Some Writers Think Life is Overrated

William Shakespeare wrote, “This life… is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Songwriter K.D. Lang put it more simply, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”

Some Writers Think Life is an Adventure

Joseph Campbell wrote, “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

Susan Ryan said, “We get to show up. We get to step into this story.”

Some Writers Think Life is Simple

Songwriter John Lennon said, “When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

Business writer Tom Peters said, “Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works.”

Some Writers Think Life is About Writing

Nobel-Prizewinning author Gabriel García Márquez wrote, “Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”

Anne Lamott, the author of Bird by Bird says, “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.”

Some Writers Think Life is Transformative

Wes Jackson said, “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”

Studs Terkel wrote, “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

Some Writers Think Life is Service

Dr. Albert Schweitzer wrote, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”

Dave Wolverton said, “When you grow up, you have to give yourself away. Sometimes you give your life all in a moment, but mostly you have to give yourself away laboring one minute at a time.”

Some Writers Think Life is Contemplation

A Blackfoot warrior named Crowfoot wrote, “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

The Welsh hobo-poet W.H. Davies said, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”

Some Writers Think Life is Connectedness

John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

My friend Vess Barnes has his own definition of our purpose in life, “To encourage, to comfort, to awaken, and to stretch those who find themselves riding this big ball as it screams thru time in the silence of space. To be a bridge, not a barricade. To be a link, not a lapse. To be a beacon and a bolster; not a bragger or a bummer. To help bring the corners of life’s lips to their...

Open your ads with a big, emotional idea.

Save the details for your web page.

Use parallel structure if you can.

Parallel structure is a writing technique that uses similar grammatical constructions to express related ideas. Patterns of words, phrases, or clauses that are repeated show that your selected ideas are of equal importance. Parallel structure uses clarity and rhythm in writing to create a balanced and harmonious flow.

It is how you can sing to the heart without music.

Parallel structure is a poem that doesn’t rhyme.

Parallel structure is a song without music.

This is parallel structure…

Natural diamonds are rare and wonderful.

Especially when they are perfectly proportioned.

If you are going to ask a rare and wonderful woman

to marry you, be sure that her engagement ring celebrates

a rare and wonderful, perfectly proportioned,

Earthborn natural diamond.

This diamond was born when the earth was formed.

It has been waiting millions of years to be the

undying symbol of your love.

An unspeakably rare and wonderful diamond;

for an unspeakably rare and wonderful love:

Earthborn natural diamonds. Available in only the finest stores.

Visit earthborndiamonds.com to find

the earthborn diamond jeweler near you.

Born, celebrates, waiting, undying…

“Natural diamonds are rare and wonderful. Especially when they are perfectly proportioned.”

1. I suggest Earthborn Diamonds as a name to consider because:

(A) the name clearly indicate that these are natural diamonds.

(B) anything that is “born” is alive.

(C) Your engagement ring also comes alive when it “celebrates” the Earthborn Diamond it holds.

(D) I own the domain name.

2. Let’s examine the central stanza of this 5-part, 4-stanza* song of love:

“This diamond was born when the earth was formed. It has been waiting millions of years to be the undying symbol of your love.”

(A) “Earthborn” is explained in that opening sentence.

(B) “waiting” is the third activity that only a living thing can do, and fourth,

(C) to be “undying,” a thing must be alive, like this diamond, and your love.

3. “Rare and wonderful” is repeated 5 times in just 30 seconds.

(A) It describes the Earthborn diamond.

(B) It describes the woman you love.

(C) It describes the love that the two of you share.

4. This love song employs a writing technique known as parallel structure.

(A) The diamond, the woman, and your love all share specific attributes, and

(B) twice the ad tells us that these diamonds are “perfectly proportioned.”

(C) Due to the recurrent, parallel structure of the ad, “perfectly proportioned” will trigger the mind of a...

Pearl had the power of 5 different breeds. She was my Megadog. The Mustang was a 1971 convertible, white with a blue interior.

The car and the dog could not talk, of course, but speech is not required to show love.

Pearl and I found each other in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, when I was 8 years old. She had been abandoned by the side of the road and was starving. I was lonely and needed a friend.

When Pearl realized that she had been adopted, she became as mellow and contented as a dope-smoking hippie in a tie-dyed T-shirt. But Pearl was not a little yapper dog. If you acted as though you were going to attack me, that 16-pound dog would become a gigantic werewolf that could move at the speed of light.

Pearl followed the advice of E.W. Howe.

“When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”

Speech is not required to show love.

Rachel Dawes was a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne in the 2005 movie, Batman Begins. She said to him,

“It’s not who you are inside, but what you do that defines you.”

Matthew records a parable by Jesus in which he makes a similar point:

“There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.”

“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.”

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Speech is not required to show love.

