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  • July 9, 2025

A Novel Approach to Picking up Customers

March 4, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

Maman est morte.–Albert Camus, L’Etranger

The first line of a novel has the power to hook you as a reader and entice you to read more. The line may shock you with honesty, tease you with what is to come or set the scene for the story ahead. Some first lines are so brilliantly memorable that they have become more famous than the novel itself, such as:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. — George Orwell, 1984

It was a dark and stormy night. — Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

A great first line gets your attention and compels you to read on. It is the come-hither look and whispered breath of longing.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. –Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

It serves as an introduction to character, place or mood.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. –J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. –Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

You do not have to be a literary great to apply this novel approach in business. Every business has a story but that story gets lost in corporate jargon. How often have you opened a marketing brochure or visited a website with a first line that made you lean in eager to read more?

Applying storytelling techniques in business writing is an excellent way to make a great impression and pick up customers. Storytelling adds warmth and humanity to your writing and feels more like a conversation than a pitch. Here are five practical ways that you can leverage the novel approach:

  1. Craft headlines that mirror the first line of a novel. Use them to capture your reader’s attention.
  2. Use “characters” to tell your business story. The character can be you, an employee or  a customer.
  3. Think like a reader. If your copy were a book, what would make the reader pick it up from the shelf?
  4. Be descriptive. Providing a reader with just enough detail allows them to form a mental picture and makes them part of the scene. Visual mediums use this technique but it is also possible to do it on paper.
  5. Ditch the corporate jargon. The use of corporate jargon is common but often is a barrier to engaging your reader. It can read like a 10 foot wall that you expect readers to climb to get to the real message. Skip the corporate acronyms and jargon and talk to your readers.

Have you seen any good uses of storytelling in business? Are you using the technique in your own business writing?

Resources:

Kelly Erickson takes this idea a step further in her post on Building Your Business with a Concept.

Joanna Young discusses the use of long words and makes a case for plain, simple language.

If you have ideas to share on Writing Website Content, please offer your comments here.


Filed Under: Business and Career, Writing Tagged With: business writing, great first lines, novel writing, storytelling in business, Writing

First Snow

November 17, 2008 by Karen Swim

A tree covered with Snow

Image via Wikipedia

Written by Karen D. Swim

The snow fell slowly at first like tiny origami doves floating toward the ground. I watched as they fluttered past my window seeming to dance upon the air to a happy little tune. Wings spread as each flake tumbled and spun until finding its landing. It then fell faster as though someone had opened giant down pillows from the clouds, a flurry of white rained down falling quickly clinging to the grass covering it in a blanket of white.

Dancing flakes from heaven sounded winter’s clarion call. Six weeks ahead of schedule, she arrived when she pleased. Perhaps she would dance with autumn again, but that was her secret to share. Today she is here, her majestic robe of white spread across the city.

My novel in progress now stands at more than 27,000 words. Like the wind that carries the snowflakes I have danced and twirled wherever the story took me. It is not the story I thought I would tell, but I quickly learned I was not in control. I had an idea nearly a year ago rooted in a kernel of truth. It sat lingering in a word file waiting for the right season. NaNo arrived and my calendar said the season was here but like the fickle nature of winter my story did not follow my plan. It unfolded in its own time sometimes beautiful and sometimes frightening in the fury of her demands.

Today, I sit in awe of the words that spread across the page. Like the first snowfall, pure and untouched is my first draft – not yet tread upon or plowed, allowing other layers to fall. I wrap my hands around my hot cup of tea savoring the first snowfall and first words. It is a good day.

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Filed Under: Insights Tagged With: first snow, novel writing

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