New Writers, Have You Branded Yourself As Well As These Writers?

Do what these writers have done to stand out

Have you ever thought about why one writer’s story gets 1k or 2k views and yours gets 100 or 200?

It might have something to do with the way a writer brands themselves through their stories.

Have you about ought how you’ve branded yourself, intentionally or inadvertently, with your readers in each one of the stories you write on Medium?

Let me explain. I have one writer-friend who I call the Netflix Series Lady because her last two stories were injected with so much drama that they felt like episodes from a Netflix series.

Where’s the next episode, KiKi Walter?

A-hem, my finger wants to tap Next Episode.

Here are a few other writers who have left an indelible image in my mind:

“The Buttcheek Lady”

I call Lu Skerdoo “The Buttcheek Lady” because she said in a comment that finds the word buttcheck inserted into any conversation to be hilarious. I can only imagine some of her conversations at home with her husband.

She was The Puzzle Lady for her beautiful story, “Sweet Surprise,” on putting together a 1,000-piece puzzle with her husband. It made me want to do a puzzle with my wife, and I’m a very spatially-organized challenged person.

The takeaway from the image I associate with Lu is that it came through comments to a story and what this tells me is we can brand ourselves even in what we say to others in our comments.

The Bird Lady.

I can’t help but think of Sarah Ouellet as The Bird Lady after reading her story, “What Is It About the Dove’s Head?” about one of her bird’s masochistic habits of masturbating on an old dove’s head in a cage they share.

“Oh, the Indignity!” To quote a line from Gordon in Thomas the Train.

Seriously I can’t get this image out of my head. I have empathy for this old dove. It makes me feel like the Hannibal Lecter of birds is in the world, and I want to see what happens to this dove.

The Chicken Man

Then there is J.R. Spiers. He is The Chicken Man for the stories about his chickens that illuminate the human condition. My favorite is, “Because Dogs Don’t Lay Eggs” because he uses chickens and puppies to talk about autism.

“How does it feel to be autistic? For me, it is a lot like being a chicken when everyone else in your family was expecting a puppy for Christmas.”

J.R. Spiers, “Because Dogs Don’t Lay Eggs.”

I think chickens as soon as I think J.R. and I want to see what’s going on with his chickens or what insight his chickens will share. Yes, he says his chickens talk and they do have a lot to say.

Then there’s Sujona Chatterjee The Harry Potter Girl, Pam Winter is The Writer Whose Husband Provides Comedy Relief, and Sam Ochstein who I have nicknamed The Former Pastor Who Loves Whiskey from his bio info.

A brilliant strategy

It’s a brilliant strategy to brand yourself in this way in your stories because it makes you stand out among all the other writers spinning tales.

It associates an indelible image to your name so people know what to expect and look forward to when they click to read one of your stories.

It helps to distinguish you from the thousands of stories that wash up on shore in our Medium Daily Digest or Circles with Our Faces on our dashboard or the home pages of a publication.

You want to be like Yana Bostongirl who writes personal stories about life, love, and healing from an Empath perspective, or Kristina God teaching tips and tricks to Medium newbies. This the image that’s comes to my mind when I think of these two writers who blazed a path to 1K, 2K, 3K, and 4K views.

You want your story to be the one that washes ashore like this diary in a bottle in this video. It’s a trailer for Ruth Ozeki’s novel, “A Tale for the Time Being:”

Quick question

Have you branded yourself in the mi da of your readers? Do your readers want to know what’s, happening in the next episode of The Netflix Series Lady, the indignities happening to The Bird Lady’s dove or what wisdom The Chicken Man’s chickens have to impart to us today?

(All of the writers mentioned in this story gave their permission to use the names I associate them with from their stories.)

Thanks for reading my story.

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Or check out my YouTube video on “Seven Tips for Success on Medium.”