Likewise, in the second chapter of James we read,

“If a person is without clothes and daily food, and you say to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but do nothing about their physical needs, what good is that?”

My ’71 Mustang, like Pearl, was abandoned by the side of the road.

I left a note under the windshield wiper in 1991.

“Might this be a good time to sell this car? Give me a call and I’ll buy it where it sits.”

The man called me and I met him at the side of the road with the cash. He handed me the title to the car and asked, “Did you call a wrecker?”

“No,” I answered, “I’m hoping to drive it home.”

The man smiled and said, “Good luck,” as he drove away.

I then took the pliers out of my back pocket and quickly replaced the fuel filter. The car started immediately and I drove it home. The fuel filter on a Ford 302 engine of that era was notorious for getting clogged up, and this Mustang still had the original fuel filter. I was shocked that it had lasted 20 years.

I am going to tell you about that car, even though I know you won’t believe me.

It never had a flat.

It would perform as though it had 4-wheel drive if I needed to pull a friend’s car out of a ditch on an icy day.

The car would refuse to run out of gas unless I was within coasting distance of a gas station. And if it absolutely had to break down, it would wait until I was within coasting distance of an auto parts store that had exactly the part I needed. (The car knew, of course, that I already had the tools that I would need in the trunk.)

Speech is not required to show love.

You have people in your life that you love. I know you do. You know it, too.

Here are two other things that you already know.

1. Talk is cheap.
2. Actions speak louder than words.

I am not against words. In fact, I am in the word business. Banging words together is what I get paid to do.

And it is always a good thing to tell the people you love that you love them.

But it...

“More agile than a turtle! Stronger than a mouse! Nobler than a head of lettuce! His shield is his Heart! It’s… El CHAPULIN COLORADO!”

El Chapulín Colorado – The Red Grasshopper – was a Spanish-speaking television star loved by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

The Red Grasshopper would shout “¡Síganme los buenos!” and leap into action whenever a ghost, a bandit, or any other threat appeared.

(“¡Síganme los buenos!” translates to “Follow me, the good ones,” or “Good guys, follow me.”)

And then he would run into a wall. Or tumble down the stairs. The results of following the lead of the Red Grasshopper were never straightforward. He had a good heart, but he was very poor, clumsy, and inept. His leadership would often increase the trouble, cause a mess, or create some other disaster that, through sheer luck, would always solve the problem.

El Chapulín Colorado was Don Quixote dressed as a comedic superhero.

Notice how these simple, concrete nouns are easy to visualize in your mind. “Turtle, mouse, head of lettuce, heart, red grasshopper.”

And the verbs associated with El Chapulín Colorado are simple as well. “Leap, follow, run, tumble.”

El Chapulín Colorado averaged 350 million viewers* per episode in Latin America alone during the mid-1970’s and 1980’s. The show has made $1.7 billion in syndication fees since it ceased production in 1992.

Luis Castañeda, one of the Wizard of Ads Partners, recently sent an email to the partner group.

Gentlemen,

I was listening to this podcast “Outliers: Anna Wintour – Vogue” [The Knowledge Project Ep. #233] when I heard this comment:

“Digital transformation isn’t about abandoning what made you successful. It’s about translating it to a new medium.”

I took this to mean:

“How can we translate what Roy has taught us into better digital marketing?”

What do you think?

Luis

Today I will teach you a simple but profound answer to the question posed by Luis. In fact, I already have:

These simple, concrete nouns are easy to visualize in your mind. “Turtle, mouse, head of lettuce, heart, red grasshopper.”

And the verbs are simple as well. “Leap, follow, run, tumble.”

Do you want to create better online ads? Avoid abstract words. Use simple, concrete nouns that people can easily see in their mind. Use simple verbs that are easy to visualize as well.

Avoid abstract words. Use concrete words.

Avoid abstract words. Use concrete words.

Avoid abstract words. Use concrete words.

And repetition is effective.

Professional writers have long been familiar with that advice, but it was only recently scientifically proven. The publication is “Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.” The paper is titled, “Concrete Words Are Easier to Recall Than Abstract Words: Evidence for a Semantic Contribution to Short-Term Serial Recall.” The tests were performed, and the paper was written, by Ian Walker and Charles Hulme of the University of York.

Their paper is long and filled with scientific jargon, but this summary sentence is relatively easy to understand:

“It is also apparent that the short words were much better recalled than the long words, and that the concrete words were much better recalled than the abstract words, with the possible exception of the first and last serial positions.”

When Walker and Hulme refer to “the first and last serial positions,” they are referring to the long-established laws of Primacy and Recency. These terms describe how humans tend to remember the first item...

A troubling statement makes us want to think of exceptions to it that would prove that statement to be wrong.

