How to Best Gain Attention for Your Book with Storytelling - BM338

[Susan Friedmann]
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest was caught plagiarizing a Ranger Rick magazine when he was eight years old. Ralph Peterson shocked everyone when the story he was made to write about the lessons he learned from the ordeal was actually better than the story he copied. It seems funny now, he says, but I didn't know I could write my own stories. I didn't know I was allowed to make them up and to lie. 

Today, Ralph is a best-selling author of four books, a super successful entrepreneur, and the current president of the New York chapter of the National Speakers Association, a dear friend, colleague, and writing buddy, Ralph, what an awesome pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

[Ralph Peterson]
My pleasure. Thank you for having me on. Very excited.

[Susan Friedmann]
Ralph, I just mentioned that we were writing buddies. I know. You know. We know. We meet twice a week for an hour. Jeff, to write. Let me ask you, how and why did you come up with this idea of a writing group?

[Ralph Peterson]
When I was writing my first book, when I finally settled on, I was going to actually sit down and write a book. I fell into the trap of dreaming and wandering and working out all in my head, mind you, and very little actual writing. And so I was kind of like thinking, I got to get myself in gear if I'm really going to be a writer, I really got to figure out how do you put yourself in a chair, hover your fingers over a keyboard, and just start writing? I was looking online one day and I saw an event that was happening in New York City. I lived just outside of New York City, and it was a writing group for writers. And when I looked into it more, it was just that. It was a bunch of writers who are meeting at a coffee shop one night a week on Wednesday nights, and the only thing you had to do was write. It was no talking at the table. It was from eight to twelve, 09:00 p.m.. You went in.

The coffee shop was nice enough to let us meet there. Everybody would just grab a coffee. We'd sit down, the person at the head of the table say, all right, we're going to start the timer and the energy. The idea that everyone on my left and my right and in front of me, everyone was writing was electric. I went from the idea of a book to writing the book in record time, because every Wednesday I was looking forward to this group. And so that's how this happened. Covet happened, and then you couldn't go anywhere, and I'm locked down, and I'm sitting here still slogging away, trying to write. I need some writing friends. We'll start using this zoom platform for more than just meeting. Let's do some writing. And that's how it happened.

[Susan Friedmann]
It's such a fun idea, and I'd never heard of it. And then when you invited me to join this, I was like, oh, yes. I mean, I do write regularly, but this sort of forced me to do it at a certain time. And like I said, I look forward to it. We meet twice a week, and it is fun.

[Ralph Peterson]
I agree. And the only rule is that you write. It doesn't matter if you're working on a book, an email, responding to somebody writing a proposal, an article. It doesn't matter. Just the holy rule is you show up and you write.

[Susan Friedmann]
Yeah, that's fun. I love it. So, yes. Thank you. I know, just from getting to know you better through the writing group, that you're a master story creator and a storyteller now you work in a niche market, which I'd love you to share with our listeners, but I want to talk about the importance of story and how you actually use it in your speaking.

[Ralph Peterson]
I got to tell you that I realized very young, so I've always wanted to be a writer. You read my little bio in the beginning, where I discovered my absolute fascination with being able to make up stories and then make it up. Stories is fun, but when other people read them and they like them, or if you start telling a story to one person and somebody beside them starts listening as well, so now of a sudden, you have an audience, you've captured two people's attention. I mean, is there anything better than that? I don't think so. That's kind of how this whole thing germinated around. I knew that the only way to get the attention that I really wanted, and I really want attention. I'm the youngest of four, so getting attention in my house was a challenge when I was a kid.

The best way to do it is to make the best story. So forget facts, forget figures, forget how it actually happened. Let's just talk about how it would be amazing to have happened. Once I started going down that road of what I would say have taken liberties with the truth and expanding on my being a little bit of a drama king, I really learned the value of gaining not just people's attention, which was the first thing I wanted. But then when you start telling stories. You start having a clear beginning in the middle and an end, and you're not rambling, but you're actually saying something in a substance. Man, that's how it got me. And then, of course, everything I read, everything I watch, everything I listen to, all I'm thinking about is how they came in, how they started. Where are they going? What's the thesis? What's the point? Where are we going? How long are they going to keep rambling?

