#117 Every Storyteller’s Struggle
Finding Clarity in Your Communications
The stakes in storytelling are high. Especially if it’s a personal story or is your career story and your next job opportunity relies on it, or the future of your business. The right story could change your life. But first you must share it. In this note I’m going to share with you my process for bringing to life a story. It’s a simplified version of what I walk people through in my courses.
Because as I continue to build my business and work with more entrepreneurs and creatives, I’ve found a common thread among them that makes storytelling that much more of a powerful tool for them. A lack of clarity. That’s right, not knowing what to say. Or how to say it.
You’ve got a great story, an amazing product, a career trajectory that would impress even Bozoma Saint John. But you stumble or fall short every time you go to tell someone about it. You say the wrong thing or it doesn’t feel compelling, or there’s just too many parts to it and you don’t know where to start. You know you’ve got a great offering but can’t quite put the words together in a pitch or on your website to convince anyone else or enough of the right people.
Which is what makes this approach so valuable (IMHO). Because clarity is what the right approach to storytelling can bring. You don’t just blurt it all out and hope something will resonate (trust me, I’ve tried that approach, it doesn’t work). It takes a bit of thinking and organizing and self-discovery. For you to be honest, to communicate your business offering, career story, or life story.
So I won’t sugar coat it and pretend it’s simple. But if you take the time required and follow these five steps you’ll be in a better place than most folks when it comes to sharing your story with the world in a clear and compelling way.
Five Steps to Clarity in Your Stories
I’ve shared these first three before.
1. Establish Your Foundations. This is all about you. Understanding your context, grounding in your Purpose and getting super clear on those things. This is the work before the real story work begins.
2. Define Your Story Elements. This is when you focus away from you and on to your story. This is about getting clear on your hero and your audience, defining your point of view, identifying the problem at the heart of your story that needs to be solved, and defining the key moments to share in your story (plot points)
3. Craft Your Story. This is getting down to stringing the words or images or elements of your story together. I have shared a framework in the past that can help with that.
These next two are new to this newsletter.
4. Elevate your story. Don’t forget that the first version of your story is often messy and a little ugly and that’s a good thing. Because that means you have it out of you and onto paper or screen now get to dive in to making it better through feedback and editing—this is where the real work of story development begins.
5. Share. The final step is choosing where to begin to bring your story to life in the world. And then actually doing it. This is the step most people jump to without doing the other things first and its why so many stories go unnoticed when they do make it out into the world.
The reason this process is so long (relative to just writing or crafting your story and putting out in the world) is because it takes into account the elements that matter most from the beginning and organizes all the amazing elements of your story so it can be shared coherently and consistently. And it leaves you clear on what elements of your story are the most compelling and need to be shared.
What do you think? I know I didn’t share the steps within the steps, that’s because it takes a whole course to do, but this should give you the foundational insight to get started on your own. If you have questions you can always reach out in the comments or reply to the email.
Now, I’d love to hear from you. I’m working on developing a new storytelling bootcamp course and would love to hear from you! What type of five-day bootcamp-style course would YOU be most interested in? Can you answer this quick (2-question) survey to help me decide? I’d love to do them all but there is only one of me.
A Story Well Told
Like so many other folks, I started From Scratch on Netflix and it left me in a puddle of tears and feelings of bittersweet. If you’re in the mood for a good cry, a sweet love story based on real life experiences, and just a lovely story of a life lived–I’d recommend you dive in. It’s an eight-part mini series and each episode is an hour long so lots of delicious storytelling to soak up. Who doesn’t love a love story? Especially one that starts in Italy?
Chantaie Allick
Writer|Strategist|Storyteller
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