The Secret to Telling Irresistible Stories in Your Book

Welcome to the Bestseller Secrets Podcast, where experts and entrepreneurs learn how to write a bestselling book that creates great income and impact for their business. I’m your host, Rob Kosberg, and today we’re going to talk about a really important topic, which is how to create and tell an irresistible story that makes it such that a reader can’t put your book download.Something that we have to understand is that you may be writing a business book, you may be writing a book about your expertise.You’re going to have tons of content in it. But we’re not writing an academic book. We want to write a book that absolutely is compelling and interesting and it keeps people gripped. That is going to require great stories.You see, content will teach, but context where people begin to know, like and trust you comes from the stories that you tell. There is a bit of an art of telling a great story. I want to give you a couple of different things to think about so that you tell a story that really captivates your ideal audience.So number one, you want to make sure always that you really think in terms of telling the story to one person. You’re not speaking in front of an audience of 500 or 1000 yet maybe,of course, you’ve already done that. But either way, you are with sitting with one person that is reading your book and you are telling that story to an individual.Extra credit, if you have an audience avatar, meaning that you know that your ideal audience is a male or a female,x age, x academic credentials, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, if you know who that is and can picture that person, even better. But always try to think in terms of telling your story to just one individual and really connect with that individual. When it comes to telling your stories, you’re going to tell stories that are perhaps stories about your life, your business, specific events that took place. Maybe you’re going to tell client case study stories. If a particular chapter doesn’t fit directly with a story from your life or a story from a client case study, then you can even use stories from history or sports or something else that will maybe business example, et cetera, that will really make your point and give great context to your point. But every single chapter is going to have a great story from life, client case study history, or sports. So number one, you want to make sure that you connect emotionally with your reader.When I wrote my first book, Life After Debt, it was right after the failure of my rather large real estate business. I had lost millions of dollars. I had millions of dollars in real estate that were underwater. It was a very, very difficult time. And I was one of millions of people that were going through that kind of difficult time in2008 and 2009. I shared elements of that story and the difficulty and the dramatic points within my story very easily. I mean, it was difficult, right, to tell that because it requires humility and perspective on all those things.But in one sense it was easy because I knew that people would be reading it that also could feel the same kind of pain that I felt. There was an emotional connection because I was writing for that audience that was going through the difficulty and I was showing them. I went through the difficulty and I came out the other side. So number one, you’ve got to connect emotionally with your reader. Your story should have an element of difficulty and pain and drama and emotion. It will keep people interested. Number two, when you’re telling a story, you want to make the pain and the problem really clear. Why do you want to do that? Because you’re going to show them how to get through that pain, that problem, to the other side. It’s the idea of the hero’s journey. And if the pain and the problem is not clear, then overcoming that pain and that problem isn’t going to be clear.So the clearer you can make it, the more you can speak directly to what the pains are, what you’re feeling, what the conflict is, what the challenge is that somebody is overcoming that you overcame in the story or a client overcame in the story. The clearer you can make that, the easier it is to connect with the solution. That brings us to number three. We have to have conflict, right? There’s going to be conflict in the story, and you want to make sure that you express that conflict and what the opposing forces are to success that the hero faces, that you faced or that your client faced, et cetera. What do I mean by that? Well, if I was writing a business book, and that business book was about overcoming the challenges that an entrepreneur faces to get to the next level, to reach success, whatever that looks like, well, there are certain opposing forces that are always going to be at work within my chapters. The opposing forces could be competition. The opposing force could be challenges with cash flow and expenditures. It could be the economy is always an opposing force when it comes to business. Regulation could be an opposing force in business. So you want to make the conflict from those opposing forces very, very clear.You don’t want to tell the story in such a way that it leaves vagaries and indecision about, okay,what were the real challenges that the hero, you or your client or whomever was facing? You want to make it very, very clear what the opposing forces to success were. And you want to have a theme of those opposing forces and how those opposing forces can be overcome. Number four. And lastly, there needs to be some kind of epiphany conquest conclusion, right? The way we tell our clients to write their stories is to think in terms of multiple steps. Step one is telling the story and the story reaches a point of drama,difficulty, conflict, challenge. And then you leave the open loop, meaning that you don’t solve that the epiphany isn’t given yet, the conquest or conclusion isn’t given yet. Instead, you’re giving content points and you’re teaching. Then you circle back around and you close the loop and the loop is closed with the epiphany. Here’s what we learned, here’s how we overcame it. Here is the conclusion to this story,right? So we’re going to connect emotionally with the reader by really expressing the pain. We’re going to make that pain and problem clear. We’re going to show the opposing forces what it is that we are up against. We’re going to be really specific about that.And then we’re going to share our epiphany, what we learned and how we overcame. And there was conquest and a conclusion. Now, some of this,even as I share it, may be a little unclear, and I completely understand that.I want to give you a couple of different examples. I love Malcolm Gladwell’s. Book outliers. Outliers is a fantastic book.If you have a copy of that, then and even if you don’t get a copy because it’s really worthwhile, go to chapter two. Chapter two is a great lesson in all of these various elements of multiple stories with great flow,with conflict and difficulty and challenge and lessons within there. In chapter two, Gladwell begins speaking about Bill Joy and Bill Gates. He shares a number of things throughout the chapter and he ends up coming all the way back to Bill Gates and Bill Joy and concludes his entire chapter. Within there, of course, is the10,000 hours rule and he shares about the Beatles and the conflict and the challenges that they went through because they weren’t very good in the beginning. But the 10,000 hours rule played out and they got good, et cetera. And of course, he circles all the way back around to where he started the story. Out. So suggestion would be to read chapter two, take a look at it,and it’s a masterclass in telling great stories.Now I also have my book. Publish, promote, profit.My suggestion is if you don’t have it, you can get a free copy of it@publishpromoteprofit.com. And in particular, chapter four is where we share the concepts of creating a great chapter and telling a story. And I use a fantastic case study of a client of mine that experienced great difficulty having wanting to write a book for many, many years, spending tens of thousands of dollars unsuccessfully leaving it at a point of great drama. Then I teach. Then I come back around and I conclude that I give the conquest, the conclusion, the epiphany. So suggestion is to get published, promote profit. You can get it free just pay for shipping. Read chapter four in particular. Or of course, Malcolm Gladwell’s. Book outliers chapter two. Two both great examples of creating fantastic compelling stories.