[Susan Friedmann]
Talk to us about using the skill or talent that you have, the storytelling. I mean, you're a successful speaker. You're in a niche market. How do you use this in your speaking?

[Ralph Peterson]
I use it as a secret weapon because I have a message. I have a lot to say. I've been through a lot. I've seen a lot. And I would like to call the warning bells. I would like to go, hey, don't do this. This is what I did. Stay away from that. And I know that looks like it's going to be fun now, but trust me, in 20 years, it's going to be the worst decision. Don't do it. Right. But nobody ever wants to listen to somebody just preach and hammer over their head. And so I use Story, much like great flavoring on Robitussin. Nobody drinks Robitustin without the great flavoring. That's what Story is to me. Story is just a way to sneak in. The lesson to sneak in the message.

[Susan Friedmann]
You have to know, obviously, what message you want to sneak in and then sugarcoat it, as you say. I love that metaphor or example of the rubber decrease. Yeah, I mean, it makes it easier and more palatable when it has a flavor, when it has a sweetness in particular. How do you go through that process? How do you map it out? Is there a formula you use? What do you do? I mean, you've got this talent, but I don't necessarily have this talent. And so I say, well, how can you teach me this talent?

[Ralph Peterson]
Yeah. I truly start with the message I want to give, and then I start trying to figure out how to almost in conversation, slip it in without you ever knowing. One of my favorite things to do when I'm speaking is I love to get up and almost start talking about something so that it's so unrelated, seemingly, that you don't even think I've started my speech yet. You get up on stage, you get introduced, and now Susan Friedman, you get up there and you go, oh, my God, I just love being in front of a guy. I love speaking. This is so fun to me. Just the other day, and the audience is with you. They have no idea you've already started. They think that you're just killing time. You're just wasting I'm not killing. I've already started. I want them to not even know. Like, I don't even want them to see the lights coming down I just want them to go, oh, my God. 30 minutes has already gone by. This is crazy. That was awesome.

Did you catch what he said there? And, oh, my God, that was really true. That was really funny. That's my secret. I come in at it with what the messages that I want to be saying, and then I just work out all these details. The other day, I'm working on this page, and just to give you a little background about, like sometimes it's so visual to me because speaking as a visual art and storytelling coming, a live one person show kind of thing,
I have this story about stuffed animals. I use a lot of stuffed animals when I speak because I use a lot of animal analogies. And so I always bring stuffed animals with me. Somebody just recently asked me, why do you always bring stuffed animals with you to a speech? And I was like, oh, my God. Have you ever tried to get an alpaca through security?
That's kind of good. It's okay. But an alpaca, you can't do much physical with that. What if it was a gorilla? And then I could physically look like I'm trying to get through security, going through those little scanner things. His arms are too wide, and you have to go through sideways, right? So all of a sudden, I change. Have you ever tried to go through security with a gorilla? And now I can actually act out the gorilla. It's funnier. It's still the same concept. All I'm trying to do is give you a visual, which is when I'm writing and I'm not speaking, it's the same thing.
How do I get you to keep reading one sentence to the next sentence to the next sentence to the next sentence?

[Susan Friedmann]
I mean, all of this I'm also jealous because it comes so naturally to you. As you say, it's your Telegus now. It's like, oh, yes, animals are great. You can use them as metaphors and for many different things. But to physically have it as well, and to show it and you're using different sensory skills here, which I know in storytelling, is so important. Talk to us more about that.

