“If a guy who grew up with a severe stutter can now make a living teaching and giving talks about how to write and tell stories, imagine how far your own stories can take you.”
Substack Notes is a cozy corner of the internet where introverted writers can find peace, community and a place to get paid to be themselves.
Medium top writer, debut author and storytelling superstar Michael Thompson is in the middle of starting all over on Substack, writing viral posts and Notes.
As an introvert myself, Michael’s journey from Medium writer to Substack newsletter writer is super inspiring. That’s why I invited him to take part in a LIVE session with
, me and more than 50 (!) participants.And our participants loooooooooooooooooved the LIVE with Michael:
Before I’ll gonna share with you Michael’s storytelling tips for writing engaging posts on Substack, let me give you some background information.
If a guy who grew up with a severe stutter can now make a living teaching, so can you
First you need to know that as a shy stuttering kid, my friend Michael Thompson never would have guessed that some of the biggest moments of his life would come from gaining the confidence to talk to strangers, and feeling a little bit uncomfortable.
This helped him discover the love of writing and become a top writer on Medium, meet the love of his live and get two boys
…become a career coach plus achieve the visibilty he was seeking for by getting featured in Business Insider, Fast Company and many more top tier media outlets.
Also it’s important to understand that in late 2019, the introverted Michael Thompson only had under 1000 followers on the publishing platform Medium but already written many engaging posts.
Back then he wrote about one post per week.
The cool thing was that he received a note from a literary agent after she read a few articles that performed well and got a lot of engagement.
In particular, this one article was to change the course of Michael's life:
She asked if he’d ever considered writing a book as she said he had “the seed.”
It turns out, Michael had “the seed”
He turned one story idea into a whole book.
His debut book is called Shy by Design: 12 Timeless Ways to Quietly Stand Out and it shows introverts are pretty excellent just as they are!
The hardcover of Michael’s book was released worldwide over the weekend and so Shy By Design officially landed in Singapore:
A few weeks back, when I satrted my Online Writing School podcast, Michael was my first podcast guest.
2,200 people downloaded and listened to our Substack native podcast:
So I knew I needed to invite Michael for a LIVE session inside my membership experience and the Notes Kickstarter Bootcamp I run with
.
Michael shared 7 ways to write engaging Notes that can get viral
#1 Start with action
People get easily bored online. They scan and skim with hungry impatient eyes. The moment you begin to bore them you’ve lost.
Be a movie director and “throw people into the action” is what Michael recommends.