“Outliers are interesting, but they rarely matter,” is a troubling statement, and you may already be thinking of exceptions to it. But it remains true nonetheless.

This second statement is also true. “If there were no outliers, there would be no new inventions, no innovations, no progress. We would be trapped forever in the status quo.”

These seemingly contradictory statements can both be true because there are two kinds of outliers.

Leonardo da Vinci made marvelous art and filled fabulous sketchbooks with his insightful ideas, but he didn’t really change anything. He was just an interesting outlier whose mind was ahead of his time.

Rare is the outlier who throws a pebble into the ocean of time and shifts the world off its axis. Electricity is harnessed. Computers are invented. Someone connects them and now everyone knows everything all the time.

“What distinguishes the past from the present is not biology, nor psychology, but rather technology. If the world has changed, it is because we have changed the world.”

– Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson in their new book, Abundance

Technology changes the world, but persuasion changes hearts and minds.

I am an ad writer.

When I was in my 20s, I was told,

“People never change their mind. If you give a person the same information they were given in the past, they will make the same decision they made in the past. When a person appears to have ‘changed their mind,’ what they have really done is made a new decision based on new information.*”

Ten years later I realized that those people were trying to use logic to create “persuasion technology.” Their mistake was assuming that people make their decisions logically. But people do not trust new information when it disagrees with their belief system.

New information may allow you to win the argument, but it rarely wins the heart.

And a person convinced against their will, remains unconvinced, still.

Wash away the opinions, bravado, and fluff, and you will find that most people are NOT seeking new information. They are seeking identity reinforcement.

Bertrand Russell was a mathematician and a logician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature eight years before I was born.

He said,

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence.”

When your goal is persuasion, don’t begin with new information. Begin by agreeing with what they already believe. Meet them where they are. Only then can you hope to lead them to where you want them to go.

Abraham Lincoln knew that persuasion is easier when you begin at a point of mutual agreement.

“If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the greatest high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the...

Clarity and Brevity are the highest creativity. But “clear and brief” does not mean simple and predictable.

One the most talented writers of advertising in the world would be surprised to hear me call him that. Jonathan Edward Durham is a novelist. He recently posted this random thought.

“‘Why am I so sad today?’ I ask myself after staring at my little handheld sadness machine and clicking all the sad little things that will definitely make me sad.”

You may not agree with Durham’s statement, but you will agree it was artfully crafted.

What Durham gave us was clarity and brevity without predictability. This is the mark of a great ad writer.

“Why am I so sad today?” immediately gets our attention. We are compelled to keep reading.

We are surprised that he owns “a little handheld sadness machine.” But our cleverness allows us to translate it as “iPhone” and we receive a tiny spasm of delight.

You have never heard of “a little handheld sadness machine” but you knew exactly what it was.

His 30-word sentence demonstrated clarity, brevity, and creativity, but none of what Jonathan Edward Durham wrote was simple or predictable.

Durham’s ability to bring us – his readers, his listeners, his customers – into active participation in a one-way conversation is pure genius.

Jonathan Edward Durham causes us to become engaged with what he is saying.

You can do it, too.

“Time + Place + Character + Emotion.” That’s it. That’s how Stephen Semple turns a weak story into a powerful one in his famous TED-X talk.

Here’s how Jonathan Edward Durham uses Time + Place + Character + Emotion to tell us a story in less than 30 seconds.

“About two years ago, we moved across the country. It was a big, stressful move, and anxieties were high all around, and it had only been about six months since we rescued Jack, so he was really just beginning to adjust to having a forever home. Needless to say, Jack didn’t understand why a bunch of strangers were taking all of our things, and he was having a very, very ruff time with the whole process.”

“We want Jack to live forever. That’s why we feed him The Wizard’s Magic dog food.”

Jonathan Edward Durham’s wonderful story became an excellent ad with my addition of just 16 words. “We want Jack to live forever. That’s why we feed him The Wizard’s Magic dog food.”

You already know how to write the 16 words. Now you need to learn how to tell a wonderful story in 76 words like Durham did.

Time + Place + Character + Emotion. Give it a try.

Roy H. Williams

PS – Most people use too many words to make too small a point. The average writer wraps lots of words around a small idea. Inflated sentences are fluffy and empty like a hot air balloon. Good writers deliver a big idea quickly. Tight sentences hit hard. – Indy Beagle

“Facts tell. Stories sell.” – Tom Schreiter

Who do you call when you need your people to cooperate, innovate, and create? Meta, Google, Salesforce, and other big companies call a woman who has a golden reputation for legendary results. Her methods are unorthodox, unconventional, and irresistible. And her credentials are unique: she is an improv entertainer who trained to be a dancer at Juilliard. Her name is Melissa Dinwiddie and she can play the ukulele. Roving reporter Rotbart...