[Ralph Peterson]
You know what's so interesting about this? When I first started, I've been writing for so long, but as you grow as a writer, I used to over describe everything. I didn't want to leave anything up to your imagination. I wanted to make sure you saw it exactly like I saw it. And I had a professor in a writing class. He said to me, I was writing a story.
The character came to a beach. I had written maybe and I'm not even making this up, maybe three pages of the scene of the character on the beach. And I spent a half a page or more on describing the beach. I talked about how many people were on the beach. I talked about what animals are on the beach. I talked about kind of day it was.
I talked about whether the ocean was coming in or whether it was going. I talked about the ebb in flow.
I think I even used that term phrase, the ebb in flow, like all this stuff. And my professor wrote on he crossed it out and he wrote the word beach. And so when I get up there, I go, you didn't like this? He goes, Let me see the beach. I know what a beach looks like. Don't give me the beach. I know what a beach looks like.
Just say it went on the beach. If there's another character on the beach that's going to run into me, then of course I need to know that person. If there's an umbrella if you tell me there's an umbrella on the beach and then don't bring up umbrellas like they catapulted through the air because of the wind, don't ever bring up that umbrella again.
It's that whole act when you're doing a play. Don't ever show a gun above a fireplace in the first act unless you're done to shoot somebody with it on the second act. That's kind of like what he was saying to me. So I learned a lot about just trying to take man, I'm a control freak with it. I got to let it go. I just got to say hat. Unless the color of the hat is important, just say hat. Just say beach.

[Susan Friedmann]
That's a great lesson, because you're right. You feel you have to really paint this picture with every single brush stroke, but you really don't, because we know what a beach is. You say a beach. I'm visualizing a beach. I was just on the Cape on Cape Cod, and I saw beaches. Yeah, you say the word beach. My mind is going there, but I've been on hundreds of different beaches around the world. It's like, okay, it's my vision. Your description may not match what I'm visualizing, and I'm thinking that could be disturbing. So the idea of just using a simple word allows me to conjure up my vision of a beach versus your vision of the beach. Does that make sense?

[Ralph Peterson]
It certainly does, and I think that is one of the challenges that a movie director has. And I think this is a good sign of a good writer. If I read the book and then go see the movie, and I am disappointed in the movie, it doesn't mean they didn't do a good job of the movie. What it means is that the writer did a good job of allowing me enough space in the book to create my own imagery. You can write a script, and then you can have a producer follow that script to a T. That's great. Those are great movies. If you write it as a book first and you allow me the space to create my own visuals and my own character development, and I know what a blonde haired woman looks like, or I know what a car looks like, then somebody puts it on the screen and they're like, oh, that's not how I envisioned it. When you go like, oh, that's not how I saw it.

[Susan Friedmann]
That's a credit to the writer, allows you the opportunity to visualize for yourself, which, yes, we like to do. Like said, you feel you need to control the whole situation, but you actually don't. But you're right about the whole movie thing because there are times that I've read the book and then I see the movie and I'm disappointed because it was nothing like I visualized the characters. Yeah, that's right.

[Ralph Peterson]
And that's what's so great about the writer. My favorite writer is the late Robert Parker. I don't know if you know him. He wrote all the maybe you don't remember because maybe you weren't here in the late 70's. But there was an old television show called Spencer for Hire and it was like an ex police officer now turned private detective. And he goes around and catches bad guys and it was like one of those kind of slapstick. Humor. Private detective kind of comedy. The show was great, but the books, I just love the books. I just absolutely love my favorite writer.
So when I was going for my degree in writing, I would tear apart all his books and I would read him and I wrote more in his margins than he wrote on his pages. I was so determined to be like Robert Parker. One of the things is that this is just his style, but it was always funny to me. He would be describing a scene where somebody burst into his office with a gun and then he would go and the wind picked up and the rain tapped on the window behind me. I'm like, wait a minute, why is the wind pick? Why do we even notice the wind? Take a left turn on me. Sometimes I'd be like, okay. I think that kind of stuff is just so great because as a writer, you're picking and choosing between your kids, your most cherished, love things, put it into context.

[Susan Friedmann]
So many of our listeners are nonfiction authors, and yet this element of story to me sounds like fiction.

[Ralph Peterson]
Let me make a bold declaration.

[Susan Friedmann]
I knew you would.

