How to Dramatically Improve Your Short Stories

I have long admired writers of short stories. Those talented people who can tell a story in only a few short pages — a story so compelling it grabs you in the first few phrases, and doesn’t let go.

Cleanly-drawn characters with an intriguing story to tell, usually with an excellent plot twist you never saw coming — they leave you breathless.

My usual efforts run from 10,000 words plus to full-length novels of about 70–85,000 words. I’ve always just started wherever and kept going ’til it felt finished. Sometime I write from both ends to the middle, and once in a while a story will actually start at the beginning. Most often it comes in chunks or scenes that need to be woven together.

I’ve always just used as many words as I needed to tell the story. I was more concerned with having enough extra, a bit of padding, to ensure there’d be a high enough word count after the final edit. So, the idea of writing a complete story in few pages was initially pretty scary, let alone telling a whole story in a thousand words or less.

Of, course, I didn’t know I could write a full-length novel ’til I tried. So, why not give it a shot?

I’ve learned a fair bit about the process, both from reading other works and from writing my own short pieces. And I’ve found there is a method to the madness. There are a few simple steps you can take to drastically improve your short stories.

The Plot

Your plot — whatever it is your characters actually do — may not be the first idea to tickle your mind when you start your story, but it requires careful attention. You don’t have a lot of time to meander around in flash fiction. A thousand words goes by fast.

Once you have your plot sorted out, you can usually navigate through your story pretty effectively.

The story starts with an action. Something you character needs to do, or wants to do, or must do… or find, or discover…

Your character make their journey, which can be either physical, emotional or both, from where we meet them at the start of your story, and on through their struggle or past their obstacle, to their destination. This is a pretty standard “quest” plot — think Hobbits. Frodo must carry the ring to Mordor and cast it into the pit to save the world.

Make a sentence about your story. Sum it all up.

Jack and Jill must find their way to the top of the hill and return with a pail of water.

Keep it simple. This is a short story. Save the multi-layered epic for your novel.

Your Main Character

Your protagonist, or main character, is the person around whom your plot revolves. The central person in your story. I often start with an idea or feeling about a character and then figure out what she/he needs to do as I go along. But there’s no right or wrong way to begin.

However, we need some kind of stakes to make our character interesting, and for us to care about them. There must be some cost involved in achieving their objective, and some kind of growth when they do. Something big enough and important enough to satisfy your reader.

That’s your character’s arc. Their growth or change — sometimes for the better, sometimes not. They were this when we met them, and at the end they’re this…

They could have gone from being a grumpy curmudgeon to a kindly friend. Like me before and after my first coffee. Or they could change from a naive young woman into a bitter, jaded socialite — it’s up to you. But they need to change or grow in some way or your readers will find them boring.

Make a sentence about their journey. Sum it all up. This is the heart of your story — what it’s all about.

Jack and Jill must overcome their fear of what might be lurking in the the very tall grass, so they can climb to the very, very top of the hill, and return with a bucket of water, or their family will die of thirst.

So, you have your character, their journey and the stakes, and you’ve hopefully ironed out the rest of the plot — the rest of what happens along the way. Now for the payoff.

The Plot Twist

A good writer makes it look easy.

They wrap it up in a nice tidy bow without appearing to. You reach the end of the story with a chuckle, a surprised laugh, maybe a feeling of satisfaction. Maybe the ending fits so perfectly, and is so completely satisfying you don’t mind having already figured it out.

A great writer will leave you amazed, possibly in tears.

No matter how good you are at sussing things out, at keeping one step ahead of the story, you never would have conceived of the ending they just sprang on you. Not in a million years.

And yet, it was so beautifully set up. You can go back through the story and see where they carefully planted the seeds, sprinkled the breadcrumbs. But they held back that one tiny piece of information…

But whether the plot twist is completely hidden ‘til the last few words, or you see it coming a mile away, the important things is, it works. It fits the story.

The ending — whatever it is — has to be believable within the world you have created. It has to stay in context, to fit the expectations you’ve set up in your reader.

You can’t just pull something out of thin air and say, “Voila!”

