Shape your story
1. Cut the fluff
Most stories start with 10 minutes of backstory.
Instead, try a “cold open” — jump straight into the action.
Create intrigue then incorporate the backstory later.
Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger did it best. The Joker robbing a bank…
2. Create a hero
Your audience needs a hero to experience the story through.
Common traits from Harry Potter to Bruce Wayne:
— Start as an underdog / orphan
— Overcome their greatest fears
— Helped by mentors
We want characters to succeed but we don’t want success to come easy.
3. Build a world
JK Rowling says: “There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.”
A few tips to create your world:
— Use rituals
— Create shared language
— Define its laws
Storytelling is how you introduce people into the world you’ve built.
4. Layer on the drama.
When you don’t think something can get worse, make it worse.
When your character is facing adversity and their back is against the wall, you have the makings of a great story.
5. Use hooks continuously
The longer your story is, the more hooks you need.
— Cliffhangers
— Agitating the problem
— Unanswered Qs
For his product launches, Steve Jobs ‘agitated the problem’ multiple times throughout.
Here’s him doing it near the end of the iPhone launch:
6. Study your audience
Your story is not for everyone.
Identify your target audience and ask intentional questions.
Brand storytelling Qs:
— How can we get more specific?
— What are the biggest problems our customers are facing?
— What’s their ideal transformation look like?
7. Slow down
Before your story’s climax, pause to force your audience to lean in.
When speaking, stop talking for 3 seconds.
When writing, make your paragraphs longer, add more sensory details, and layer on the drama.
Force your audience to hang on to every word.
8. Use data sparingly but intentionally
If you use too many numbers, none of them matter.
Instead, pick the most impactful and use those to amplify your story.
“Numbers tell, stories sell.”
9. Build to one moment
The entire story should be designed to amplify one moment.
But what is the moment about?
Change — I once was this, but now I’m this.
Here’s Steve Jobs’ one moment at the iPhone launch — “today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
10. Shape your story
Creatives like to avoid structure. But your audience needs it to follow your story.
Luckily there are proven frameworks you can adapt:
— StoryBrand
— Hero’s Journey
— Three Act
Christopher Nolan used this plot for Inception (h/t @Julian):
11. Jeff Bezos said:
“There is no way to write a six-page narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking.”
Here’s the writing framework Bezos uses (that you can too):
Bezos made Amazon into a writing culture by banning powerpoint and forcing everyone to write 6-page memos for meetings.
He called them “narratives.”
Amazon uses a tailored process and specific writing guidelines to make this happen.
Each memo is structured around the same 6 components:
• Intro
• Goals
• Tenets
• Current state
• Lessons learned
• Strategy
Meeting attendees get 20 min to read the doc.
Then they spend the rest of the meeting tearing apart the ideas it presents.
After the meeting, the memo owner makes edits and sends out a final version to all involved parties.
From everything I’ve read, it’s a heck of a task and really is required for all meetings.
To keep it consistent, Amazon uses 7 rules for writing its memos:
Use shorter than 30 words per sentence
Constraints drive clear thinking.
And the best constraints force you to use less words, not more (sorry, school).
If you can explain something in simple terms, you likely understand it well.
Replace adjectives with data
“Customers love Prime.”
“Customers with Prime spend on average 3x more than those without and we retain 90% of them year over year.”
Specificity leads to clear results and quick decision making.
Pass the “so what” test
The reader should immediately know what action you want them to take.
Make sure to answer who, what, and when.
Otherwise, you’ve wasted your time and the reader’s.
Eliminate weasel words
Most weasel words are adverbs.
“Nearly
“Significantly”
These words are imprecise and nobody knows what they mean. Get rid of them.
As Stephen King says, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
Use subject-verb-object sentences
The goal of writing is to transfer your thoughts to another person with as little lost in translation as possible.
It’s a big game of telephone.
The simpler your sentences, the more accurately your ideas will be translated.
Avoid clutter words
Utilize → use
In order to → to
Until such time as → until
Due to the fact → because
Getting rid of clutter focuses your message on the parts that matter.
Avoid jargon and acronyms
Companies are littered with internal jargon.
But this excludes new employees and anyone external to the company.
When wanting to use an acronym, write it out the first time it’s used in any document.
Clear > clever
To me, Amazon’s writing focus does three things:
• Filters for clear thinkers
• Makes knowledge transfer easy
• Eliminates unnecessary meetings
Just imagine how many pointless meetings you’d eliminate if the owner had to write a six page paper.
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