There was a book a number of years ago called Everything I Need, I Learned in Kindergarten or something to that affect. One of the things you do in kindergarten is listening at story time and reading stories. Whether its children or adults, whether it is to inform or to sell, a story must be there or you will lose people. In this era when people are more cynical, a good story will always catch their attention. This leads to the problem where some of the best minds think about data and metrics, but storytelling is a different skill which is not always easy to do.

According to Harvey Schachter’s column in the Globe one writer has tried to make it simpler for managers to tell better stories. Richard Krevolin a screenwriter and professor at UCLA and USC film schools has written a book called The Hook published by Career Press,  Wayne, New Jersey, 2015 in which he outlines how to tell stories.

The basics is a 3 step approach – start by being able to articulate the premise of your story in a single sentence. The second step is answering 7 questions and final step is the outline.

The 7 questions are:

Who is your main character?   –  the hero should be the user

What does you main character need/want/desire? –  the dramatic problem

Who or what keeps him from achieving what he wants?  – who or what is the antagonist

How does he achieve what he wants?  –  how does the process work

What are you trying to say by ending the story in this way?  – what are your themes and motives

How do you want to tell your story?   what will be the narrative device  – this is a critical decision for how you tell will change everything.

How do your characters change? –  this is what makes the story credible

The 3rd step is the outline and it has 4 possibilities:

Origin stories – this is the simplest approach – the beginning of the product or service.

Mission/values stories –  from the mission/values of the company’s statement of values

Knowledge sharing – move from bullet points to a story that happens to share information

Brand/vision myth – told to inspire or create myths. Keep it believable.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, all companies try to sell their story to investors. How much you are accepting of them is the reason why you might buy their shares. There are many alternatives and if you hear and read a good story you will begin to put the company on your watch list. One method to do stories better is simply ask people to tell you a story when they ask you for advice.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.