June 3, 2008
The Hero’s Journey is THE template upon which most successful stories and screenplays are built upon. The following is a summary deconstruction Silence of the Lambs – Academy Award Winner Best Film (1991):
Introduce Hero and Capabilities [Clarice tackling the FBI assault course].
Herald brings the Call to Adventure [Jack Crawford sends Clarice to visit Lecter (her Supernatural Aid)].
Threshold Guardian [Dr Chiltern obstructs Clarice's visit to Lecter].
Refusal [Lecter refuses to help].
Overcoming Refusal [Lecter's cell mate is rude and causes Lecter to help Clarice by way of apology]. Lecter sends Clarice to the First Threshold [the garage].
Physical Separation / Belly of the Whale [Lecter says he'll help Clarice catch Buffalo Bill].
Antagonism developed [Buffalo Bill kidnaps senator's daughter].
Transformation / Road of Trials x 3 [Clarice controls the police officers; analyses the dead body in Clay County; learns about the cocoon].
Resistance to the Meeting with the Oracle [Dr Chiltern obstructs Clarice from seeing Lecter before he is moved].
Journey to the Sword [Lecter journeys to meet the Senator].
Seizing the Sword [Clarice gets the info she needs, which Lecter has written in the case files; Clarice learns the significance of Silence of the Lambs].
Rebirth through Death [Lecter escapes and kills].
Reward [Clarice knows Lecter will not come after her].
Atonement with the Father [Clarice learns that Buffalo Bill can only covet what he sees].
Apotheosis [he's making a skin suit].
Ultimate Boon [Crawford has (allegedly) found Buffalo Bill].
Refusal [Crawford tells Clarice not to come to Chicago but go to Belvedere instead].
Magic Flight [Senator's daughter attempts to escape].
Rescue from Without {Clarice directed toward Mrs Lipman].
Crossing the Return Threshold [Clarice enters buffalo Bills House].
Master of the Two Worlds [Clarice and Buffalo Bill gun battle].
Freedom to Live [medals, graduation, Lecter confirms he has no plans to call on Clarice].
The Complete 188 stage Hero’s Journey and FREE 17 stage sample and other story structure templates can be found at http://managing-creativity.com/
You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.
Kal Bishop, MBA
**********************************
You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.
Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. His specialities include Knowledge Management and Creativity and Innovation Management. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached at http://managing-creativity.com/
Comments Off
It is a well known web site marketing strategy: To attract
new customers and traffic, give out something for free:
e-zine, ebooks, software, services etc.
But as you already know, most people don’t appreciate what
they get for free because they will always suspect there
must be catch.
If not, why will anyone give something away for free?
you get what I mean?
So, I will now give you 8 web site marketing strategy and
ideas on how to increase the perceived value of the
freebies you give out.
(1) You could tell them what the freebie is worth with
a dollar amount. For example, “Subscribe to my free
e-zine! A $199 value!”
(2) You could add other freebies to your freebie that
will increase the value. For example, “Subscribe to
my free e-zine and get free access to our “subscribers
only” private web site!”
(3) You could tell them the freebie is only available for
a limited time. For example, ” Download our free
ebook, this free offer will only be available until May
30, 2000.”
(4) You could tell them the freebie is only available to
a limited number of people. For example, ” Our free
software will only be available for the next 100 people
that download it.”
(5) You could give more details about the freebie.
List the benefits, features, what problems the freebie
will solve, etc.
(6) You could describe your freebie to sound more
attractive. For example, instead of “free report” you
could say “free never released top secret document”
(7) You could list testimonials for your freebie. Most
businesses don’t give testimonials for their freebies.
This would defiantly increase your freebies value.
(8) You could tell people how many people have
already receive your freebie. For example, “15,000
people have already subscribed to my free e-zine!
Can they all be wrong?
May these web site marketing strategy and secrets
help you to make a lot of money.
Warmly,
I-key Benney, CEO
I-key, a Millionaire CEO from New York City is the creator of “Mscsrrr: Millionaire Secret Cash System”,(investing online) program, which has helped thousands of ordinary people from all over the world to attain financial security and shining success during the past 2 yrs.
Mscsrrr Millionaire Cash System helps you to generate $1,500+/Week for life, from home or office, part time or full time. No large investment or hassles. Win $1000-$2000 free “cash”.
Comments Off
This short email in opt tutorial shows you some of my favorite tips and techniques for dealing with new subscribers to get them hooked so they stay in your list.
The main goal of email in opt tutorial is to explain how to develop a communication process with your new subscribers to build trust.
One of the biggest aspects of online business is trust, and how you are perceived. If you make a bad first impression, or come off as someone just in it for the money, people are smarter than that. They’ll see it coming a mile away, especially with all of the scams and people getting ripped off today.
Email in opt tutorial is composed with two main parts if you neglect one part things will go wrong. Please give all parts the required attention.