[Ralph Peterson]
Here's my bold declaration if you want your business book, your how to book, your three step instructional manual to be read from cover to cover. I think the setting up the beginning of the chapter with this is the lesson we're going to go over and then you give us the lesson, and then you give us three questions to ask about the lesson we just read about. I think those days are numbered. I think people are more interested in and can get the same information.
The leadership tip, the strategy, the business experience. You can get it through story and the reader has a much more enjoyable time, much more relatable time to what it is you're saying. So, again, when I was writing my first book, and I'm a nonfiction writer, I write business books, books about management.
So it's maybe a little bit because it's in my wheelhouse. I'm talking about experiences with people, and so often my stories are from interactions I have. And so my goal is to try to explain the situation I was in as vividly as I need to be. So that you want to keep reading. I want you to either like me or not like me, like my character, not like my character, but I want you to keep reading. That's how I write. It's how I train. And I think if you are a nonfiction writer and you want to have a real impact, I think learning how to package your message into story is key.

[Susan Friedmann]
It's funny that you should say that because I was just on a webinar about webinars. The facilitator talked about using parables when you're on a webinar and to keep the interest, and especially if this is a free webinar and you're looking to potentially sell a product or a service, that the idea of using a parable will help. Rather than saying, hey, here's my book, it's going to tell you how to do X, Y, and Z or here's my course. But the whole idea of bringing them into that talk to us. How does that sound to you?

[Ralph Peterson]
I completely agree. I think instruction manuals are great. If I'm putting together a couch from Ikea, which is not probably this smart, you wouldn't put a couch together, but a piece of furniture from Ikea. Instructions are really great. But if you want to teach me something, you have to do more than just give me the one, two, three steps. I really want to hear a story, and I want it to be fun and bombastic. I want it to be engaging. I completely agree. By the way, I love the idea of attending a webinar about webinars. It's like when writers write about writers in their story. They'll have a story about a writer writing a book while the writer is writing a book. It is the my most fun thing.

[Susan Friedmann]
Yeah, you can keep going with that. Yes, I agree. It's truly fun. I know that our listeners love mistakes or how to avoid mistakes. Ralph and you and I have joked a lot about mistakes that we both made. If you were giving advice to our listeners what might be a couple of mistakes, you would say, hey, learn from me.

[Ralph Peterson]
It's funny because I write nonfiction, and I write about real events that happen, like real situations that we're in and that we find ourselves in in the day to day. I think one of the big mistakes I make is sometimes I'm too accurate in my description, and so I've been called. And were you writing about me. So sometimes in that situation, maybe avoid that. But then on the other side of that, I also tried to go with a loan a lot. And what I mean is, I've always been very and I still am. I still struggle with this. To be clear. I'm very private with my writing. I'm private in a way that I don't want anybody to ever see it until you're ready to show it.
But the big mistake that I've made prior to really sitting down and being able to write my first book was everybody I would talk to.
 Every time I kept trying to start up the writing. Trying to start up the writing. I would tell them about the book I was writing. And I would tell them about this chapter I just wrote or this sentence I just came up with. What would happen, inevitably, is every time I did that, it would stop me from writing because I had just gotten a little dopamine hit about, oh, my God, that sounds like an amazing story. And that was enough.
I didn't need to write it anymore. And it really hamstrung me to continue my writing. And so I live and die by the whole I don't tell anybody about what I'm writing about, especially if it's a serious thing I'm working on. It drives my wife crazy because she'll be like, you've been over there writing for 2 hours. Do you have anything to share? And I'm like, no, I've got nothing. She's like, when am I going to be able to read it? I'm like, I don't know. Not yet.
And it's not a big secret. It's that I know that I've learned from experience that if I tell her the story, I have trouble writing the story. I need to write it before I can tell it to anybody else. I kind of give away my magic that way. If I do it that way, maybe it seems silly. I don't know.

[Susan Friedmann]
Well, it's so funny because what it reminds me of is the writing group. This morning I read you something that I'd written, and I said, what do you think about it? And you said, I liked the last sentence.

[Ralph Peterson]
Yes.

[Susan Friedmann]
I'm pleased I had sent it already because I had worked on this, and I'd word smith it. And I was like, okay, maybe I shouldn't have shed.

[Ralph Peterson]
I apologize. There's nothing to apologize. But you're right.

