Storytelling GYM #4
You get better at storytelling not by studying theories, but by telling stories.
#1
Every story can end in three sentences:
First sentence: the beginning.
Second: the pivot moment.
Third: the transformation.
But what keeps readers glued to the story?
It’s the roadblock before the transformation.
And conflict means nothing without stakes.
If your main character doesn’t face any consequences for doing something wrong, it’s hard for readers to invest emotionally in the story.
Now you know why a story like “My Iced Americano” doesn’t land.
Because it has no stakes.
No stakes → no tension.
No tension → no attention.
So, what kind of conflict is the most powerful?
A life-threatening event.
And here’s an example.
Story #1 by Greg McKeown
Let me tell you the story of Patrick McGinnis.
He had done all the things he was supposed to do.
He had checked all the boxes.
He graduated from Georgetown University.
Then from Harvard Business School.
He joined the ranks of a top finance and insurance company.
He put in the long workdays he felt were expected of him—eighty hours per week, even on vacations and holidays.
He never left the office before his boss; sometimes, it felt as though he never left the office at all.
He traveled so much for work that he earned the highest frequent flier status on Delta—a level so high it didn’t even have a name.
Meanwhile, he served on the boards of four companies across three continents.
Once, when he refused to stay home sick, he had to leave a board meeting three times to throw up in the bathroom.
When he returned, a colleague said he looked green.
Still, he powered through.
He had been taught that hard work is the key to everything you want in life. It was part of the New England mindset: your work ethic is evidence of your character.
And ever the overachiever, he took this to the next level.
He didn’t just believe working endless hours would lead to success—he believed it was success.
If you didn’t stay late at work, you must not have a very important job. He assumed that in the end, his long hours would pay off.
Then one day, he woke up to find himself working for a bankrupt company. That company was AIG.
The year was 2008. His stock had fallen 97 percent.
All the late nights at the office, all the countless red-eye flights to Europe, South America, and China, all the missed birthdays and celebrations—had been for nothing.
In the months after the financial crisis hit, McGinnis couldn’t get out of bed. He started having night sweats.
His vision blurred—both literally and figuratively.
He couldn’t see clearly for months.
He was floundering. Lost. He was sick with stress.
His doctor ran some tests.
He felt like Boxer the Horse from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the farm’s most dedicated laborer whose answer to every problem was, “I will work harder”—until he collapsed from overwork and was sent to the knackers’ yard.
So on the cab ride back from the doctor’s office, McGinnis made what he called “a bargain with God.”
He promised, “If I survive this, then I will really make some changes.”
“Working longer and harder had been the solution to every problem,” McGinnis said.
But suddenly, he realized, “The marginal return of working harder was, in fact, negative.”
So what could he do?
He had three options:
Carry on and likely work himself to death.
Aim lower and give up on his goals.
Find an easier way to achieve the success he wanted.
He chose the third option.
He stepped down from his role at AIG but stayed on as a consultant. He stopped working eighty-hour weeks.
He started going home at five.
He no longer emailed on the weekends.
He stopped treating sleep like a necessary evil.
He started walking, running, and eating better.
He lost twenty-five pounds. He started enjoying his life—and his work—again.
Around this time, he was inspired by a friend who was investing in startups. Not with huge checks—just small investments here and there. It piqued Patrick’s interest. He invested in a couple of companies. He now has a twenty-five-fold return on his portfolio.
Even during tough economic times, he’s felt optimistic about his finances because he isn’t dependent on a single source of income. He’s made more money working half the hours he used to. And the type of work he’s doing is more rewarding, less intrusive.
“It doesn’t even feel like work anymore,” he said.
What he learned from this experience was this:
When you simply can’t try any harder, it’s time to find a different path.
What about you? Do you ever feel like:
You’re running faster but not moving any closer to your goals?
You want to make a higher contribution but lack the energy?
You’re teetering on the edge of burnout?
Everything feels so much harder than it ought to be?
If you answered yes to any (or all) of these, this book is for you.
These people are disciplined and focused. They’re engaged and motivated. And yet, they are utterly exhausted.
#2
Have you ever had a story that helped you get unstuck from a problem?
I have.