Part one of email in opt tutorial – make sure you have a system ready to take action!
Note: Don’t buy or rent a mailing list unless you make sure the subscribers in the list know they will receive your marketing messages.
Before you buy, rent email list or start collecting email addresses from your web site, you need to have a solid system in place that will allow you to communicate with your list and allow them to get to know you and trust you.
Most of subscribers you will receive are new online users and / or new businesses starters. They are info seekers. They opt in because they want information about your product or service now. They won’t wait for tomorrow to receive it.Use autoresponder to offer free valuable information via email! All you have to do is create your own series of email training to educate your prospects.
- Get quality autoresponder service. You obviously can’t do this on an individual basis, because it would be nearly impossible as your list gets bigger, but you can easily do this through your automatic responder services.Use addtracker to track your potential clients foot steps and adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.
- Make sure you have your tracking systems in place so you know what’s going on once the promotions begin and the traffic hits. Don’t do any guesswork. You need SCIENTIFIC numbers telling you what’s going on, what’s happened and what you need to do to increase sales and profits.
Part two of email in opt tutorial – How to structure your autoresponder messages.
Don’t ruin your business by sending out 50 or more follow up advertising messages. People are becoming very careful about requesting anything for fear of being spammed to death for doing it.
- Teach your subscribers.
Set up seven parts autoresponder email course. Each course contains helpful information and quality gift related to the course theme.
Email courses are a very good way to build your reputation as a provider of useful information. Setup an email course series a bout a hot topic. Give quality information in the course. Don’t advertise any product during the course phase. Don’t show your subscribers you are here only for money. Instead, invite them to visit your website to see your special marketing offer, your web site update, your quality free information, etc… and the ways are endless to put your offer in front of your potential customer.
In each course you may send a free quality brandable ebook or software where you advertise your affiliate programs. Allow your subscribers to brand the product with their name to help them make money they will think you for doing so.
- Show them you are a real person.
Put your contacts info including your email address, your physical address, phone number, etc… in all your outgoing messages to make it easy for your subscribers to contact you and feel they are dealing with an authentic marketer. Show them your photo, your family photos or your employees’ photo. Send them to where they can read about you.
- Let Your Subscribers Know You.
After your email course series is over hook your subscribers with your follow up messages series.
Set up a series of follow up messages. You can set up a whole series of follow up messages that show your potential customer that you are concerned with their satisfaction and you are here to help them succeed.
In your first tree messages or so do not promote any product or service you are selling at all. These three messages are designed to open an unstoppable dialog between you and your potential customers to build relationship and trust.
Instead of sales pitches, you’ll be sending out to your new subscribers a series of emails that talk about anything you want but no product promotion. You may talk about yourself, your likes & dislikes, your favorite hobby, what you do for a living, any websites you have, etc. You can even talk about your family and friends if you want.
After they receive your emails that talk about what you have chosen to talk about. Invite your subscribers to contact you in a friendly manner. Let them know you are there to help them. Ask them to send you emails talking about anything and everything they want to talk about. Your subscribers won’t contact you on their own if you don’t invite them.
In this introductory phase of the process, keep sending to your subscribers a quality information and gifts that they can’t find elsewhere. When people see you as a provider of good information that they can use and profit from, then your reputation and the reputation of your company becomes more credible.
When this happens people will be more likely to buy your products and services or indeed the products or services you recommend them.
As soon as the communication starts up between you and your subscribers, start collecting information about your subscribers. Information like what business they are involved in? What are their concerns and fears? Their gender, age, where they live? What’s their problem?
Once you have built trust and collect information….
At this time start sending promotional messages that promote quality products. Do not promote any product before you try it. If you try to promote a product you have never used, it will show. The visitor will see and feel the lack of sincerity and your reputation will suffer accordingly. If you follow these techniques you will build a quality email list of ready to buy subscribers.
Permission email marketing is an art. Permission email marketing is not a hard science. Without question, email marketing is the most affordable and effective tool in your marketing arsenal.
You can use email marketing to maximize all of your other sales and marketing activities and improve the return on investment (ROI) of every dollar you spend to obtain new business.
If you want to buy targeted email list do it wisely. Do not send messages to these lists unless you are sure that they know they will receive marketing messages from you.
Comments Off
As you climb higher and higher on that precarious corporate ladder, you’ll eventually get to the point where you are depending on other people to get work done for a deadline you are responsible for. An example of this would be if you are leading a team doing software design, and you are responsible of having all of the designs done by a certain date. You are responsible for the end result (all of the designs done), but you need your team to actually write the designs for this to happen. What happens if your team doesn’t make the deadline? Who gets the blame? This is a simple answer: You.
