In 1984, two artists used a simple process to create a story that captivated an audience for years and generated billions of dollars in revenue. That same process is being used today by a master copywriter to attract hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers. With companies creating millions of web pages of content marketing , finding an untold story or a new angle can feel like an impossible task.

I'd like to tell you about a powerful but elusive emotion that you can trigger to increase traffic, click-throughs, and conversions. Used properly, it can entice your reader to give you their full attention and follow your call to action. But there's a catch. Despite its intensity, this emotion is fickle . And it's often mishandled in copywriting. Make a mistake and your reader's interest can disappear with the smallest of distractions.

Say you've been feeling under the weather for a few days, and you decide to go to the doctor. The moment you open the door to your doctor's office, she takes one quick look at you, thrusts a prescription into your hands, and slams the door in your face. No check-up, no conversation, just a bottle of pills and her bill in the mail. Are you confident she's given you the solution " the correct medicine " you need to make you feel better? Um, no.

One of the most useful lessons I've learned about writing engaging content came from studying screenwriting. It's that every single piece of dialogue or screen direction had to be working hard to hook viewers in and keep them gripped. Audiences don't like fluff or irrelevance. Write like that and you won't keep their attention. And while there's no absolute science to it,

A long long time ago, around the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece, there were a bunch of hip kids called the Sophists who loved to talk. Actually, not just talk. They loved teaching people how to debate and come up with persuasive arguments to influence the opinions and beliefs of others through the use of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of using language for persuasive ends. Not unlike copywriting . So, the Sophists would travel around from town to town,