Stories Mean Business - Nick Warren

I've been circling the ideas laid out in the last few episodes, and we have another brick for this thing that we're building.

Vulnerability – which I've talked about often – is honest, but so is the anger and frustration we sometimes feel. Both come out of the darkness, and both – over time – build attention. Not the thin, brittle attention of short-term tactics ... but deeper attraction of people sharing their reality.

More importantly, consistent honesty builds trust ... and trust is rocketfuel in business.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/775:-The-Two-Sides-of-Honesty

A friend of mine thinks it might.

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So anyway, I've been wondering about the nature of reality, and how bad I am at understanding it.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/773-Whats-the-Reality?

A client of mine was struggling to thread some work together ... overwhelmed all the directions he could go, and going nowhere as a result.

A couple of days ago, we talked about the value of choosing a theme.

Not the scary, confusing "theme" of English literature ... but the reassuring foundation of a simple, controlling idea.

The theme for my first thriller was right there in the title – execution is everything. I built the book around that idea. For my second, it took longer, but eventually I settled on [[Guilt]] ... and it POWERED the story like a train.

As with so much in creativity, it helps to reduce your options – and theme does that.

Don't be scared of it. Use it.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/772:-Theme-Is-Your-Foundation

As I've mentioned before, I do a lot of my best thinking on the page.

Yesterday, I was writing the sign-up copy for my mailing list ... and a whole lot of stuff came out ... including this idea that attention is a trap.

I'm not going to repeat it all here, because it's all there on the page ... but you can see how this works.

Telling stories. Taking readers on a journey. Demonstrating proof. Opening loops for later. Getting them to nod their head through shared experience. Filtering out the poor prospects.

All that good stuff is going on in this example ... and now it's an asset that I can take out into the world.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/771:-Attention-Is-A-Trap

A week ago, I had a down day – but it wasn't writers’ block.

Having written for years – including 120,000+ word thrillers – I don't believe in it.

There were certainly days that my writing was terrible, but there were never days when I just stared at the screen.

I think the ’block’ happens for some people when they let the ’vision’ of the thing get in the way of the reality.

In reality, nothing is created in your head. Sure, you have ideas, concepts and ... perhaps ... thoughts of the adulation you'll receive when it's finally published.

But that's not creation.

Ernest Hemingway famously worked his way through the block by committing to writing ’one true sentence’. Here he is, in A Moveable Feast.

"Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scroll-work or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written."

Most of us – alas – are not Hemingway, so I'd modify his advice by one word.

Write a sentence.

Then another.

Then another.

They may be bad – probably will be. But, as Stephen King says, the first few minutes of writing are always like "smelling a dead fish".

Our job is to work through that until the rhythm comes.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/770:-One-True-Sentence

Yesterday, we talked about Walt Disney's strategy map, and how he explicitly connected his empire's assets to grow his business.

In this episode, I discuss how I'll be bridging the gap between my podcast and my my course.

The scale is different, but the principle is the same.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/769:-Nick-Warrens-Strategy-Map

In 1957, Walt Disney produced something extraordinary. But it wasn't a movie or a TV show or an animation ...

It was a map of his business strategy.

In some ways, it's exactly as you might image. Mickey, Donald and Pluto are all on show providing personality ... but they don't distract from the insight.

Disney understood franchises. He understood how the movies fed the theme parks, and how – in turn – the theme parks promoted the movies.

But that was far from the only symbiotic relationship. The ’map’ includes sections for music, books, television, merchandising and comic books ... each one feeding the others.

Each one a virtuous feedback loop – a business built of flywheels.

Listen to the episode to hear more, and learn how I'm about to bring this down to earth, and leverage a similar loop in my business.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/768:-Walt-Disneys-Business-Map

Let's see how the experts do. We're searching for contrast in the opening lines of Dracula, On The Road, The Sandman, The Prophet, War of the Worlds, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Die Trying.

Not a bad bunch of mentors.

Episode home:

https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast/767:-Engines-of-Energy

Early in his book, The Path of Least Resistance for Artists, Robert Fritz talks about the fundamental engine of art – contrast.

We talked about Fritz's work back in episode 681, but here he relates the the example of Paul McCartney writing "Hello Goodbye".

If you check out the lyrics of that song you'll see that it's a masterclass of lean contrast ... and each line is a little engine that moves energy forward.

Remember: Contrast creates tension, tension creates conflict, conflict creates drama, and drama creates attention.

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