Tag: Chris Bohjalian

The Intersection of Marketing & Storytelling

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A little tenderness goes a long way when trying to reach an audience. If you want to develop a brand message that has meaning, emotional storytelling could be the key to your next marketing campaign. As bestselling author Chris Bohjalian illustrated in Part I of this Renegade Thinkers Unite episode, storytelling is all about touching the audience on a personal level. [Show notes by Jay Tellini.]

In Part II of this episode, Bohjalian talks about the mechanics behind some of the deeply emotional themes he has communicated to his readers over the years. The author’s eloquent words are sure to inspire your marketing team, as he provides narrative advice that can help your brand convey a powerful story. You can listen to the episode here.

Here are some of our favorite moments from the interview:

Drew: How do you market your books when you’re on the road?

Chris: First of all, the book tours changed a lot in the last 25 years. And it’s changed a lot because of the digital era. The digital era has done two things to the book tour. First of all, it has dramatically decreased the number of hardcover books you will sell on a book tour because so many people will buy the book digitally from either Apple, Amazon, Kobo, BN.com. That means that each event is likely to sell fewer books. Secondly, it is meant—tragically—that there are fewer book stores. We all know that independent bookstores lost a lot of bricks and mortar faces when Amazon started in the late 1990s. We all know that Barnes and Noble is beleaguered right now as it tries to manage these beautiful superstores that were built in the 1990s, pre-Amazon, pre-BN.com with how many books they can really move in a 200,000 square foot store. A book tour is different now.

Drew: How is it different?

Chris: You have different expectations in terms of how many books you’re going to sell, but you’re doing two things. You’re being an ambassador for your publisher. You’re being an ambassador for yourself or your brand. You’re getting a chance to connect one-on-one with your readers. And yes, you are getting a chance still to sell books because I sign a lot of napkins, Kindle cases, posters, flyers at book tours now by people who read on a tablet. And that’s fine. It’s all reading. It’s all savoring stories, but it’s different. The days when you might sign four, five hundred books at a book event are waning. At least there are for me. I know that there are authors out there who will sign 400, 500 books at an event but those events are pretty rare for me.

Drew: You’re teaching master classes at Yale and Rutgers. What are you teaching your students?

Chris: I believe television and the digital age have changed how readers approach novels. You need to immerse them fast into what the story is, why the stakes matter, and why it’s emotionally relevant to them. And so what I like to focus on is, how do you begin? What’s your point of view? What’s your tense, and what’s going to create either that sense of dread or momentum or enthusiasm to cause your reader to pick this book up off the table or download it when there are so many other choices? What’s going to hook them on page one.

 

If Marketing is Storytelling Then Learn from a NYT #1 Bestseller

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Marketers are mini-authors in the sense that they seek to spark emotional connections with audiences through storytelling. Ideally, every element of a marketing campaign needs to feel near and dear to the consumer. As the array of platforms on which marketers can make impressions expands, it’s essential to maintain a voice that is consistent, adaptable, and—above all—genuine. In order to hit these points, we need to understand the anatomy of a good story. [Show notes by Jay Tellini.]

That’s where #1 New York Times bestselling author Chris Bohjalian comes in. Character-driven anecdotes dominate Bohjalian’s work, as his descriptive prowess has made him a master of sentimental narration. The wordsmith’s writing style affirms the tenderness that so many brands try to articulate in their ad campaigns.

In Part I of his conversation with Drew Neisser, Bohjalian shares insights for telling a rich and personal story. The author explains how he manages to draw dedicated crowds both in his books and on his social media channels, offering unique advice from a perspective that’s fresh to many marketers. You can listen to the episode here.

Here are some standout questions and answers from the interview:

 

Drew: Can you talk a little bit about your writing routine?

Chris: Being precise, being careful, being thoughtful, and being responsible—really trying to understand what you want to say, whether it’s a whole report about Listerine antiseptic or some marketing research on Clorets, the breath deodorant. I was writing between 5 and 7 a.m. in the morning before going to work at Thompson and then Monday and Tuesday nights when I came home from work. When I left advertising once and for all in my early 30s, I continued to start writing at about 5:00 in the morning because that was my habit. And then we had an infant baby girl and it was important to get as much writing in as I could before it was time to help get her up and out the door to daycare and then to preschool and then to elementary school. These days I don’t start at 5:00 in the morning anymore, I probably start at about six but I’m at my desk until at least 11 or 11:30 until noon or 12:30.

Drew: What are your writing goals for the day?

The goal is to write a thousand words a day. I don’t always write a thousand words. But as Jodi Picoult observed, it is a whole lot easier to edit garbage than a blank page. And so it’s important to get something down on paper. Every 50 or so pages I print out what I have and then I edit by hand using a fountain pen because fountain pens are messy and it forces me to think more slowly. To really find that right synonym for “red,” whether it’s burgundy or claret. I always also write with the understanding that the first draft isn’t the final draft. My books will usually go through seven or eight or nine drafts. I never know where my books are going. I depend on my characters to take me by the hand and lead me through the dark of the story. 

Drew: Storytelling has jumped from the domain of novelists like yourself into brand marketing, and social media has leapt from my world into your world of bookselling. Can you tell me about your storytelling techniques?

Chris: Sure. First of all, I think novels are changing and I believe they are changing because we are in the midst of a wonderful renaissance in television drama (The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Handmaid’s Tale). Certainly television drama at its finest impacts the way that I write today. And that gets to my second point; the digital world has changed our attention spans and our expectations. I think it’s utterly fascinating that when we think of Les Miserables, we think it begins with Jean Valjean stealing the candlesticks. That’s how the musical begins. That’s how the movie begins. The reality is that Jean Valjean steals the candlesticks on page 104 of my edition of the novel. The first 103 pages is a lengthy discussion of the goodness of the archbishop. That novel has 60 pages about the sewers of Paris. Thanks to the Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Mad Men, we’ve got a very different craving for narrative drive and storytelling, which is why when my books work, and heaven knows they do not always work, they are in part about dread and they are in part about a narrative drive that must begin from page one. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want characters that are deep and real, because heaven knows that I do. But you want to meet those characters quickly. You want to feel their pain quickly and understand why you’re going to be emotionally invested in that story quickly.