The Greeks called that old trick “Deus ex Machina”, literally, “God from the machine.” Except when they did it, it wasn’t old yet.

In Greek plays of a certain genre it was common to have some god, Zeus or Apollo usually, appear from the clouds of Mount Olympus (via a crane) and descend to earth to mete out justice or settle the conflict.

In modern usage, it generally means you’ve written yourself into a corner and can’t think of a good way out, so you use some crazy cataclysmic event or an intervention by some other-wordly being to set everything to rights.

For example, your reluctant, ex-navy-seal hero is trapped on the twenty-ninth floor of a burning building along with the beautiful teacher he kinda likes, and her entire class of kiddies on a school outing. 

What? School outing? Never mind — just go with me…

He’s just run out of ammo, and the terrorists are only two floors below them and closing in fast.

And here it comes, completely out of left field.

Suddenly, an earthquake sets off a tsunami which sweeps away the terrorists and douses the flames but miraculously leaves the skyscraper intact and all the good guys alive.

There you go — deus ex machina. But, I’ve seen worse. They could have been saved by aliens.

I’m sure you can do better.

Jack and Jill are terrified of what might be lurking in the the tall grass. Bravely overcoming their fears, they climb to the very, very top of the hill, finally reaching the well. On their way back down though, Jack slips and knocks himself out. He rolls helplessly down the hill. But plucky Jill, tumbling after him, manages to reach the bottom first and breaks his fall. She saves Jack’s life. And keeps their family from dying of thirst…

You notice, though we didn’t add an extra characters, Little Bow Peep could have been passing by, looking for her sheep. In fact, one of her sheep, in the already established context of Mother Goose land, could just as easily have broken Jack’s fall. That could have been more fun.

Also, we didn’t introduce a first-aid kit, or a passing paramedic. Remember, deus ex machina. Keep it real within the context of your story.

If your plot twist doesn’t work, then you either have to find a new ending that does fit the story, or go back and make everything else lead up to your big finish.

And now comes the really important part of your story…

Editing Your Finished Work

And I don’t mean for grammar, and spelling, and punctuation, and all that stuff. That’s a given. I mean now you’re going to go back and remove every single word you don’t need.

You can keep an eye on the word count as you’re writing. Just hit <Control> A to select/highlight your whole article and the program will give you a rough word count. When you reach six-hundred words or so, you know you’re about two-thirds done, so you better get busy wrapping things up.

Don’t stop ’til you’re finished the story, but try to stay close to a thousand words.

But then, once you’re done, re-read your story from start to finish. Looking for words you can cut.

For example, I just edited the above sentence. It used to read, “Looking for extra, or unnecessary words you easily can get rid of.” Now it reads, “Looking for words you can cut.” Cleaner. Removed five words from the overall total. Not troublesome in most articles, but they would be wasteful and excess verbiage in flash fiction where every single word must be made to count.

Look for sentences where you can say the same thing in fewer words. Say it better, tighter, and with more interesting words. The right-click activated min-Thesaurus is your friend.

Get rid of repetition unless it’s for emphasis. Highlight a phrase and click <Find> on the top menu, and your word-processing program will show you how many times you’ve used a particular words or phrase. Then scroll through the list and decide what to keep and what to change.

And please, please, avoid using “that” as much as humanly possible, unless it’s in dialogue. There are better words, stronger words, more specific words to say what you’re trying to say. Find them. Keep cutting.

And have fun. Don’t be afraid to play and experiment as you write your short stories. Find different voices for your characters. Make them different ages, from different backgrounds. Imagine real people you know well, or one of your favorite actors speaking their dialogue. How does it sound? Does it give you ideas for a different way to go with your character?

Culled from The Writing Cooperative

• FLASH FICTION
• PLOT TWIST
• WRITING

6 Terrific Tips to Writing a Gripping Horror Story

This guide to how to write a horror story covers the basics — a basic understanding of the definition of horror and common elements of horror fiction gives a good foundation on what is needed to write a gripping horror story. These tips can be applied to evoke an intense feeling in your readers, even if you don’t exclusively write horror.

