Get Your Story Straight
A Non-Fiction Storytelling Course for Newsletter Writers, Bloggers and Other Creative Artists
Get Your Story Straight is a 6-week course on non-fiction storytelling from Mike Sowden, author of the newsletter Everything Is Amazing (read by over 30,000 subscribers every week).
It will teach you:
How to build a great non-fiction story from scratch, and know exactly why it works so well on your audience…
How to tell stories that stir up emotions - and why that's so, *so* important…
How to communicate your stories in a way that gets everyone's attention…
How to build long-term stories that keep readers hooked, over the short-term and for the long haul…
How to scale up into flagship storylines, quests and movements…
How to tell stories on social media and convert that attention into clicks, signups and paid subscribers…
How to avoid burning out (because you don't know where you're going and why).
Feeling like nobody cares about what you have to say?
Every time you publish something in your blog or newsletter, do you get nothing but tumbleweeds and crickets?
Or maybe you see people arriving, but they never seem to read your stuff. They check out the first few lines and whoosh! - they're gone.
What happened?
Wait - isn’t it just about getting more traffic or followers?
Some online folk (often the least reputable kind) will say you just need to focus on promoting yourself to the maximum number of people - and then you’ll automatically build an audience that loves your work!
“It's just a numbers game! You just need bigger numbers!”
Nope.
Growing your readership is important.
But you need to know how to light up the readers you already have.
What you need is better storytelling - aka. "knowing how to make people care".
Here's why.
Great storytelling makes people come back for more.
Do you want to tell stories that really engage people, hooking them so they can't stop reading?
Do you want your work to stand out? (Great stories travel far and get lots of attention. They're the key to media mentions, social media referrals and truly engaged visitors by the bucketload.)
Do you want people to love your work?
Do you want them to trust you & be persuaded by you - enough to subscribe to all your stuff, and to sing your praises to complete strangers?
Do you maybe even want your audience to buy from you?
Then you need to tell stories that make people care.
It’s as simple (and powerful) as that.
Want to know more?
OK, who am I to say all this?
Hi! My name’s Mike.
Using everything I’ve learned as a former travel writer, copywriter, archaeologist and story consultant, I’ve spent the last 4 years building up Everything Is Amazing, a science newsletter about awe and wonder, into a readership of just over 31,000 subscribers - partly by using social media to tell stories that went massively viral, like this one.
This course is my attempt to pass along everything I know.
Who is Get Your Story Straight for?
Maybe you have ambitions of telling stories for a living. You’re ready to take your first steps - and you’re wanting guidance on the absolute basics.
Maybe you just want to tell stories for fun. You’d love to be able to spin a winning tale at a party - or you’re a passionate amateur advocate on something you feel very strongly about. Either way, you take your fun seriously enough to want to do a really effective job of it.
Or maybe you're already experienced. It’s already your job to tell stories, and you've been at this a while - but you're wanting a refresher to hone your skills and unleash your full potential.
What’s in the course?
Twice a week for 6 weeks you’ll be emailed a lesson, which contains a short audio introduction, a text essay, and a challenge at the end to help you develop your skills.
The Lesson Plan:
Your Storyteller’s Journey
(We start with you, what you want from your stories, and what the modern media landscape looks like.)
What’s a Story and Why Should You Care?
A Great Story Begins With…
A Great Story Is Tense
A Great Story Builds Trust
A Great Story Makes Everyone Feel It
How Great Stories Become Events, Quests and Movements
A Great Story Ends With…
Finding Your Voice & Style
Case Study - 01: My Newsletter Strategy
(I explain how I grew my newsletter over the last 4 years to where it is today - what’s worked, and what didn’t.)
Case Study - 02: Using Social Media
The End Of Your Journey (Is Just The Beginning)
PLUS: lifetime access (including all future course updates and bonus lessons)!
Hey, will this course make me rich?
AKA. “where are the wild promises of seven-figure incomes and so on?”
Ha. No. It's not that kind of course.
Yes, there are plenty of people making crazy money by using great storytelling - but I'm not one of them.
However, I am a full-time writer, making a sustainable living.
This isn't a "Get Rich Quick" course. (Frankly, I’d recommend running away from that kind of stuff at great speed.)
But the principles of good storytelling have helped me (moderately successfully) and others (sometimes far more successfully) build sustainable creative lifestyles for ourselves.
Ready to get started?
Choose Your Plan:
The Standard Plan
This option includes:
The full 6-week course, comprising 12 email lessons with audio introductions and exercises
LIFETIME access to the course and all future updates
Basic email support.
Optional - a free year’s paid subscription to my newsletter “Everything Is Amazing” .
The Advanced Plan
This option includes:
Everything in the Standard plan…
…plus a single 1-to-1 Storytelling Consultation (see below).
This Plan is best if:
you want everything in the course and you’re wanting my 1-to-1 help with a particular non-fiction essay, business narrative, or blog or newsletter content strategy.
How does the Storytelling Consultation work?
I’ll be working 1-to-1 with you on a story of your choosing - maybe a particular essay you want to get published, a strategic storyline for a publication you want to launch, or maybe a collection of research materials where you haven’t yet found the narrative throughline to present to an audience in a way that will hook them. (Or maybe something completely different! I love surprises.)
We’ll do the work in three stages:
A preliminary Zoom call to talk the idea over. (I strongly recommend we do this after you’ve gone through all the lessons of Get Your Story Straight, but it’s not a requirement.) We’ll book a time for this that suits both of us, either via a Calendly link or an agreed-upon date and time.
By email, I’ll give you my best suggestions on shaping your story (aka. the bulk of my half of the “consultation” side of things).
A wrap-up Zoom call, when we’ll discuss the story and my suggestions for getting it into shape, before deciding on a plan of action you can take forward.
Unsure if your particular story is a good fit for this process? Ping me an email at mike@getyourstorystraight.co.uk to discuss it!
*** 100% Money-Back Guarantee For The Course ***
The Get Your Story Straight course comes with a no-risk, money-back, 100% satisfaction guarantee. That means if you go through it and you’re not happy with it, email me and I’ll happily refund you 100% of the purchase price.