January 18, 1604: King James, a Protestant, announces that he will commission an English translation of the Bible.

January 16, 1605: Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is published in Spain. It is considered to be the first modern novel. Every sophisticated storytelling device used by the best writers today made its initial debut in Don Quixote.

February 28, 1605: A 41-year-old Italian named Galileo publishes an astronomical text written as an imagined conversation. A pair of Paduan peasants talk about Kepler’s Supernova.

One says, “A very bright star shines at night like an owl’s eye.”

And the other replies, “And it can still be seen in the morning when it is time to prune the grapevines!”

The observations of the peasants clearly disprove the widely held belief that the earth is the center of the universe. The authorities take note. Uh-oh for Galileo.

November 1, 1605: Shakespeare’s Othello is first performed for King James in the banqueting hall at Whitehall Palace in London.

Meanwhile, a group of English Roman Catholics stack 36 barrels of gunpowder under the floor of the Palace of Westminster. Their plan is to blow up the king, his family, and the entire legislature on November 5, 1605.

The Gunpowder Plot is discovered by a night watchman just a few hours before Guy Fawkes was to have lit the fuse.

Shakespeare immediately begins writing a new play. In it, a ruler gives enormous power to those who flatter him, but his insanity goes unnoticed by society. “King Lear” is regularly cited as one of the greatest works of literature ever written.

May 13, 1607: One hundred and four English men and boys arrive in North America to start a settlement in what is now Virginia. They name it “Jamestown” after King James. The American Experiment has begun.

Don Quixote, Galileo, Shakespeare, the crisis of King James, and the founding of Jamestown in the New World…

All of this happens within a span of just 28 months. Flash forward…

May 2, 1611: The English Bible that will be known as the King James Version is published.

April 23, 1616: Shakespeare and Cervantes – the great voices of England and Spain – die just a few hours apart. (Galileo continues until 1642.)

July 4, 1776: The 13 colonies of the American Experiment light a fuse of their own and the Revolutionary War engulfs the Atlantic coast.

November 19, 1863: Abraham Lincoln looks out over a field of 6,000 acres. He says,

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Lincoln ends his speech one minute later. His hope is that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln’s fear is that “the people” will not remain firmly united enough to resist the takeover of a tyrant. We know this because he opens his speech by referring to our 1776 Declaration which rejected crazy King George. America had escaped George’s heavy-handed leadership just –”four...

I was whining to Clay Cary about the interest rate the bank was going to charge me to fund a real estate investment. I felt the percentage was way too high.

Clay asked, “Is the deal you’re about to make a good deal? How much money will you make from it?”

I answered his question conservatively. He said, “Now let’s calculate the total amount of interest that you will pay on the loan that makes this deal possible.”

We calculated the dollar amounts.

I was going to make hundreds of times more money on the real estate than I was going to pay in interest on the loan.

Clay said, “As a rule of thumb, if the interest rate you are paying determines whether or not the deal you are making is good or bad, you are definitely making a bad deal. Don’t judge according to percentages. Judge according to dollars.”

Here’s a thought.

Why do banks never get angry about the huge profits that YOU make on deals using THEIR money?

I have never heard a bank say, “We supplied the money, but you are keeping most of the profits. That’s not fair. You should give us more money than we originally agreed upon.”

Banks never say that because banks always remember that YOU found the deal and decided to let THEM make some money on it with you.

Here’s another example of how percentages can be misleading.

Woody Justice had been in business for 6 years when I met him in 1987. His business was circling the drain. Woody’s biggest year had a top line of $350,000. His goal was to someday sell $1,000,000 worth of jewelry in a single year. That would put Woody in the top 10% of jewelers nationwide.

I began working with Woody and we grew more than 100% a year for two years in a row. We blew past the $1,000,000 mark in the second year. About a dozen years later, Woody was grumpy. He said, “We used to grow by big percentages. But last year we only grew by ten percent. You need to get your shit together.”

“Woody, how many dollars did our top line grow last year?”

“We grew by a million dollars,” he said.

“Woody, when we first began working together, a million-dollar jump from $350,000 to $1,350,000 would have been a 286% increase. We would have nearly quadrupled your best year ever and you would have wet your pants. Evaluate yourself by dollar growth, not percentage growth. Percentages will lead you to believe that you are doing better, or worse, than you really are.”

Woody made a face but didn’t say anything, so I continued. “And by the way, we’re running out of people in this Dairy Queen town. If you want to grow by big percentages again, we’re going to need to open another store somewhere else.”

I could say those things to him because we were close friends.

Woody died unexpectedly 14 years ago but I still have his number on my cell phone. I tell myself that if I press that number, Woody will hear his phone ring.

As long as I don’t delete that number from my phone, Woody Justice will never be...