Your Job Is to Make the Impossible Plausible

People are interested in impossibilities — what can’t happen or be done.

But you’ll really capture their attention when you show that something impossible is indeed possible.

As Aristotle says in his Poetics: “A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.”

Walt Disney called this “the plausible impossible principle.”

You can see it clearly in cartoons, where a character will do something that defies the laws of logic or physics — like jump off a cliff and float down using their pants as a parachute — but within the world of the cartoon, it’s perfectly plausible.

The best endings of books and movies do the same thing: an impossible coincidence or achievement ties everything up nicely, but in a perfectly plausible way.

Compelling sales copy or content writing often does this as well, by taking a seemingly impossible fact or claim and showing that there’s a way to make it possible. (In sales copy, of course, the product is the enabling factor.)

When I write sales copy, the reaction I’m always looking for is: “That’s impossible. Or is it...?” And that requires a careful combination of impossible claim quickly followed by just enough proof to turn outright rejection into intrigued skepticism.

One of my most successful promotions was headlined: “How to Treat Any Disease by Taking Advantage of Its Hidden Weakness.”

A seemingly impossible claim that was quickly backed up by showing that there were indeed natural remedies that dealt with even today’s most serious health problems. And that they do indeed work by capitalizing on the hidden vulnerabilities of illnesses.

Once you understand this principle, you’ll start to see it all around you, in books, movies, sales copy, and, of course, cartoons. (How great is it that we get to watch cartoons and call it “work”?)

For more, here’s Walt himself explaining how he does it (with a little help from some animated friends)…