Think about the Bible for a moment. It's the most popular book on the planet, provides guidance and counsel to billions of people, and has been around for thousands of years.

Why is The Bible so popular?

Because of the stories.

The stories provide comfort and hope by communicating timeless concepts in a way that we can all understand. Stories of real people, dealing with real problems.

What can we learn about copywriting from the Bible? We can learn that the best way to change someone's mind is to tell a story.

I am suggesting that we can learn from this technique. We can tell stories in our sales letters that illustrate our features and benefits in a way that our readers instantly recognize themselves in the plot, and become emotionally involved in its resolution. After all, if you are interested in a story, you want to see how it ends, right?

So even if you don't read every word, you'll still skim to the end in order to see how it turns out.

That's exactly what we want with our sales letters.

What elements does a story have that you need in your sales letter?

Sales letters need a protagonist.

The protagonist is the hero of the story, the star. The person who is facing a problem, or a challenge, or needs to make a decision. The person who unlocks a secret.  The protagonist represents the reader.

In the narrative of your letter, the protagonist could be you, or someone you know, or someone who used the product you are selling. It could be the person who invented the product. It could be a person who was skeptical of the product, then tried it, and become a fan.

The whole sales letter is written from the point of view of that protagonist.

Every sales letter needs conflict.

Conflict is the problem that needs to be solved, a question that needs to be answered, a battle that needs to be fought. But it doesn't always have to be conflict with an external enemy.

In fact, in many sales letters, your protagonist won't be battling dark forces or evil bankers or whatever. The conflict will be internal, with his or her own vices. For example, a sales letter for a weight loss product, the conflict would come from the temptation of snacks and free cookies at the office. It would come from the nightly cravings for sweets.

The result of all that is a hero with low energy, low self esteem, and a large waistline. So your hero tries all sorts of diets, but nothing ever works. The pounds come back, and your hero feels miserable. That's conflict.
The third part of the story is Resolution.

This is the shining path that leads your hero out of the wilderness, and into a bright new future. And of course, your product will play a key role in this transformation.

For your weight loss sales letter, it should be pretty easy to figure out. Your hero finally discovers the secret of the new program, and suddenly, her waistline is transformed. Her energy improves. She loses the weight and keeps it off.

And this is really the most important part of the story.

• You want to be really vivid in describing the results of uncovering the secret.
• You want to describe not only how the hero's life has improved, you want to talk about how others now view the hero.
• You want to talk about the specific things the hero can now do that were impossible before.
• You want to talk about the hero's plans for the future.

The more detail you provide about the way things could be, the more you will get your reader excited about the potential of your product.

Remember, I am not talking about fabricating any stories.

The hero of your story should be a real person. 

Whatever you put in your sales letter should a true and accurate reflection of what happened to that individual. But you will also want to put a disclaimer somewhere in your copy that states that "individual results may vary."

Not everyone is going to wind up int he same place as your hero. But you want to get them to imagine that's what the best-case scenario could be like. I think you are beginning to understand what I am saying.

Let's summarize

To make a sales letter really interesting, you need a story. And a story needs three things: a hero, a conflict, and a resolution.

The more details you can provide in your story, the better. Be sure you give your hero a name. Provide details, like where she/he lives, what they do for a living. How they got into their crisis. And how they got out, with the help of your product.