Last week I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feeds while sipping the steaming hot tea on a chilly winter morning when a story caught my eye.
It was captivating and well-written, but what really intrigued me was the footnote. The author mentioned that she developed the story with the help of a story coach, and if anyone wanted to develop their story, they should DM (direct message) him.
Now, if there is one thing that I have been struggling with for the past three years, is telling stories from everyday life. I am very good at telling other people’s stories. But when it comes to telling stories from my own life, I feel inhibited.
So, I sent him a contact request. He immediately accepted it, and sent me a welcome note.
I was impressed.
I wrote back, telling him that I wanted to improve my storytelling skills. What would he suggest I should do?
He sent me a link to a TED Talk.
I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up.
I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”
“Then consider it official,” he wrote back.
As soon as I got his response, I said to myself, “OMG! What have I done? Am I even equipped to pull it through? In two weeks, I will be traveling. There is no way I could meet the challenge.”
I can go back and tell him that it was a mistake.
Or don’t go back at all. I don’t owe him anything.
But hang on, what will be the price of pulling myself out?
I will not learn storytelling. What’s the big deal?
Hang on. It is a big deal. I want to get better at storytelling. This is my chance. Why not give it a go? Write as many days as I can. Learn as much as I could. I have nothing to lose. Only to gain.
So, this was it.
I published the above story as Story #1. The story got 2760 impressions and 42 likes. I received more than 20 comments.
Since then, I have been writing a story a day. I even created a hashtag #30days30stories. Other people joined in, and we have a nice thread going where people are telling their stories while learning the craft of storytelling.
I have learned more about storytelling in the last week than I did in the past three years.
And it started by putting myself out there.
How to craft a story?
On the very first story, the story coach Dan Manning wrote to me,
“You can make any story better by getting really specific on the moment of change. Here it is in this story:
I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up. I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”
In all of your stories, make sure your audience knows this is THE moment they have been waiting for.
Later I had a Zoom call with him, and we talked about storytelling. He gave me a simple framework to craft my stories.
That framework was a goldmine. Using it, practically any anecdote from everyday life can be converted into a story.
It looks like this:
A story starts with a change. In your anecdote, look where the change is occurring and start building your story from there. Describe what was the situation (or the person) before the change and how it (the situation or person) changed after the change.
If there is no change, there is no story.
Phillip Berry Osborne said:
“Ultimately, the key to personal-experience stories is change. Where our personal lives are concerned, in fact, change is probably the biggest single challenge we all face and share.
That’s why the best personal stories explore our transition in life — if only to encourage us to accept ourselves in some new context or as we’re becoming.
Such transition or change is vital to storytelling since it’s bound up with the overall message that underscores any good story — and yet, too often, writers fail in this one key area of change and, especially, the message that comes out of it.
Another important element of a story is meaning.
Without a message, a story is like an egg without a shell.
Many of us, as writers, neglect this fundamental requirement.
We, humans, love stories because we are looking for meaning in them. Meaning could be as simple as:
- making a decision to do something or not to do something.
- an insight
- a lesson
- an epiphany
- a realization.
Pick those moments in your day and weave your stories around them.
Follow me on LinkedIn, and you can read my stories there.
So want kind of stories can you write?
There are three kinds of stories:
- Stories that motivate you and make you feel focused, and enhance your memory (dopamine generating)
- Stories that make be more generous, trust and bond(Oxytocin generating)
- Stories that make us laugh (Endorphine generating)
Want to learn more about them, watch this TED Talk.
