Last week I told you that great communicators tell stories. How, you may ask, does one create a great story?? Thank heavens for the Internets! When I’m helping clients develop stories, we look at these three well known models.
First – the classic – Fairytale Story Structure
- Problem: What’s going wrong?
- Good and evil: Who’s obstructing, who’s constructing?
- Magical elements: People, animals, objects, or technologies!
- Happy Ending: Resolution of the problem
- Moral or Lesson: Reinforces our values
Second – The Silicon Valley-style story structure from a great Hubspot post:
- Setup – the why: Use story to introduce characters; set audience expectation on what they’ll get and why they should care
- Confrontation – the how: Detail the problem (the villain) and the solution (the hero); support with data, examples
- Resolution – the what: Resolve the conflict; end with hope and a call to action
Third – the beloved Pixar story structure – elucidated in a great piece on Pixar’s 22 story rules:
- Once upon a time . . . (introduce the world and the characters)
- Every day. . . (daily life is smooth and lovely)
- One day . . . (change happens!)
- Because of that . . . (more change happens! Crisis!)
- Because of that . . . (crisis!)
- Until finally . . . resolution, in a new way, in a new place
And if you’d really like to go deep with storytelling – Jay Golden is one of the great storytelling experts we have. Soak up his wisdom here.
Go forth and create great stories! You have more to share than you realize!
