How To Become A More Persuasive Writer By Channeling Homer

There are two ways to become a better writer: write more and read more. I first read the Odyssey at the age of 14 and The Iliad at 17. I return to them each year. Why have these two epic poems some 2,700 years old (with traditions stretching back even earlier, to the Bronze Age) lasted so long and proven so influential?

It’s not just their age. It isn’t even that the stories are so truthful to the human condition that they’re still relevant today. It’s that Homer (whoever he was) is a storyteller of nearly unsurpassed skill, a true master of language. But his language and writing style isn’t merely a beautiful thing to read, it’s something you can start using to become a more powerful and persuasive writer or speaker yourself.

In Media Res

Most famously, both the Iliad and Odyssey begin in media res (“in the middle of things”). The Iliad doesn’t begin with the Judgment of Paris and his elopement with Helen, but covers only a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey, meanwhile, begins not with the sack of Troy, but at the point Odysseus is about to return home, ten years later. This actually allows Homer to show us action first, and then fill in the missing details later, which the reader is probably wondering about.

Aside from skipping a slower build, a staple of most of modern fiction, beginning your message in media res actually takes advantage of a Pre-Suasive principle: that of “the unfinished.” This relates to the Zeigarnik effect which I spoke about a month or so ago, that people pay more attention to and remember things that aren’t complete.

In addition to allowing Homer to begin with memorable action, the device of in media res captivates attention because his audience wants to know what was the cause of this action (though in his own time the story was far more familiar on immediate recall than it is today). As you’re transfixed, he slowly solves the unanswered questions, partly with the Catalogue of Ships in book two of the Iliad, partly by the duel between Paris and Menelaus in book 3, and partly by the meeting of Achilles and Priam in book 24. In the Odyssey, books 9-12 tie up the loose ends. Yet, the main story of both epics is still unsolved even so, and he can smoothly move his audience’s attention back to the action at Troy or Odysseus’ homecoming.

If you have trouble building up your story or message, choosing to begin in media res at an opportune moment might save you some headaches.

Despite its fame, the Trojan Horse is never actually seen directly. It’s only described in passing in the Odyssey.

Trance, Directness, and Simile

One of Homer’s most famous hallmarks is his use of simile, but there’s more to it than that. There is actually a particular hypnotic pattern that these similes often use. Unlimited Selling Power explains:

Ideosensory trance is another form of hypnosis we experience daily. It is based on our innate abilities to create in our minds visual images, feelings, voices, sounds, and even tastes and smells. When did you engage in ideosensory activities today? When you vividly experienced something that was not going on in “real time.” Some examples: When you imagined what you might have for lunch or dinner, when you imagined what you might do at home tonight, or when you imagined a sales call, or mentally rehearsed what you might say to someone else in the office today. Did you see the expression on his face? Could you hear his words and feel yourself reacting? You were in an ideosensory trance.

Very persuasive individuals can orchestrate vivid images that influence both the perception and mood of the listener. Highly-skilled salespeople use “word magic” to bring their prospects and customers to other worlds of sights and sounds and feelings.

This is what Homer does constantly:

Here Asius flogged his team and chariot hard, nor did he find the gates shut, the bolt shot home, not yet, the men still held them wide, hoping to save some comrade fleeing the onset, racing for the ships. Straight at the gates he lashed his team, hell-bent, his troops crowding behind him shouting war cries, never thinking the Argive line could still hold out – they’d all be hurled back on their blackened hulls. Idiots. There in the gates they found two men, a brace of two great fighters, lionhearted sons of the Lapith spearmen, one Pirithous’ offspring, rugged Polypoetes, the other Leonteus, a match for murderous Ares. Both warriors planted there before the towering gates rose like oaks that that rear their crests on a mountain ridge, standing up to the gales and driving rains, day in, day out, their giant roots branching, gripping deep in the earth: so these two, trusting all to their arms, their power, stood up to Asius’ headlong charge and never shrank. (Iliad 12.142-60)

Notice two other aspects of this that make the simile/trance even more powerful. The first is obviously the natural element involved. People have always respected and feared nature, which Robert Greene highlights in The 48 Laws of Power. You also know nature. It doesn’t need to be explained to you. The second element is the repeated use of action words (“standing,” “driving,” “branching,” “gripping”), which anchors the text and makes it more impactful (recall that more persuasive speakers use action words while less persuasive ones use passive words).