[Susan Friedmann]
It is. It's tough because people judge and criticize with the best intentions in the world. They give their opinion maybe that's a paper. And their opinion is often a judgment, which is it's a judgment. It's almost like putting a pin in a balloon bursting.

[Ralph Peterson]
It really is. It's so challenging. I got to tell you. Here's something I've learned. I learned this lesson the hard way, and it's a really tough lesson. And it's not just a tough lesson for me, but it's a tough lesson for my wife. When I ask her opinion, I have to be more clear with what it is I'm really after, because sometimes when I'm like, hey, what do you think? I really want the praise. I don't want the critical critique. Right. And I need to be clear about that. I need to go, I think this is really good if you want to read it, but I need you to tell me that you like it or something. And I know that sounds like, well, aren't you going to grow? Yes, I will grow. Then I'll easily go, okay, where could I improve?
 But on the other part of that, this is something that I did not expect to either feel myself or to come up against. When I was writing my last book, I had my wife after I finally finished it, and she read through it, and she had some notes for me, which I had asked her for. And so she handed me the notes, and I was like, okay, that's really great. And then I didn't take her notes into account in my edit, so I added, she goes to read it again. She was, I thought I told you maybe do this and this and that's. When I was like, oh, my God.
I never had this conversation. I'm so sorry. Yeah, no, I want your opinion, but I'm still going to do it my way. I value your opinion, but I may still want to go my own direction. I heard what you said. I liked what you had to say, but I still like it this way. It's still me, the writer. I'm using my wife as an example. She's my first editor, but she's not my editor. And I have to do the same thing with my editor. My editor will be like, oh, my God, this you got to change that. You got to change this. I'm slow down.
Hold on. What is your opinion about it? And then I'll either do it or not do it as somebody again who doesn't even want to share my writing, because I don't want you to criticize it at all. I think it's great. Otherwise, I wouldn't even say, hey, do you want to read this? And then when you do criticize it or you do offer suggestions for changes and I don't take them, maybe I don't find them valuable. I don't agree. It's okay. But just having that conversation up front, I think would have saved me a little bit more of a headache.

[Susan Friedmann]
Yeah. Because when you're asking for somebody's opinion, they're expecting you to potentially take their advice or suggestions into account, but maybe you do, maybe you don't. Yeah. And you're right. You really would like people to say, hey, isn't this great? But they don't. They say, Well, I like the last sentence.

[Ralph Peterson]
I thought it was positive. I don't know.

[Susan Friedmann]
I think it's very positive. The last sentence was very good, Ralph. If our listeners wanted to get hold of you and to learn more about who you are and what you do. How can they do that?

[Ralph Peterson]
Quite honestly, if you just wanted to check out some of my work, you can just go to Ralph Petersonbooks.com and that will just bring you to my Amazon Authors page. So, Ralph Petersonbooks.com, that's the easiest way to find me. And then from there, my name and email and everything is everywhere on my book, so you could easily get me from there.

[Susan Friedmann]
Perfect. Okay. And I'll put that in the show notes as well so people can check you out and check out some of your writing, because as I said, you're a masterful storyteller story creator and we would end off with a golden nugget. So if you would leave our listener if you could leave our listeners and would leave our listeners with a golden nugget, what would it be?

[Ralph Peterson]
It's really simple, and I'm saying this to myself as I'm saying it out loud, you know that I'm saying it to myself. A writer, right? A dream or dreams, a procrastinate or procrastinate? What are you going to be for me? I'm a writer. Every day I write and every day I claim it. You know, Susan, after the timer goes off, I say, well, congratulations. Today we can call ourselves writers. The more days you can stack up to call yourself a writer, claim that price, earn that title, you'll be swimming.

[Susan Friedmann]
In books in no time, just like Ralph Peterson. You're amazing. Thank you for honoring us with your wisdom. This was fabulous, listeners. I know we had a lot of fun together, Ralph and I, but there are some immense wisdom stories, treasures, gems that packed up in what Ralph has shared with us. So thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for taking time out of your precious day to listen to this interview. And I sincerely hope that it sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Here's how to connect with Ralph - Ralph Petersonbooks.com