The word ‘horror’ means ‘an intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The word comes from the Latin horrere, meaning ‘to tremble or shudder’.

5 common elements of the best horror stories

The best horror stories share at least five elements in common:

1. They explore ‘malevolent’ or ‘wicked’ characters, deeds or phenomena.
2. They arouse feelings of fear, shock or disgust as well as the sense of the uncanny – things are not what they seem. There is a heightened sense of the unknown and/or mysterious.
3. They are intense (as the dictionary definition reminds us). Horror books convey intense emotion, mood, tone and environments. Together, these produce the sense that everything is charged with ominous possibility.
4. They contain scary and/or shocking and scintillating plot twists and story reveals (unlike episodes of the cartoon Scooby Doo, in which the bad guys are typically conniving realtors dressed as paranormal beings – ghosts, werewolves). In horror the ghosts and werewolves are very, very real.
5. They immerse readers in the macabre. Horror tends to deal with morbid situations, from repetitive cycles of violence to death-related uncanny scenarios. Zombies march, vampires make you join their legion, or (in subtler scenarios) long-dead friends or relations pay unexpected visits.

How do you write a horror story or novel like Stephen King, Clive Barker or (looking further back in the genre’s history) Edgar Allan Poe? Start with these six tips:

1: Learn how to write horror using strong, pervasive tone

Tone and mood are two elements that contribute to how your story feels. Great tone and mood can have readers’ spines tingling before a single character has even spoken or made a terrible decision.

How you describe settings, character movement and actions creates an overarching tone. In horror writing, a dark or frightening tone is often pronounced. Take this example from Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always:

‘Half closing his eyes, he crossed to the window and fumbled to slam it, making sure that the latch was in place this time.

The wind had started his lamp moving, and when he turned back the whole room seemed to be swinging around. One moment the fight was blazing in his eyes, the next it was flooding the opposite wall. But in between the blaze and the flood it lit the middle of his room, and standing there – shaking the rain off his hat – was a stranger.

He looked harmless enough. He was no more than six inches taller than Harvey, his frame scrawny, his skin distinctly yellowish in colour. He was wearing a fancy suit, a pair of spectacles and a lavish smile.’

The scene is suffused with a sense of the unsettling. Objects that should be stationary move. The room itself seems to move. The  viewpoint character is disoriented. A peculiar character seems to materialize out of nowhere.

Barker also creates an ominous tone through indirect means. ‘He looked harmless enough’ draws our attention to the possibility the man could in fact be harmful. The ‘scrawny’ frame and ‘yellowish’ skin both make the stranger unsettling and increase the sense of unfamiliarity.

Whether you are an aspiring horror author or not, work at creating consistent mood and tone. If you want to write a scary novel, focus on ways you can make actions and descriptions work together to establish an uneasy atmosphere.

2: Read widely in your genre

Whatever genre you write in, whether psychological or paranormal horror read as many books by respected authors in your genre as possible. Examples of celebrated horror authors include Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Bram Stoker, Neil Gaiman, Chuck Palahniuk, John Lindqvist and more.

As you read authors in your genre, make notes on what aspects of your genre the author excels in. Is it great, spooky settings? Copy out your favourite quotes that create an eerie sense of place and re-read when trying to make your own settings more vivid. Actively learning from great authors will improve your mastery of the horror genre.

3: Give wicked characters better, credible motivations

When you write a horror novel, it shouldn’t read as though a malevolent force is sitting at a bus stop, waiting to infiltrate your unsuspecting characters’ world ‘just because’. Give every malevolent character a strong, clear motivation. Revealing exactly what the motivation is can be part of the mystery that sustains your story and keeps readers guessing why unsettling things keep happening.

If there’s a malevolent force, being or stranger in your horror novel, make their motivation similar in magnitude to the character’s actions. Readers will scoff if a creepy doll goes on a murderous rampage in your novel simply because somebody took its batteries out.

4: Use the core elements of tragedy

This is excellent horror-writing advice from Chuck Wendig’s blog Terrible Minds. As Wendig puts it:

Horror is best when it’s about tragedy in its truest and most theatrical form: tragedy is born through character flaws, through bad choices, through grave missteps.