Here’s another of the same kind:

When the Trojans saw Ideomeneus fierce as fire, him and his aides-in-arms in handsome blazoned gear, they all cried out and charged them through the press and a sudden, pitched battle broke at the ships’ sterns. As gale winds swirl and shatter under the shrilling gusts on days when drifts of dust lie piled thick on the roads and winds whip up the dirt in a dense whirling cloud – so the battle broke, storming chaos, troops inflamed, slashing each other with bronze, carnage mounting, manslaughtering combat bristling with rangy spears, the honed lances brandished in hand and ripping flesh and the eyes dazzled now, blind with the glare of bronze, glittering helmets flashing, fighters plowing on in a mass. Only a veteran steeled at heart could watch that struggle and still thrill with joy and never feel the terror. (Iliad 13.384-99)

And how about when men actually go down?

Under his ear the son of Telamon stabbed with a heavy lance, wrenched the weapon out and down he went like a tall ash on a landmark mountain ridge that glistens far and wide – chopped down by an axe, its leaves running with sap, strewn across the earth…so Imbrius fell, the fine bronze armor clashing against him hard. (Iliad 13.211-16)

Finally, just to crystallize the point, I’ll leave with one of my favorite passages that centers on another sense – sound.

But over against them glorious Hector ranged his Trojans…and now they stretched the line of battle strangling tight, the blue-haired god of the sea and Hector fired in arms, he driving the Trojans, the god driving the Argives – and a wild surf pounded the ships and shelters, squadrons clashed with shattering war cries rising. Not so loud the breakers bellowing out against the shore, driven in from open sea by the North Wind’s brutal blast, not so loud the roar of fire whipped to a crackling blaze rampaging into a mountain gorge, raging up through timber, not so loud the gale that howls in the leafy crowns of oaks when it hits its pitch of fury tearing branches down – nothing so loud as cries of Trojans, cries of Achaeans, terrible war cries, armies storming against each other. (Iliad 14.461-74)

There’s no arguing with these passages, no parsing their meaning in your analytical mind. They hit your senses directly. With Homer, you see the glare of the bronze of clashing warriors burning bright as fire, you hear their cries as you hear the howling winds, and when men die, they go down like trees or bellowing bulls. The extraordinary is given an ordinary experience that you know. If you’re explaining, you’re losing in persuasive gravitas. Homer never explains. He also never uses passive language. When using his similes or not, his language is always direct and potent.

Conclusion

Understand: people mostly live in stories. Scott Adams likes to call it “different movies on the same screen.” Facts by themselves are mostly boring. They need to be centered on a narrative that’s moving. The best way you can sharpen your technique, whether you want to write a great story or simply craft a persuasive message, the machinery is usually the same. The best way to improve is to “write more and read more.” In this and many other areas in life, Homer still stands as a titan, 27 centuries later.

Read Next5 Things You Don’t Know About The Devices That Control Your Brain

32 thoughts on “How To Become A More Persuasive Writer By Channeling Homer”

  1. 增达网:
    ——————————
    终生只需99元,让百万人每天浏览你的广告,每次浏览十秒时间。
    终生只需99元,免费下载群发软件,无使用限制,全部是破解版。
    终生只需99元,让你什么不干躺着就赚钱,上线替下线发展会员。
    ——————————
    群发软件免费下,无限广告免费发,
    百万流量免费享,十级提成免费拿。
    ——————————
    注册网址:
    http://www.wo.zengda.xin/
    ——————————

      1. Homer reads Advanced Marketing, David Rockefeller looks on approvingly?

  2. Star Wars, the original, also started in media res. Because George Lucas was informed by Campbellian interpretations of mythology, aka the monomyth.

