Exactly how to start a story (& give it the best chance to go viral)

I used to be terrible at writing the first couple lines of a story…

Like, literally, the very first sentence of a story would always frustrate the hell out of me.

That is, until I stumbled upon the Primal Opening Framework.

  • This framework is behind the most famous opening story for a sales message — The Wall Street Journal Billion Dollar Letter.
  • I’ve used this framework (for a long time without even knowing it) to make millions in sales through email for me and past clients.
  • I went viral on X in part because of a Primal Opening.

So what exactly is a Primal Opening?

Simply, a Primal Opening is a better way to construct the first sentence or two of a story.

I’m calling these Primal Openings for 2 reasons:

  1. The definition of the word Primal is "coming before all others in importance".
  2. The first sentence is your most important sentence.

ATTENTION is the #1 goal of your first sentence.

Things that draw attention speak to our primal brain.

Okay, before I tell you exactly what the framework is join me on a little detective journey. Here’s how I stumbled into this framework.

One of the coolest parts of studying marketing history and old ads is that you find connections others miss.

"Modernists" — those who think studying old ads is dumb — never see stuff like this.

I was trying to start a story for an email & thought, "What’s the most famous sales story of all time? What are the first couple sentences?"

The answer of course is Martin Conroy’s Wall Street Journal letter.

"On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college."

I re-read that opening line for the 100th time and it hit me.

Something seemed familiar.

I popped on Google and searched for the most famous opening lines in popular books.

And there it was.

The intro to Dostoevsky’s classic Crime & Punishment is:

"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."

Conroy wrote the Wall Street Journal letter in 1974, a full century after Dostoevsky wrote his masterpiece.

Armed with that info, I started looking at all the opening sentences of Dostoevsky’s stories and noticed a pattern.

The opening sentences of his stories either:

  • Set a time and place.

  • Introduce a character.

That’s really it. Here are some examples:

"The Idiot" (1869)

"Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o’clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed."

"The Brothers Karamazov" (1880)

"Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his tragic and obscure death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago, and which I shall relate in its proper place."

"Notes from Underground" (1864)

"I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."

"The Gambler" (1866)

"There was no way to get out! It was not that we were prevented by some insurmountable obstacle; it was that there simply was nowhere to go."

The first part of a Primal Opening is setting the time and place or intro’ing a character.

But you need to look closer.

There’s also an ATTENTION grabbing part of this equation.

You’ll find tension & foreshadowing and/or unexpected strangeness/weirdness.

So the full Primal Opening Framework for stories is:

  • Set time & place PLUS add tension/foreshadowing or novelty/strangeness.

  • Introduce character PLUS add tension/foreshadowing or novelty/strangeness.

Back to my opening line for this email.

"I used to be terrible at writing the first couple lines of a story…"

A character, me, is introduced PLUS I say something novel (unexpected).

I’m typically seen as an email copywriting expert. You wouldn’t normally see an expert admit to a shortcoming in their field of expertise.

It’s a little unexpected and creates some curiosity.

Of course it’s not jaw dropping or anything like that, but it’s better than how 95% of writers try to start their stories.

I hope this week has been helpful and that you have a great weekend!

– Derek

P.S. Here’s what I recommend now:

I’m NOT an expert on growing with social media – I’m an expert on copywriting for emails and simple sales letters and on constructing offers (mainly, "how to" course offers). I’ve been doing all that for close to 15 years now and I’ve built up a nice little business.

Recently, one of my customers and "internet friends", Parker Worth, put together a course on using storytelling to go viral on social media and to make sales.

That’s what he’s an expert on – he grew from zero to 65k+ social media followers in just 15 months all by sharing simple and viral stories on social media. Some of the stories were about him and his journey and some of those stories have been about other more public figures.

Either way, Parker has built up a big following, a decent-sized email list, and done over $175k in sales in 15 short months.

My list (you) is always asking me "how to get started getting traffic, growing an audience, and getting people to subscribe to an email list?"

Well, telling stories on social media is one good way to do that and to start flexing those copywriting muscles you’ve been building up with my products.

So I’m recommending you join Parker’s Digital Storytelling Master Class now because the cart closes on Sunday night.

This isn’t a $1000 course – it’s just $197 and you’ll learn all the storytelling formulas you need to get started on social media.

He’s going to teach Digital Storytelling Master Class through an Email Delivered Course (which he learned from me) and that kicks off on Monday.

If you’re even slightly curious about how stories can be used to grow your social media presence, and to make more sales, head over here to get all the details:

>>> Train yourself to write viral stories that sell and grow an audience from scratch on social media