The horror genre uses the core elements of tragedy so nakedly that some of these have become clichés. ‘Don’t go in that house, idiot,’ you might shout at the screen while watching American Horror Story, because the character has the tragic flaw of being oblivious to personal danger. In horror stories, we get scared because, as readers, we see the signs foolhardy characters don’t.

At its heart, tragedy teaches some important lessons, for example:

• The destructive, rippling cause and effect acts of cruelty can set in motion (the frightening way the title character of Stephen King’s novel Carrie unleashes her powers due to bottling sustained psychological abuse is a good example)
• The value of seeing situations and scenarios from multiple perspectives (e.g. You could tell yourself, ‘That house is abandoned because the property market fell’. But also: ‘That house is abandoned because something terrible happened there (and keeps happening there) and people are afraid of it.’)
• The lesson that bravery means making a choice in full awareness of danger, whereas making choices in blissful unawareness of their potential consequences leaves people vulnerable

To write a credible horror novel, in other words, show that the horror-filled situation is dependent on a network of character choices, past or present. At its heart, horror fiction reminds us that cause and effect is real, even in the fantastical realm of storytelling.

5: Write scary novels by tapping into common human fears

If the point of horror writing (and horror elements in other genres such as paranormal romance) is to arouse fear, shock or disgust, think of the things people are most commonly afraid of.

Live Science places an interest choice at number one: The dentist. It’s true that you can feel powerless when you’re in the dentist’s chair. Couple this with the pain of certain dental procedures and it’s plain to see why a malevolent dentist is the stuff of horror nightmares.

Making readers scared creates tension and increases the pace of your story. Even so there should be a reason for making readers fearful. A terrifying situation should be central to the plot and should be driven by some or other cause (even if the reader can only guess, ultimately, what the precise cause is).

Here are some of the most common fears people have. As an exercise, list the reasons why we might find these things terrifying. Most relate to physical and/or mortal danger, but you can also draw on other common fears. Fears such as fear of humiliation, inadequacy or failure:

Most common fears – fodder for horror novel writing

• Fear of animals (dogs, snakes, sharks, mythical creatures such as the deep sea-dwelling kraken)
• Fear of flying (film producers combined the previous fear and this other common fear to make the spoof horror movie Snakes on a Plane)
• The dark – one of the most fundamental fears of the unfamiliar
• Perilous heights
• Other people and their often unknown desires or intentions
• Ugly or disorienting environments

Think of how common fears can be evoked in your horror fiction. Some are more often exploited in horror writing than others. A less precise fear (such as the fear of certain spaces) will let you tell the horror story you want with fewer specified must-haves.

6: Terror vs horror: Learn the difference

To learn how to write horror novels, it’s useful to understand the difference between horror and terror. Both have their place in horror writing.

‘Terror’ describes a state of feeling. Oxford Dictionaries simply define it as ‘extreme fear’. To ‘terrorise’, means to use extreme fear to intimidate others. Horror, however, also suggests elements of disgust and surprise or shock. Thus the word ‘horror’ describes not only extreme fear but also revulsion and a sense of surprise and the unexpected.

Horror writers share different ways to understand the difference between terror and horror:

For Stephen King, terror is a feeling the author tries to evoke in the reader before resorting to shock tactics such as surprising with the extreme or unpleasant:

‘I’ll try to terrify you first, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll horrify you, and if I can’t make it there, I’ll try to gross you out. I’m not proud.’

King’s quote suggests that if you can create terror in the reader before there’s even a gross-out moment or sickly reveal in your horror novel, you’re winning.

Culled from Now Novel

• HORROR STORY
• TIPS ON WRITING HORROR

5 Facts about Publishing That Could Change your Writing Career

I hear people tell me all the time they want to write a book. But wanting and doing aren’t the same, are they? It’s time to shed the myths about book publishing and start facing the facts. If you’re one of those eight in 10 people dreaming of writing a book, this might change everything for you.

What if everything you’ve heard was wrong?

