What Belongs in a Good Story?

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To many churches and ministries want to seem smart and on top of things when we communicate, so we load our stories with facts and data. But too much kills the heart of a story - it's emotion.

Mark Rovner of SeaChange discussing storytelling during his talk at the Network for Good said that "too many facts and too much data in your stories are the equivalent of emotional Novocain."

So what belongs in a story? According to Mark, Character, desire and conflict.

The character is the protagonist. Who is the main character? It needs to be a person, not your organization. A good protagonist is human, attractive, funny, good-hearted and up against a serious challenge.

Desire is what the character wants and pursues.

Conflict is the active opposition to the protagonist achieving his/her goals. Conflict is very important: You need high stakes, long odds and maybe even a villain.

Read more about Mark's thoughts from Katya's blog.

How are you doing on storytelling? Here’s a checklist: Try it out!


(ht: Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog)

The Ask

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Movie Mondays has created a great little video that is short and to the point. This week's focus is "The Ask."

For many, asking a person to financially contribute to the church/missions trip/capital campaign/cause/ministry is the most stressful part of the fund development process. Sending mail is easy. Going to lunch is easy. Telling a donor and ministry partner how we used their last gift is easy. But asking for the next gift (or even the first gift) - that is often times not so easy.

Once the ask is made, we sometimes have a tendency to immediately start back peddling or we just keep on talking. DON'T. Just sit and be quiet. Certainly those few seconds of silence may seem like an eternity, but that short silence is the most critical point in the conversation.

Make sure you check out this video! (The video will be online for a short period of time from this posting..beyond that time, archived videos can only be accessed through a paid membership)

How to Write Emails that Get Read

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I hate to receive those emails that go longer than a novel and that look like one long ongoing sentence. Most often emails should be kept short and sweet.

And yet sometimes your church or ministry can't keep an email short due to some important information that needs to be immediately communicated. So how do you write a long email that will be read by your church?

Make sure the subject line grabs the reader - Make sure you think about the subject line first, it's the most important item in your email. In just 30-50 characters of the subject line you need to get across why they need to open and read your email.

Use Subheads - Getting the attention of your readers using subheads is always a great idea. It breaks up your thoughts and gets to the heart of what you're trying to communicate while letting them do the necessary skimming.

Make sure you Communicate in Small Chunks - It is important to get to your point fast in small succinct paragraphs. Plus writing in small chunks creates more white space and therefore makes your email more readable.

Use Bullets - Bullets break up points or benefits so that your readers can get your information quickly by scanning. This is a very popular copywriting tactic for email and the web in general.

Write Like You Speak - When you are talking to a person at church, you don't speak in long boring sentences. You are probably concise and conversational. The same should be true of your email.