Episode 513 Copywriting With Todd Jones Story Gap

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Show Summary

The podcast features Rob Cairns of Stunning Digital Marketing interviewing Todd Jones about the concept of “story gaps.” Jones explains that story gaps are intentionally or unintentionally omitted details in a story that allow the audience to fill in the blanks using their own experiences. This technique, along with “neural coupling,” helps create a connection between the storyteller and the audience. They discuss how this applies to various mediums, highlighting the importance of storytelling in business and personal branding. They touch upon vulnerability, authenticity, and the power of shared experiences in building connections. They suggest engaging in real-world interactions outside of work to promote connectedness.

Show Resources

David Garfinkel’s book – https://www.persuasionstorycode.com/

Link to School of Content: https://community.copyflight.com/latest?fcom_action=auth&form=register

Karen Eber’s Book: https://www.kareneber.com/book

Karen Hall’s Book: https://www.storiesthatstick.com/

Show Transcript

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and today I’m here with my Copywriting with Todd Jones segment. Hey Todd, how you doing man?

Hello. Thank you for having me on.

Oh, always a pleasure. Um, you know, it’s funny. We were talking before I went to record and you know, we got about 10 inches of snow and more coming and the greater Toronto area should be called snow again in right now because uh it’s a bit of a mess.

Yeah, I uh we had our really good snow for every three years and you know that’s fine. Let’s move on. But they are talking about having snow next week here. So we’ll see. Anyway,

I probably have tornadoes Saturday and then snow on Tuesday. Yes, that’s Arkansas weather.

Yep. Typical. Um today we wanted to talk about story gaps and story telling. So what is a story gap? Let’s go there first.

So um I wasn’t really sure what to call it. That’s that’s what I call it story gaps. Um so I had this I was telling you I had this long conversation with perplexity basically helped me clarify my thoughts and I kind of felt this way all along. Um it wasn’t the the emphasis didn’t come exactly the way I thought. But earlier this week on Facebook somebody some music Facebook page posted this meme. with a picture of Tom Petty and a quote attributed to him although I don’t know that it’s really from him but it’s a good quote uh so for the purposes of this particular topic the quote is perfect and it says a good song remember Tom P he’s a songwriter uh it was a songwriter and singer one of the best a good song

great songwriter too he’s passed away a number of years

yes yes he was yeah a great song should give you a lot of images should be able to make your own you should be able to make your own little movie in your head to a good song. And so a story gap um is is it’s actually a technique in storytelling in in in my little conversation with the the perplexity thing. I I we come to the conclusion that it can happen both naturally like involuntarily or it can be employed uh specifically. But I go back to um the book stories of stick by Kinder Hall and I thought I was where I got it. I really didn’t. I think it’s implied not really specifically said. She talks about the components. She calls them the components or the elements that makes a good story. There’s four I think. But the one that’s that is necessary for this particular conversation is specific details. Um so you tell the story uh went to the podcast conference last month and it was a big auditorium and it it was cold. and u they had this carpet looked like it’s from the 1990s and you’re given some specific details. Um but maybe you choose and this is the the actual idea of a story app choose to neglect a detail. Uh but we do that sometimes because it’s impossible to one to remember all the details and two it’s impossible to describe every single thing. Um so you uh you leave out whether it’s on purpose or just involuntarily uh details of the story. Now, so what it’s it’s a it’s a particular tactic and what it does is um allow the person listening or reading. This is not particularly a storytelling by video thing. This is more of a storytelling by listening or reading. So, if you’re reading your favorite fictional book, they’re going to give you a lot of details, but they’re not going to give you every detail. So, your mind fills those things in from it. own collective memory. Now that part of it is called neural coupling. Um that’s where the neural coupling comes in. So basically these two work hand in hand. I was trying to differentiate the difference between these two because they every time uh perplexity would summarize it for me I’m like that’s the same thing and it took me a little bit but they’re the both sides of the same coin. So one side is you’re leaving out details. Um but you have you have to have details right? You have to have some details. because it triggers these things. But you leave out details. Maybe you don’t maybe you say the guy’s uh bald and he has a beard, but you don’t say what kind of beard or whatever. You don’t say what color the beard is, whatever. Um that’s just a example. Um anyway, and and the mind on the other side um will fill in the details and it will it also neural coupling has to do with you being on the same wavelength as the reader. So I think there’s an emotional connection. too. In fact, those two things are connected by emotion. Um, so you begin, it’s like you are, you feel like you’re in the story with the reader or the the author or the person telling the story. You, you know, you’re telling, it’s like you’re standing around the Thanksgiving table and you’re telling the stories and you’re like, you can see what’s going on. And this is exactly what Tom’s talking about in this quote, assuming he actually um said it, but even if he didn’t, it’s a good quote for what we’re talking about. So, when you tell a story, And again, this is auditorial or or listening, right? Um, so you pick up and actually let me tell you a story. I’m going to tell you a story to emphasize this point. Um, back when I was working in the bookstore, uh, Borders, which doesn’t exist anymore, but your listeners probably old enough to remember Borders Books and Music. Um, the, uh, the, uh, store one was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So, um, some of you may have actually gone. I worked at the one in Fort Worth there. We had two in Fort Worth, Texas. I worked at one on Huin and I30 um for about eight years. Um toward the end of the eight years, we had a new president for the whole company and really the company was in decline and eventually went bankrupt, but he was brought in to try to more or less save it. Uh one of the things he did is he recaptured the borders.com domain