We’ve all heard the old wives’ tales and urban legends about what it takes to get a book contract or hit the best sellers list. We’ve been subjected to silly little formulas and hype about how to go from “writer” status to author.

And we’ve all been duped.

I’m not here to tell you everything you know about publishing is wrong. But I can tell you for five years I believed a lot of lies that kept my writing career from taking off. Here’s what I believed:

“I can do this on my own.”

“All it takes is a good message.”

“Once I land the contract, the publisher will do all the work.”

“Media attention = best seller.”

“Once I’m published, I’m all set.”

Turns out, none of those were true. And for the longest time, I resisted acknowledging this, because I was scared of doing the work. But when I finally succumbed to the truth, it set me free.

Maybe it will for you, too.

Fact #1: You need an agent

If you want to publish a book through a traditional publisher, you’re going to need a literary agent.

Sure, you can start pitching your proposal or manuscript on your own, but the fact is authors with agents tend to be taken more seriously and get higher advances.hu

It’s in your best interest to hire an agent. You don’t pay this person until you actually get signed (much like how a real estate agent works), so it’s to your advantage to get one.

It’s always a win-win. He or she doesn’t make any money until you do.

Fact #2: Everyone needs a platform (yes, even fiction writers)

In the case of nonfiction work, your platform is often a blog or some kind of content delivery platform, like a radio show or podcast. It can even be your speaking schedule.

For potential novelists and the like, it’s your body of work. Which could mean a blog, but more often it’s something you’ve already published. Like a short story in a literary journal or magazine. Or a previously self-published book. It could even be your newsletter list.

A platform is a way of proving you have what it takes to sell books. In either case (nonfiction or fiction), the point is you can’t succeed without people knowing who you are — and a platform accomplishes this.

Fact #3: The publisher won’t do all the work

A friend who’s been in publishing for decades told me this when I got my first book deal:

Assume that the publisher won’t do any of the work to promote your book, that it will all be up to you. And if for some reason, they do something to help you, then it’s an added bonus. But never expect it. Publishing is venture capitalism.

This means that the publisher puts up all the money, taking the financial risks. And you are the investment. You need to come up with all the bright ideas and clever ways to get your idea or story to spread. They’re just the bank.

From what I’ve seen, publishers love it when authors think like this. It takes the pressure off of them to think like an ad agency and instead do what they do best: create great products.

But make no mistake: the only one who determines your book’s success is you.

Fact #4: Publicity doesn’t sell books

Getting on The Today Show won’t sell a million copies of your book. Neither will a ton of ads.

Think about it: When was the last time you bought something just because someone on TV talked about it? If you’re like me, the answer is never.

Granted, those things can help spread the word, but ultimately what sells books is word-of-mouth. Friends telling friends. That’s it. Nothing special or mystical about it.

So whatever cute ideas you have about getting your writing in front of a lot of people, try not to veer too far away from this basic strategy:

Ask permission.

Build trust.

Be generous.

If you are a first-time author (or about to be), the best thing you can do for your book is get a lot of people to talk about it. Even if it means giving it away for free. This is how Paulo Coelho became an international best-selling author. It can work.

Fact #5: Publishing one book won’t make you rich

There’s a popular misconception that once you publish a book, you are now a full-time author and a pretty big deal.

This belief hails back to the early days of Stephen King and Michael Crichton when publishing was a different animal. Those guys wrote their first manuscripts and got six-figure advances… for their first book!

It doesn’t work like that anymore. There’s too much supply, too much competition. These days, you have to write a few books before you can even call your writing a “career.”

Even then it can be difficult, because most royalty rates aren’t that great (8–20%). That’s why it usually takes years to make any kind of meager salary through writing books.

The alternative, of course, is to not try making money off your books. Instead, consider them a business card — an introduction to a premium product or service you offer.

This could be a course or seminar, even be something like a membership website or a video series. For a lot of authors, it’s their speaking platforms. The book spreads the idea and builds an audience; it’s up to you to make money off it.

