You've probably heard experts advise you to tell stories in order to open hearts and minds to your ideas or products. But you've probably been left wondering: “How?” If telling stories were all that easy, we’d all be enjoying the success of Stephen King.
Although you can try to master the storyteller craft through his wonderful how-to book On Writing, you don’t need to get that fancy. All you need are these five magical storytelling tricks that I've come up with from my many years of telling stories for organizations:
1. Open with the conflict.
2. Quickly introduce a hero your readers can identify with.
3. Be brief.
4. Have a point.
5. Keep it real.
Open with a conflict
The natural tendency is to start at the beginning of the story or to describe the setting first. Wrong. If you don’t grab readers right away, they will get distracted by some shinier object. You need to open your story with a major conflict, much like those cops shows that start with the murder. As your story unfolds, you can reveal the details and background that your readers need to know in order to appreciate your tale. Don’t think you can side step the conflicts, vulnerabilities, obstacles and problems that drive a plot. There’s little thrill in something good getting better. Dare to be dramatic.
A hero just like me
You need to create a compelling character your readers can relate to. That can mean going beyond sector, demographics and other superficial categories to the hero’s deep pains and passions. The more your reader can identify with the hero, the more likely she is to consider your product as the solution to her problem, the answer to his prayers or the resolution to their conflict. Because your story will likely be quite short, you need to hone in on details that say more. For example, you might want to describe talking to a mother with kids interrupting or a business analyst whose eye lid twitches.
Be brief
You need to respect your readers’ time by keeping your story as brief as possible. You don’t have the hundreds of pages of a novelist or the couple hours of a film maker. Online you have to tell you story in seconds, minutes only if it’s amazing. Think of the stories that work in friendly conversations. Think of your great uncle who drones on and on about the war when one colorful battle scene would captivate you.
Make your point
Chances are you have an objective, whether it’s introducing your services, building respect for your expertise or selling your product. That’s the point of your story. Don’t blow it by making your point too soon, especially if it’s a sales pitch. Because your point flows from the problem you solved or conflict you resolved, you need to deliver it in the conclusion, like the punch line to a joke. Don’t assume people will get your point. Tell them clearly.
Keep it real
Your story will be credible and build trust only if it is true. Otherwise, people will smell the poop right away or figure it out later and turn on you. Remember that advertising agencies spend millions creating characters and situations that the people they want to connect with can relate to. But anyone with a small business or other tight focus probably has lots of true, free stories that will open doors as only a true story can.
Learn more about storytelling and other techniques to connect with people through writing in Barb Sawyers’ book, Write Like You Talk—Only Better, coming soon in print and for e-readers. Read the first chapters here.
Hi Barb - great article! I actually came to copywriting through writing fiction *badly* (or at least, so it seemed to me anyway - I loved writing scenes and description, but I could never come up with plotlines that were complex enough to justify more than a short story!)
As my job started taking on more and more of a marketing flavour, though, I started realising how I could use my love of writing descriptive scenes to tell stories that really got my readers involved. So I've become a fan of using stories whenever and wherever I could - they've really made a difference for me.