The front door lurks in a recess. Its ancient black paintwork is spattered with road splash, and the shallow pane of glass above its jamb betrays no light within. An empty milk bottle has stood in its shadow so long, city lichen has bonded it…
(Or, how marketers and nonfiction authors can use the curiosity gap to hook readers and draw them into your world.) I recently critiqued the first twenty-ish pages of a new writer’s thriller. The character intrigued me. The setup was solid. The premise was compelling. But…
My husband and I were wandering around New York City for ThrillerFest—and we were starving. We’d been meandering through the streets for hours, as we tend to do in cities, and we hadn’t brought any snacks. We were in luck, though—because if you throw a…
A few months ago at the gym, my weight lifting trainer asked me what I was up to that weekend. I told her I was teaching at a writing conference, and that I was worried about a presentation I’m supposed to give on how to…
Writing customer stories was my bread and butter for many years as a freelance copywriter. They’re super popular in B2B (business-to-business) marketing because B2B buyers are looking for a product’s tangible value—they want to see exactly how you solved similar problems for someone else, and…
My client Erin Weed is a master of collecting stories that drive her point home. She’s got this great one in her TEDx Talk, “Dare to be authentic,” about being dressed as Wonder Woman to cheer up a friend going through chemo, and being unexpectedly…
(These examples of how to tell your signature story in one line come from my presentation at the Scalable SheEO Summit earlier this week. If you didn’t get a chance to see my talk live, I believe the replay is still available for free—and you…
Today we’re going to be talking about how to create a quarterly content calendar as part of your content marketing plan—in other words, a content calendar to guide your business over the next three months. What I’m about to tell you might sound like a…
Yesterday, my husband and I had friends over for brunch. After a few hours of chatting together, the boys retired out to the backyard to talk about manly things (RC cars and bicycles, I assume?) while my friend and I stayed inside to talk about…
I’ve been spending a ton of time doing research on social media lately, and I’ve noticed something. Everyone says storytelling sells, but nobody’s explaining how to actually write a good story. To be fair, it’s not easy to teach the art of telling a good…