Page 162 - Hypnotic Writing - How to Seduce and Persuade Customers with Only Your Words

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HOW PEOPLE THINK
As I mentioned earlier, the average web site (or sales letter) is terrible. They are written by people talking about themselves and begging you to buy from them. In order for you to be different, you’ll need to write in the way people think. You’ll need to create Hypnotic Writing in my favorite of all forms: the story.
Once upon a time Roger Schank, writing in his thought-provoking scholarly book Tell Me a Story, stated, “We do not easily remember what other people have said if they do not tell it in the form of a story. We can learn from the stories of others, but only if what we hear re- lates strongly to something we already knew.” Elsewhere he writes, “People think in terms of stories.”
In short, if you want to create Hypnotic Writing that follows the basic three-step formula I’ve taught you, then the best form may be through a story.
I love stories. My most successful articles, books, web sites, and even audiopackages, all include stories. Stories are a power- ful way to get your message across. People don’t usually defend against a story. And, as Schank pointed out, people actually think in stories.
If you remember one definition we gave earlier—“Anything you do that makes your listeners react because of mental images you plant in their minds is waking hypnosis”—then you can easily see that written stories are a terrific way to create mental images that lead to a waking trance.
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