**

Jeff Goins

3 Essentials for a Successful Brand Diversification Strategy

In an attempt to expand their market size and invigorate their brand, many firms take a shot at diversifying their brand. ‘Brand diversification’ commonly refers to a process of launching a new product in a new market, as seen in Ansoff’s Growth Matrix; examples of such strategy are the McCafe, Nike’s golfing collection, IBM’s business intelligence & analytics, and UberEATS.

Some cases are more extreme; for instance, Amazon Studios. Most people would agree that there is little connection between ecommerce and movie production.

Typically, firms choose to diversify to utilize their current brand equity, leverage current know-how, gain economies of scale, or simply to become its own supplier.

McCafe is an example of using current brand equity to gain success in another area. McDonald’s is known for its cheap prices, consistent quality, and efficient operations, all of which can be used in a café as well. Essentially, they’re just altering the menu items, while delivering the same experience.

IBM’s move into business intelligence and analytics is an example of a firm using its current know-how (and partially its brand equity, too) for obtaining success in a new market. IBM has delivered corporate technology for decades, and have proved to be quite good at what they do, which they then take into a new market — with great results.

#1: Stay True to Yourself

Don’t lose yourself in the process! This may sound cheesy, but what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t dramatically change your brand positioning, especially not if the new product is in the same product category as your remaining portfolio. It makes sense for Nike to sell golfing attire, but luxury fashion clothing? Not so much. Not only will this not sell very well, it will also damage the rest of Nike’s products. It’s confusing, don’t go there.

This is not the same as saying you can’t move into completely different markets. Take Virgin, for instance. This conglomerate started out with Virgin Records, and now they’re operating an airline, a hotel chain, a telecommunication company, and fitness studios. While Virgin has moved into significantly different markets, they have maintained a somewhat consistent brand positioning in all these markets. The same goes for EasyGroup; EasyJet, EasyGym, EasyPizza, and EasyHotel are all perceived by consumers as low-cost options.

In particular, your price positioning is important: you want to make sure it’s consistent across different markets.

 

#2: Understand Your Customer

You found a new product you want to sell in a new market? Great! But remember, you don’t want to confuse your customers. Your new product has to seem credible as a product extension. Does it make sense that COMPANY X is now selling PRODUCT Y? You want your customers to think it does.

However, we often see managers basing the development of new products on their own perceptions of their current brand- and price positioning. And more often than not, this perception is different from the customers’.

In order to understand how your customers perceive your current brand, it can be useful to see how they perceive its value compared to the competitors’, by comparing their willingness to pay. In that way you’ll be able to develop a product that fits within your current portfolio.

 

#3: Get the Launch-Price Right

When you launch a new product, you want to make sure that your price will maximize profits in the long run, too. Firms are often tempted to employ a penetration pricing strategy in the beginning to gain some traction, but this is a short-sighted approach. Once you set your launch price, it is hard to make a drastic price increase, as your customers will feel that they’re now getting the same value at a higher price. There are some quite disastrous examples, where companies have set a low launch price and missed out on billions of profit in the long run, because it simply wasn’t possible to increase prices without too strong an impact on sales quantity.

**

Culled from Price Beam

Post Tags:#brand#brand diversification#market size

The 5 Best Strategies To Win Back Lost Customers For Your Enterprise

Think of them as your customers—even when they’re heading out the door. That’s the ideal approach when a customer lapses. Churn is built into every business model, but just because churn is expected doesn’t mean it has to be accepted.

Today’s customer-centered economy means every customer should feel your product is built around their needs. After investing time and effort into helping your customer through the onboarding and adoption phase, it can be discouraging to see them leave.

You don’t have to give up on your customers, though. There are several strategies to win back lost customers that can rekindle your relationship and retain the investment you made in their success.

Why Did They Churn?

Every cancellation is an opportunity to learn more about how customers experience your business and how you can improve your customer success efforts. Viewed this way, customer churn can provide valuable insight for customer success teams.

Many factors can contribute to churn, but generally, customer cancellations are driven by the following motivations:

• Your service has not provided sufficient value.
• Your customer needs to reduce costs.
• Your solution is no longer needed.
• Your service wasn’t fully adopted.
• There was poor visibility into the value your product provided.
• Your customer changed key personnel.
• Cheaper or trendier alternatives become available.

