Surprising Broca

By Michael Drew - Oct 31 , 2007

The Key to Creating a Message That Is Heard and Acted Upon

Broca’s Area resides in the left hemisphere of your brain, just over the southeast corner of the Motor Association Cortex. It’s the brain’s center for action words. It produces verbs, builds sentences, and predicts what people are going to say.

“Gee, Mike, that’s interesting. Uh—Would you mind telling me why I should care?”

Because Broca’s Area is a big player in the persuasion process. Because the authors you work with are out there trying to persuade people to make the decision to buy their books, the books you’re publishing. And because Broca’s Area is the guard house for—and it’s only a short distance away from—the Prefrontal Cortex, where those decisions are made.

So let’s follow a verbal message through the brain, shall we? (Don’t worry—I’m not smart enough to get too technical.)

When a message is heard, it enters the brain through the Auditory Cortex and then lands in Wernicke’s Area, which attaches meanings, images, and feelings to sounds and to individual words. (Reading a message is a little more complicated than that, as our brains translate words into their auditory equivalent before we can understand them. But either way, verbal and other messages start their journey in the same warming-up place: Wernicke’s Area.)

Wernicke’s Area then passes the words along to Broca’s Area, which scans the words to see if they fit a pattern similar to others it has already stored away from the past. Broca then jumps the arranged, organized message over the Motor Association Cortex to the Prefrontal Cortex, just behind the forehead. When the words are the same-o-same-o usual patterns, the brain anticipates what is coming next, adopts a ho-hum, so-what attitude, and reduces its level of concentration, looking for other, perhaps more interesting thoughts.

But if an author can find a way to deliver a message that stands out as being different from Broca’s usual patterns, he stands a much better chance of surprising Broca, holding the audience’s attention, and getting the Prefrontal Cortex to initiate some action, such as deciding to buy your author’s book. For example, let’s consider the following poem:

Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,” and he glittered when he walked

And he was rich — yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In short, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

A morbid ending, to be sure. But you must admit that Edwin Arlington Robinson is a master at surprising Broca with unpredictable words—especially verbs—in unusual combinations, bringing sparks to his message. As a result, his message zipped right past Broca’s Area. And it made the short leap across the Motor Association Cortex to the Prefrontal Cortex, encouraging readers to make a decision to take action, even if only internally. (Because of this talent, Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry three times during his lifetime.)

Challenge the authors you work with to find fascinating ways to engage their audiences and leave them with their mental tongues hanging out, panting for more. Prod your authors into using creative phrasing and active verbs in circus ways. Nag them into mixing flashing neon lights with common data, thereby teasing testy Broca and shocking that ambling Prefrontal Cortex into deciding to take action—to buy their books. “C’mon! Bring it on!”

Questions about your marketing plan may be directed to Michael R. Drew at the Austin, Texas, headquarters of Promote A Book : 512-858-0040. You can also contact Michael via email at michael@promoteabook.com.