that early in the career or early in the years of Borders uh when the internet started they started redirecting it to Amazon. Uh it was a smart move on Amazon’s part and to some degree part on Borders part too except that people would come in all the time to return something that they got really from Amazon but in their mind they went to borders.com so it just ended up in Amazon but that was it was kind of was a little bit confusing and basically we pawned off our entire e-commerce to uh Amazon it did not help things right uh but it was smart on Amazon’s part anyway the new guy comes in, he says, “We want to sell more books. We’re a bookstore. We want to sell more books.” And so they started doing uh, for the lack of a better term, a a um book of the month or book of the whatever, book of the quarter, whatever.

And they really encouraged us to check out that book and take it home and read it. Now, Rob, I will tell you this, and you know this, I am not a big fiction reader.

I know.

I do not read a lot of fiction. I tend to get my fiction movies and that kind of thing. Um, I probably should be more uh the fiction reader, but you know, when you’re trying to do business and that kind of stuff, you tend to uh my mom, who didn’t read much at all when she was working, is now reading a bunch of fiction. Uh, so she’s telling me about all these books she’s reading, all that kind of stuff. Um, so this book was um, City of Thieves, I think is what it was called.

And the guy writes, he’s basically retelling a story his grandfather told him as a young soldier in the Russian army. I hope this didn’t get your podcast banned. World War II. Um, he was the guy was a was a Russian uh soldier. And they were given this impossible task of finding eggs for the general’s daughter’s wedding cake. Um, just like eggs right now are really expensive and a little bit hard to find in the States and maybe Canada too. I don’t know. Um, there there was a big massive egg shortage in the middle of World War II. Um, I do not know how much this story is accurate. I do know he um did some literary license because his grandpa gave him permission to do that. He tells this story at the beginning of the book. This is funny. I could actually see this and hear it in my mind when I read it. And I would use this story, by the way, to sell the book, of which it worked about three out of four times.

Um it was in the first chapter, really wasn’t even a chapter, it was like an intro. He said, “I’m I’m having, you know, he’s having these conversations with his grandfather. He’s recording them. He’s he just one more time, you know, tell me about this. And he said, “David,” he said, “I can’t remember everything. It was so long ago. I can’t remember.” He said, “Well, I just want to make sure I get it right. I want to make sure it’s accurate.” He said, “David, you’re a writer. Make it up.” So, I’m illustrating this thing with that story. I can literally see them in some room and not not in all detail, right? But a grandfather father and a grandson and his grandson’s got the recording the tape recorder and he’s he’s talking to him. He’s he’s pressed him about details, right? Because details do matter, but it’s hard to get every single detail accurate. Describe every single detail. And this little thing, and you can do this, like I said, either knowingly,

yep,

or not knowingly, but either way, it really just what it does is it does synchronize you with the person listening. the story or reading the story. Um, it allows them to enter your world, if you will, in that way. That’s that’s the only way I know to describe it. Um, I I find this a lot with biblical stories, right? You you feel like you’re enter the world, like you know, there’s King David and you know, there’s something going on. I feel like I’ve entered the world. Um, that’s essentially what you’re doing. So, you give just enough detail to trigger those memories, right? And your brain will fill in what’s missing. Um, so now when it comes to movies and videos, they still do the same thing. It’s it’s it’s the interpretation of the producer and the writer to fill those blanks in, but there’s there’s blanks.