Many of these motivations can be matters of perception. If your customers say your service isn’t returning value, for instance, the real problem may lie in the way you educate and engage with your customer. The good news is that improved communication and targeted campaigns are the best weapons at your disposal when trying to win back a lapsed customer.

The 5 Best Strategies to Win Back Lost Customers

To win back lost customers, you need to begin by researching what went wrong. If you use a customer success platform, then you can retroactively chart their engagement with your product over time. Such a platform records key customer data such as the product features they accessed, how many individuals used the service regularly compared to how many licenses were purchased, and when overall usage declined.

Armed with this data, you can begin the win-back process. The best strategies include:

• Ask to talk
• Acknowledge the problem
• Incentivize return
• Announce improvements
• Select your win-back targets

In all instances, your communication should be personalized and informed by real customer success data.

Ask to Talk

Begin your win-back campaign by asking your customer if they are willing to discuss their experience with your product. Obviously, the customer might reject your offer, but anyone who agrees to talk may be persuaded to come back.

So, rather than end your relationship with a generic auto-generated survey, see if you can discuss a specific aspect of your service. For example, your customer success platform may tell you that fewer than half the individuals on an account regularly accessed your product. That might lead you to ask, “Would you like to discuss any difficulties you had in getting your team members to adopt our service?”.

It’s nearly impossible to win back a lapsed customer if you no longer have their attention, so starting a conversation is the first step in rekindling your relationship.

Acknowledge the Problem

In order to win back a customer, you have to take responsibility for their unhappiness and provide a solution. Once you know why the customer churned, you can build a win-back campaign around the idea that you have heard your customer’s complaints and addressed them. Such a strategy might include promises of more thorough onboarding, changes to the user interface, regular on-site visits and calls, or changes to the price structure.

The customer-centered economy demands we build our products around our customers. Acknowledging there was a problem could give you a second chance to demonstrate your desire to mold your business to your customer’s needs.

Incentivize Return

A great way to revive a business relationship is to offer a new deal. Personalized messaging that addresses the interests and motivations of your lapsed customer can entice them to reconsider. You could offer discounted subscriptions, VIP support, free webinars or training sessions, and access to premium features as a way of luring customers back.

It is common for online retailers, for instance, to offer customers direct discounts on items related to previous purchases as a way of attracting them back. The goal here is to demonstrate increased value.

Announce Improvements

Using social media, blogs, video, and media opportunities, you can open a conversation regarding ways your business is improving. If your customer success metrics are telling you that customers perceive a delay in getting online support, for example, you can post about your new escalation techniques. Open up a broader conversation around what kinds of support are most effective, how technology can improve customer service, and how customer expectations have changed the nature of your business.

If you can position yourself as a leader in your industry, you may be able to rekindle a lapsed customer’s interest—especially if they see you’ve addressed their specific pain points.

Select Your Win-back Targets

Frankly, not every lapsed customer is worth pursuing. There’s little point in expending resources on a lapsed customer if your research tells you they’re likely to churn again or provide only limited revenue.

A customer success platform is key in determining the potential value of a churned customer. If your data shows the customer never progressed beyond a 20% license utilization rate, that they had low feature adoption, or regularly complained about your service, then they are unlikely to return. If, however, your data indicates high usage and feature adoption but a specific disruption to service use—perhaps a key manager left the company or a new budget was enforced—then you are more likely to win back the customer.

Employing Strategies to Win Back Lost Customers

The loss of a single customer is not going to break your business, but every instance of churn is a signal that your customer success model can be improved and an opportunity to find out exactly how.

The best strategies for winning back a lapsed customer stem from the same practices that allow your company to nurture and grow a successful customer relationship: gathering and acting on detailed customer data, actively tracking a customer through their journey, and personalizing customer engagement. If you acknowledge your role in a customer’s decision to cancel and demonstrate your willingness to shape your service to meet their needs, then you stand a reasonable chance of winning back their business and deepening your relationship.