  3. Great analysis. I have long wanted to read The Iliad and The Odyssey. What I see in the excerpts you show here is this; Homer didn’t express ideas, rather feelings.
    The feeling of fighting for your life. The feeling of running for your life. The feeling of being on a ship in storm-tossed seas.
    Now I shall have to read both these classics. Thanks for the prompt.

  4. “…as we advance in life these things fall off one by one , and I suspect we are left with only Homer and Virgil, perhaps with only Homer alone.”-Thomas Jefferson

  5. Funny that one would become a better writer by reading Homer—a poet who never wrote anything down. D’oh!

    1. I honestly cannot take any war story seriously if it does not have an accurate depiction of the art of war.
      I don’t think siege weapons were mentioned in the book, and there was not a single siege weapon in the film Troy. Hell, if I was in charge of Troy’s defense, I would have wiped out the Greek army in a couple of weeks.

      1. I think there is a lot of value in both Odyssesy and Iliad. They are worth reading for more than just the war story. I don’t know the history of weapons, but the history of the human condition is there really well

        1. I haven’t read the Odyssey yet. I check it when I get the time.
          But as far as the film goes, watching Orlando Bloom’s ass getting kicked by Brendon Gleeson made me almost forgive every flaw in the movie.
          EDIT: Did a brief google check. Turns out Paris is actually brave and heroic and totally not the coward as he was portrayed in the film. I’m never going to watch T.V again.

        2. Yeah I’ve never seen any of the movies but I can see how bloom getting ass kicked by gleeson would be great.

      2. I feel you, I’m always frustrated when I read battle scenes in most novels.
        I’m often tempted to write fantasy with realistic renaissance type of warfare (pikes formations and early gun powder).

        1. I’ve tried to make mine as realistic as I can, with future technology of course.
          But the demands of the narrative and prose might force you to take some liberties.

      3. Remember that the book only covers a few weeks of the war and the Bronze Age didn’t have much in the way of siege technology. There are some battering rams mentioned but it’s notable that in the annals of Thutmose III and others, towns tended to be captured by storm (done primitively) or starvation.
        Patroclus tried to climb the “angle” of the walls but “Apollo battered him back.”

    2. Actually, there is a growing thought that writing actually played a role in the composition of them. I recommend the excellent introduction to the Penguin version about this for starters.

    3. It was quite amusing when the oral bards collided with literate scholars in the ancient world. The bards could remember more but couldn’t read, and the scholars could read but not remember.

      1. Is there a book about that I would be very interested to read about instances

      2. Similarly, people 100 years ago could do complex math problems more easily. Today people just rely on calculators. Is it a coincidence that we seem to be getting dumber both intellectually and socially as selfies, 140 characters, and bulleted lists are becoming the norm to transmit information?
        I begin to think that in the future we’ll be so dumb as not be able to do the basics of life without some robot or the like. This is a subject I’m considering putting into a story.
        Although, as a sidenote, being an oral bard and being able to write isn’t always mutually exclusive.

        1. Studies of pre-literate peoples have shown they have an increased memory as compared to literate people, as they don’t have to remember the complexities of letters and their formation. It is a re-allocation of the mind processing power (to use a crude metaphor).
          Recent studies have found finding people are adjusting to not remembering information, but rather how to find information with their smart device.
          As technology supplements our minds, it changes to fit with it. But a tech so fragile as a smartphone. Perhaps a Scalzi organic “Brain Pal” is in our future.

  6. If you want to become a better writer, do what Benjamin Franklin did:
    “About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator – I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it.
    With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’d to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.
    But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned then into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.
    I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language.”
    -Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

    1. Check-Out Ben Franklin’s 18th Century Man-Game Advice:
      “In all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:
      1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.
      2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.
      3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.
      4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.
      5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
      6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.
      7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.
      8thly and Lastly They are so grateful!!”
      ― Benjamin Franklin

Comments are closed.