“If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.”
~ George Lucas
The film industry makes over 1 billion dollars each year in the United States alone. It makes 50 billion worldwide. What is behind these staggering figures? Human beings’ need for crafting an impactful compelling story. But a compelling story is more than just entertainment – stories sell products, help leaders connect with their teams and inspire us to take action. This need for stories is not just conjecture, it’s an idea now backed by science.
How to Craft a Compelling Story
One of the world’s most inspiring business leaders and – unsurprisingly – best storytellers is Richard Branson. In one of his Forbes interviews, he shares his views on telling stories in business: “Today, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you also have to be a good storyteller”.
Branson’s life and origin story follows the typical ‘Man in a hole’ story arc. A young boy suffering from dyslexia is misunderstood at school, drops out, starts a magazine and learns that in fact, his mind is different and special and capable of great things!
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky often tells Airbnb’s story: “I remember for the first two years when we first started the company I would wake up in the morning and I would have this panic …
Everyone thought I was crazy, no one supported us, we had no money … I probably lost 20 pounds, as I had no money for food … over the course of the day I would convince myself everything was going to work out … but then I would go to sleep and there was like a reset button … my heart would start pounding again. It was like Groundhog Day; it was like this every morning.” Their story is so inspiring that it’s one of the most often told stories on turnaround success.
All these examples show that if you want to be a great leader you need to be able to communicate your vision, message and goals with your employees, peers, audience and investors in a way that persuades and inspires all these disparate groups to support you and move toward a common goal.
5 Tips on How to Write a Compelling Story
So, what does it take to craft a compelling story? Here are all the techniques you need to use to get a desired result of a truly compelling story.
1. Decide on your Takeaway First
Most screenwriters know the end of their story before they know anything else. This gives them a roadmap of sorts with a specific event to write towards. You want your listeners to walk away from your speech with some sort of takeaway or actionable knowledge they can put to use immediately.
What is the main goal of your presentation? Is it to build brand awareness? Build trust? Promote a new service? You’ll want to know this before writing your story, so you know the ending you are writing toward.
2. There Must be Obstacles
Can you imagine if Luke Skywalker had an easy time saving the galaxy from the dark forces? If finding the missing patient from the criminally insane on Castle Island was a cinch? Or if Andy Dufresne would have easily escaped from prison in Shawshank Redemption? These well-beloved stories would be far from compelling. Stories need characters that face big obstacles. The people sitting in your audience? They too are facing obstacles and are coming to you for the solution.
Make sure your stories always have an obstacle. Perhaps you want to share all of the obstacles you faced when you first started your business, or the obstacles you faced getting to that next revenue level, or the obstacles you faced running a family business. It doesn’t matter who the main character is or what the specific obstacles are, just make sure you have some.
3. Use a Strong Storytelling Framework
Crafting a compelling story is a lot like baking: you can certainly be creative, but for the final product to come out right, you’re going to have to follow some steps and in the right order. For instance, you don’t decorate the cake first, then bake it, and then finally mix all of the ingredients together.
Those steps are obviously not in the right order.
Using a storytelling framework will help you put all of your story’s elements in the right order.
This is the basic storytelling path:
- The Intro/setup
- The Problem/obstacle introduction
- The Character struggles to overcome the obstacle
- The Resolution
- The Conclusion
Let’s look at that same path using some familiar storytelling language:
Once upon a time | Suddenly | It seemed as though all hope was lost | Fortunately | And they lived happily ever after. The end.
Using this basic framework will help you tell a story that builds in tension and makes sense to your audience.
4. Create Images in the Listeners’ Minds
When we hear stories, we, at the same time, see and feel the stories inside our imaginations.
This is how they become real to us. You can help your story become real to your listeners by using descriptive language that helps the audience imagine fully what you are saying.
If an author writes, “The room was cold.” You are given a fact, but you don’t really know how cold it is. You don’t really feel the cold yourself. But if an author writes, “The cold air slithered into the room, sending a chill down Walter’s back and breaking his skin out into little bumps.” Now you feel it.
When you are first writing your story/presentation, it’s okay to use simple descriptions just to get all of your ideas down. But as you refine your story, remember to use language to paint a picture that will help your audience hook into the action and feel what your main character is feeling.
Going back to our previous examples, if you are sharing a story about the obstacles you faced starting your business, you might say, “I didn’t have very much money when I was first starting out.”
Or you could get a bit more descriptive, “The first year in business I never paid myself and I ate only bagels and ramen noodles to keep costs down. I also biked everywhere so I could save gas money and put it toward buying a Xerox copier.” The more you can help your audience feel something, the better chance you have at connecting with them.
5. Don’t Try to be Perfect
Perhaps the biggest tip on how to write a compelling story is to not try and be a perfect storyteller. Good characters aren’t perfect, they’re messy. Good stories aren’t perfect, because perfect stories are dull and robotic and void of any humanity.
Don’t set yourself up to look perfect in front of your audience’s eyes. If you do, you will instantly alienate them. Remember, you want to share how you struggled to start your business or raise your children. The audience doesn’t want to hear that you are a perfect parent or an overnight entrepreneurial success. No one will relate to that.
Your goal is to connect and convert the audience into brand fans and ambassadors. To do that, forget being perfect and just be human. Tell human stories full of struggle, mistakes and lessons.
Final Thoughts
There is a mighty big difference between good public speakers and captivating public speakers.
Public speakers know how to write a speech. Captivating public speakers know how to write a compelling story, just like the screenwriters of some of your favourite movies. As a leader, your job is to convey certain information in a way that engages your audience and adds value to their lives.
You can simply share a bunch of facts and hope that 10% of the audience understands what you’re saying, or you can give meaning to those facts by crafting a story and have 70% or even more of the audience forever changed by the knowledge and passion you’ve shared.
Don’t just take our word for it: according to cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, people are 22 times more likely to remember a piece of information when it’s been wrapped in a compelling story.
In fact, widely successful brands like Coca Cola, Nike, Airbnb, and Virgin Group have all been built on the backbone of compelling stories – and most importantly, are led by inspiring leaders who have embraced storytelling as a way to bring their vision to life.
If you use the tips we shared in this blog, you’ll not only know exactly how to craft a compelling story, but you’ll also become a wildly successful presenter that makes a real impact every time you get on a stage or walk in a conference room.
Want even more tips on making both your personal and your brand story captivating and compelling? Follow us on LinkedIn to read the latest news, real stories and advice on all things corporate communication.
LaQuita Cleare and Team CCA