With this idea firmly in mind, how do you prevent missing a deadline? This is another simple answer, and yet many people don’t follow it: Be proactive. What does this mean? Well, I find that a good amount of the time a deadline is missed because the team lead does not check to see if their team is on track until the last minute. Finding out that three designs aren’t going to be done the day before the deadline is due is not going to do you any good, as it is too late to do anything about it. However, if in this same situation you were to check a week or two before the deadline was due, the outcome might be different. This is being proactive. For our purposes, we can define it as taking action with enough time before your deadline is due to correct any problems.
The following are three things that you can do to be proactive on your projects as a team lead:
- Have regular meetings – Not just every once and awhile on the fly, but scheduled meetings. This means that your team knows that you have a meeting at a certain time on a certain day every week. For instance, you could have a 10:00 AM meeting every Monday to kick off the week and make sure everybody knows what they should be working on. Also, you could have a meeting at 3:00 PM on Friday to wrap up the week. You don’t have to go overboard and have a meeting everyday (unless you’re in really deep trouble), but I’ve found once or twice a week to be effective. Make sure that you have a structure to the meeting as well, and it’s not just everybody standing around randomly talking. You need to conduct it and have a clear agenda when you go in for what you want to get out of it.
- Keep a tracking spreadsheet – This is another important organization tool: The tracking spreadsheet. Yes, it is a pain to maintain. However, it will save you from a lot of problems in the future. With this spreadsheet, you can see your team’s progress at a glance. This makes it easy to go into a meeting with them and ask questions about who is slipping or who is going to be ahead of schedule and why. This can save your deadlines by allowing people who are ahead of schedule to help pick up the slack of those who are falling behind. Also, this is good for meetings with your boss so that you can give them an easy to understand overview of how your team is progressing. The key point to remember here is to make sure your tracking spreadsheet is up to date. It does you no good if you have one, and yet nobody has updated it for a week. If your team is responsible for updating, remind them to update at the end of everyday (or whatever works for you, I just find the end of the day to be effective). If you are responsible for updating it, make sure you set aside a certain amount of time to do it everyday.
- Check in individually – Even if you have regular meetings, you should have informal progress checks with each of your team members. This doesn’t mean that you have a schedule a specific time for this, this can be as simple as stopping by their cube and asking them how they are doing. This way you don’t have to find out about a problem that happened on Tuesday at your regular Friday meeting. By performing these progress checks, you relay a message to your team that you are right there with them in the trenches, and that you are there to help if they have any questions. Also, as stated above, this allows you to take action immediately on a problem instead of having someone waste their time working on it for days at a time. Linking to the point above, if you find a change in someone’s progress as you talk to them, update the tracking spreadsheet immediately after you get back to your desk. This way you can see how that change is going to impact the rest of the team and your final deadline.
These are just three ways I’ve found that help me to be Proactive. There are probably lots of other ways specific to your work situation that can also help you out. A good way to think about your deadline situation is this: Whoever is holding you responsible for your deadline probably looks at your project as something of a black box. They don’t want to know the fine details, they just know what they want to see come out of it. With this in mind, you want to deal with any problems that arise inside that box, rather than outside of it, so that when your finished product comes out the end result is what this person is looking for.
Kevin Augustine is the administrator for Workplace Life – Where Every Cubicle Has a Window. Visit us for helpful articles on common Microsoft Office software such as Microsoft Word and Excel. We also have articles on career management, surviving in the office, professional email tips, and bits of humor to lighten up your day.
Comments Off
A colleague who does work for a nonprofit organization contacted me asking if I could do research on the success rate of personalized direct mail letters (Dear Joe) versus generically addressed letters (Dear Friend). Surprisingly, I didn’t find as many statistics as expected, but I found information stating that personalized letters outperform generic letters.
The Digital Printing Council conducted a survey and the results showed “tailored direct mail pieces increase response rates by more than 500 percent over a basic, non-personalized piece.”
Gotmarketing reports that “personalizing an email marketing campaign can improve response rates by 45 percent.” This one defines customized content and the customer’s purchase history as personalization.
ClickZ shares data from a study that “found personalization was the most important factor when contributors determine which charity or fundraising direct mail they open at 62 percent.” Second place? Timing at 59 percent.
It may cost more to personalize the campaign, but the response rate more than makes up the difference than taking the cheap, generic route. When I see mail addressed to “Resident,” I promptly throw it in the trash or recycling pile.
More resouces: “Personalized donor letters always outperform generic ‘Dear Friend’ appeals. Donors deserve ’special’ treatment and appeals should reinforce the positive relationship you’ve already established.” From FundClass.
Mal Warwick & Associates, Inc. learned “personal attention makes a big difference. The old cliche is true: people give money to people, not organizations. The more personal the contact, the more effective your fundraising will be.”
Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl’s notes, eNewsletter Journal, and The Remediator Security Digest. She is also a PC Today columnist and a tour guide at InformIT. She is geared to tackle your editing, writing, content, and process needs. The native Texan resides in Plano, Texas, a heartbeat north of Dallas, and doesn’t wear a 10-gallon hat or cowboy boots.
Comments Off