Culled from Business2Community

Post Tags:#customers#Marketing#strategies

6 Ways to Make More Money With Your Book

A lot of authors want to write a book, sell it and make millions of money, but in reality, it doesn’t always work that way. The royalty you get from books can be so small that it might even be hard to break even on the money you spent in publishing your book. However, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways you can make money from your book. There are – and we are glad to share it with you.

• Be Like John Grisham: In this case, you can be like Grisham, Rowlings and the likes who give producers the opportunity to make a film adaptation of their book while they get tons of money in return. By giving producers movie rights, you can give your fans the opportunity to have a deeper experience of your book through the movie while you still get paid for it.

• Become a Speaker: Publishing a book establishes your credibility as an expert in the field you have written about. Thus, you can use the opportunity from your book to get speaking engagements and speak about the content of your book to an audience, pull out life lessons from your book and educate people.

• Become a Consultant:You can also become a consultant for government offices major corporations, foundations and the likes. Irrespective of what you have written about, you can offer information you have gathered through your research while writing your book to these organizations and get paid for it.
• Offer Coaching Services: As an author, you can offer coaching services to a lot of people. You can teach people on how to write a book You can also teach people a step by step guide on how to write a novel, and you can come up with your own course outline and packages on book writing to teach to people in exchange of money.

• Develop Ancillary Products: You can come up with great concepts from your book and use them to make money. Such as, selling a school bag with the face of the characters in your book or using the cover of your book to make t-shirts, water bottles, postcards and the likes.
• Sell Other Rights from your Book: Aside from selling your movie rights by giving producers to make a movie adaptation of your book, you can also sell other rights that come with your book such as reprint rights, foreign rights, audio rights, multimedia rights, and merchandising rights.

With these ideas, you can make a lot of money from your book aside from direct sales.

But it is crucial that you market your books. Once you market your book far and wide it would be easy to make multiple streams of income from it. You can check our blog post on How to market your book with little or no budget

How a Strong Character Arc Can Make Readers Love Your Protagonist

Rags-to-riches stories result in the most common dramatic character arcs. But the best character arcs result in inner change, not just changes in circumstance.

Novel readers love it when a protagonist dramatically transforms from Page One to The End.

What is Character Arc?

Simply how your lead character moves from his status quo to become heroic.

That doesn’t mean he [and I use he inclusively to mean he or she] has to become a comic book superhero. It just means he develops new muscles by facing every obstacle — and failing until his predicament ultimately appears hopeless.

He develops skills and strength along the way, attempting overcome all these obstacles, until in the end he’s become a different person and can finally succeed.

The more challenges your main character faces the better. Bestselling novelist Dean Koontz recommends “plunging your character into terrible trouble ASAP.”

You’ll be tempted to show mercy on him. Don’t! Only the toughest challenges force your character to become heroic.

A Classic Example of Character Arc

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Ebenezer Scrooge begins as a selfish, miserly, miserable curmudgeon. But through encounters with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, he faces the awful truth about himself:

Unless he changes his ways, upon his death no one will mourn or even miss him.

Scrooge vows to embrace the true Christmas Spirit year ’round, and he becomes a new man — joyful, generous, and loving.

How to Ensure Dramatic Character Arc

Challenge your character at every turn, removing every support and convenience. Thrust him into the most difficult predicaments you can imagine. Reach into your toolbox for everything that’ll make his life difficult.

We’re tempted to equip our characters with whatever they need, when we should do the opposite. Take away the house, the car, the income, maybe even the spouse or lover. Make your character succeed in spite of it all. That’s what forces him to heroism.

Just remember:

Your character’s change must be credible. Heroes are proactive. Your character must change as a result of his doing something, not because he figures out the problem or realizes he must change.

How to Know Your Character Is Changing

Whatever you do, don’t tell readers how your character is changing. They should be able to deduce that from what you show them.

And if you do it right, you just might experience an Author Arc as well — a change in yourself as a result of what you learn from writing the story.

The Most Important Element of Character Arc

A person changes for a reason.

He must face trials — real, painful problems — he can solve only as a changed person.

Get this right, and you’ll produce a story readers will remember forever.

Culled from Writer’s Digest

• CHARACTER ARC
• WRITING STRONG CHARACTERS