Rough Draft

“Don’t panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested.” That’s the punch line for one of the most successful urban legends in the last fifteen years. What makes it so successful? It’s hypnotic: understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought and behavior. How do you create stories that are like that? Just follow these…

You can spot a mediocre writer from miles away … Flat verbs. Obtuse nouns. Lame metaphors. Absence of stories. I should know. I used to be one. In regards to the mediocre writers, it seems to me that they’d want an edge. That they’d kill to get their hands on words that crank out power…

Who would you prefer to write for you: somebody with a vanilla personality or someone with an awkward, funny edge to them? Someone who sees the unique and can find the angle that will differentiate you from the mob? I’m going for the awkward edge because, when getting attention and visibility online is SO difficult…

That’s a lot of books out there. What’s the benefit of reading as many of them as you can lay your eyes on? One of the fastest tracks to mastering the art of compelling copy and seductive story-telling is to observe how others do it … both the masters and the flops. In fact, you…

There’s an old-school trick to selling ideas to movie executives. It’s called the high-concept pitch. A high-concept pitch lays out the entire story–premise, promise, and execution–in one simple sentence. Here are a few famous examples from Hollywood: – Backdraft: Top Gun in a Firehouse – Ghost: a man dies and becomes his wife’s guardian angel…

Anybody out there know who Cyrus Trask is? Anyone? You won’t find out who Cyrus Trask is if you eyeball a list of country singers. No. The only way you can find out who Cyrus Trask is is by reading John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden. John Steinbeck describes Cyrus Trask as the father of…