Movies and videos are hard because what it is is the writer and the producer shows you and interprets for you. Whereas when you read a book, and I I think I’ve told you this,

interpreters,

you know, I’m an avid reader. And when I read a non-fiction book, I can picture the scene in my head

and I walk through the scene. And those are the writers I like to read. And I was thinking about that as you were saying that and I was thinking, what do I like to read? And I’ll throw a few out there. Robert Leam,

we all know. Yeah.

Who’s passed away?

Um Hen Fullet, two of the, by the way, two of the best mystery writers on the face of the earth.

Two of my favorites. Um and then I was kind of thinking sci-fi. There’s a guy by the name of Piers Anthony who used to write about these mystical worlds and

you could I could picture that or you remember Isaac Azimoff and the robot novels or um

well okay think about JR Tolken who did the Lord of the Rings

and then and then my favorite book one of my favorite books 1984 which was 1948 George Orwell

and you read that book and the point I’m making is you know and I read some historic ical fiction. Um, John Jakes who wrote North and South and uh that series and I read these books and I just picture them. That’s why I prefer reading very much over a movie. Movies are movies are cool to go out with the other half and say, “Hey, let’s go see a movie.” And and they’re fun. They have a purpose. Don’t get me wrong. Watching TV has a purpose. But stories in a book or stories online is a whole new level.

So, um,

go ahead. Sorry.

I the people I know who read all the Harry Potter books say that they did an amazing job with the movie. The movie just like was described and so

yeah um but our minds fill in the gaps. Now,

we’re not writing as business owners, we’re not writing a fictional story.

We are

for the most part. Sometimes you’d use one as an illustration. Um, but we’re using the storytelling to, you know, persuade somebody, um, to make a point. Um, so Karen, I’m sorry, Kinder Hall, that book is a great book to read for how to implement storytelling in your business. She gives four stories. I’ve added a fifth one to it. Uh, and then Karen Iber’s book, The Perfect Story. If you are a business person or an entrepreneur or a speaker and want to learn to use storytelling and speaking. Uh Karen Eber’s book, The Perfect Story is a great book to read to consume to learn how to use it storytelling and she does actually have a very good TEDex talk about with she tells a story. It actually gained a lot of uh views whenever she did it. So those are two uh there’s a lot of I mean there’s a lot of people talk about storytelling in the business world. Um those two are in my opinion kind for me at least lynch pins for for um you know anchoring some of my thoughts on story. I mean you you have uh Donald Miller as well and and I’m not you know but those two Karen and Kendra the 2Ks I guess are are kind of where I stand and a lot of development a lot of my thoughts uh about storytelling and um I was reading some stuff in Kendra’s book today preparing for this and I’m thinking I need to go back and read this book again. But um it’s interesting to me um my friend Um Britney Hodak who wrote treating super fans the book um when she has this little framework and she in the first one is S for story tell your story

um I think and we talked about this in one one of the previous episodes

as a service business when you’re a service business and I think it’s true for product business as well but um maybe a little bit easier to see in a service business when you are trying to stand out

your your most ultimate differentiator is who you are.

Yeah,

it it just is. And um and I know we we um we just want to get roll up our sleeves, get to work, uh help people save money, improve their business, um whatever whatever it is. We we don’t want to harp on ourselves.

I actually don’t want to help people save money. We want to help people make money.

Make money. Yeah. Well, you know, when you’re a business owner, you you either help people save money, make money, or improve their life or their business. That’s pretty much your the the trio that we’re trying to do, but um you you you’ve got to to differentiate to to differentiate yourself. That’s can be a hard word to say.

So, you’ve got to be willing really to be a little bit vulnerable. And I’ll hear people all the time, I heard on LinkedIn, they’re like, “Yeah, people don’t they don’t want really want to hear your story and blah blah blah.”

I think what I’ll tell you, what I’ll tell you is I think people aren’t vulnerable enough. People aren’t real people. They they don’t want bots and they and they want to hear the and they want to do they want to hear. I mean, you’ve heard me over the years in this podcast. I’ve been vulnerable about my relationships. I’ve been vulnerable about my health. I’ve been very and I’m not I honestly I’m not doing it to say, “Hey, look at me. I need sympathy.” No, I I have support for that. What I’m doing it is to share the experience of being a business owner. And sometimes being an entrepreneur is hard

and people don’t understand that. For example, working at home like you and I do or you being in an individual office. We’re lucky you and I. We have a gang of friends. I mean, we’ve got each other. We’ve got Ryan Waterbury. We’ve got Deender. We’ve got uh Paul Lacy. I mean, we banter all the time. That’s probably our secret because we all know that being by yourself will kill you and and

well, and I’m trying to be more present.

Yep.

Engagement is my theme for the year. Um with actual human beings. And so one thing that helps me and I think anybody who’s a soloreneur who um

can be isolated is this would really apply to them and I’m not trying this this story. We’re doing a story. But go to the coffee shop, man. Just sit down. You know, it’s not even about doing work there, man. It’s just going So here’s what I did. I go to, you know, I go to my favorite coffee shop every morning. Round Mountain Coffee almost every morning. U shout out to Scott Forbish and the gang there. They probably won’t even hear this, but I love them to death. They are my Valentine tomorrow on Valentine’s Day. Uh but anyway, I go there this morning and and uh the the barista says something and it’s a reference to LA night and he you know and the kid sitting at the table, he looks up and he goes, “Oh, you two guys would hit it off.” For the next hour, I sat down, I assumed because I didn’t look at my old clock, drink my coffee, talked to this young man about pro ly for a an entire hour. That did me a world.

And here and here’s the key. You’re not looking at your smartphone and you’re not looking at your laptop. I got on um a regional bus the other day and this young man who sat beside me was a university student and you know I’m 57 so I’m up there and got talking and it turned out he was a PhD student at the univer at York University in Toronto.

And so him and I got talking about a PhD all the way to a stop. And he looked at me at the end and said, “Thanks for the great conversation.” And like I wasn’t buried in my smartphone. I wasn’t buried in listening to a podcast, which I often do. I did Coming Home last night. But and I do that too where I go I have a couple coffee shops. One’s a Tim Hortons. Those who don’t know, Timmy’s is like the big chain here in Canada. One is

it’s Starbucks of uh Canada, right?

Well, we have Starbucks all over. There’s a Starbucks I like and there’s um Not far from the Starbucks, there’s also what’s called a Second Cup. They’re like a another Canadian coffee chain and they have a little bit of a a different flare. So, depending on what mood I’m in, where I’ll go and people laugh at me and you know, my family looks at me and says, “You go work in a coffee shop a couple times a week.” And I do without failure. I’ll go do some writing. I’ll take a coffee. But it’s because of the people. It’s to it’s that changing environment to get out with people. Oh. and go work in one of the libraries very often. That’s a different ballgame. The libraries are just focused work. But you know, but I agree with you. You got to do that. So, is there anything else you want to talk about about

I don’t know how we got to working in coffee shops from story gap and neural coupling, but we did. And uh but but yeah, it’s about it’s about being willing to you know, you do not have to tell every single detail of your story. There’s I’ve told a lot about some of my health But I haven’t told everything.

Don’t play on that. But here’s what here’s what happens. And and this plays out in this story gap in neural coupling is it it allows people to connect with you.

Remember oxytocin. I love that word oxytocin. Um it allows people to connect with you because they themselves find themselves in your story. They it floods them with their memories. Um and some are good and some are bad. That’s why sometimes we say this is tri this can be triggering. Depends on what you’re sharing, but but I think it’s not about being vulnerable. It’s not about being overly authentic either because authentic is a buzz word that a lot of people use in business. Um, so you got to know you you don’t do it all the time, right? When when you’re talking about your own story, you don’t do it all the time. You tell it just enough. And that’s why I’m bullish on about pages and that kind of thing. But but it’s not just about your own story, right? You’re, like I said, storytelling has so many benefits in business. whether it’s persuading actually uh I would I would recommend and I should uh send you the link or at least the the name of the book but uh David Garfinkle put out a really good about persuasion stories and he’s he’s a legendary

he’s a legendary copywriter he invited me on his show last year and um

listeners we’ll get we’ll get that link in our show notes so you know we’ll we’ll take care of that but you know thanks for sharing uh try it story gaps are important

and also some storytelling in your marketing because that’s really important and that that

I may come back and do a little bit more conversation about this in the school of content. So if you’re you know if you want to be uh alerted on that either sign up for the email list story arc or join the school of content uh yeah school of content. So

thanks Todd and as always you can get Todd over at copyfight.com or harass him on any of the big socials. I think Todd’s on LinkedIn I know that he’s on ex Twitter. I think he’s even hiding on blue sky a little bit these days. Yeah, I know.

If you if you p me on blue sky, I might see it a month later. So, I’m It’s better to Twitter and LinkedIn. And I’ve got a rash of people trying to friend me on Facebook right now, but um I just have one thing to say. Get a dream, hold on to it, and shoot for the sky.

Hey Todd, thanks buddy. Have a great day, my friend.