Every time I feel stuck with creativity problems, I retell myself this one story.
That’s the power of the stories we tell ourselves:
They compress all the information we need.
They encourage us.
They help us push through challenges.
Wanna know what mine is?
Here it is.
Story #2 by Jonah Berger
Tom Dickson was looking for a new job.
Born in San Francisco, he was led by his Mormon faith to attend school at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, where he graduated in 1971 with a degree in engineering.
He moved home after graduation, but the job market was tough and there weren't many opportunities.
The only position he could find was at a company making birth control and intrauterine devices.
These devices helped prevent pregnancy, but they could also be seen as abortives, which went against Tom's Mormon beliefs.
A Mormon helping to develop new methods of birth control? It was time to find something new.
Tom had always been interested in bread making. While practicing his hobby, he noticed that there were no good cheap home grinders with which to make flour.
So Tom put his engineering skills to work.
After playing around with a ten-dollar vacuum motor, he cobbled together something that milled finer flour at a cheaper price than anything currently on the market.
The grinder was so good that Tom started producing it on a larger scale. The business did reasonably well, and playing around with different methods of processing food got him interested in more general blenders.
Soon he moved back to Utah to start his own blender company. In 1995, he produced his first home blender, and in 1999, Blendtec was founded.
But although the product was great, no one really knew about it. Awareness was low. So in 2006, Tom hired George Wright, another BYU alum, as his marketing director.
Later, George would joke that the marketing budget at his prior company was greater than all of Blendtec's revenues.
On one of his first days on the job, George noticed a pile of sawdust on the floor of the manufacturing plant. Given that no construction was in progress, George was puzzled. What was going on?
It turned out that Tom was in the factory doing what he did every day: trying to break blenders. To test the durability and power of Blendtec blenders, Tom would cram two-by-two boards, among other objects, into the blenders and turn them on—hence the sawdust.
George had an idea that would make Tom's blender famous.
With a meager fifty-dollar budget (not fifty million or even fifty thousand), George went out and bought marbles, golf balls, and a rake.
He also purchased a white lab coat for Tom, just like what a laboratory scientist would wear. Then he put Tom and a blender in front of a camera.
George asked Tom to do exactly what he had done with the two-by-twos: see if they would blend.
Imagine taking a handful of marbles and tossing them into your home blender.
Not the cheap kind of marbles made of plastic or clay, but the real ones. The half-inch orbs made out of solid glass. So strong that they could withstand a car driving over them.
That is exactly what Tom did. He dropped fifty glass marbles in one of his blenders and hit the button for slow churn.
The marbles bounced furiously around the blender, making rat-tat-tat noises like a hailstorm on the roof of a car.
Tom waited fifteen seconds and then stopped the blender. He cautiously lifted the top as white smoke poured out: glass dust.
All that was left of the marbles was a fine powder that looked like flour. Rather than cracking from the punishment, the blender had flexed its muscles.
Golf balls were pulverized, and the rake was reduced to a pile of slivers. George posted the videos on YouTube and crossed his fingers.
His intuition was right. People were amazed.
They loved the videos. They were surprised at the blender's power and called it everything from "insanely awesome" to "the ultimate blender."
Some couldn't even believe that what they were seeing was possible.
Others wondered what else the blender could pulverize. Computer hard drives? A samurai sword?
In the first week, the videos racked up 6 million views. Tom and George had hit a viral home run.
Tom went on to blend everything from Bic lighters to Nintendo Wii controllers.
He's tried glow sticks, Justin Bieber CDs, and even an iPhone.
Not only did Blendtec blenders demolish all these objects, but their video series, titled Will It Blend?, received more than 300 million views.
Within two years, the campaign increased retail blender sales 700 percent.
All from videos made for less than a few hundred dollars apiece.
And for a product that seemed anything but word-of-mouth worthy.
A regular, boring old blender.
#3
It’s easy to tell a story.
It’s hard to make that story compelling.
But Dave Chappelle always nails it.
He makes every story vivid.
How?
He’s mastered:
How to use dialogue
How to frame the story
How to write a punchline
And here are some of his best examples.
Story #3 by Dave Chappelle
I know what it's like to have a cold house. I wasn't allowed to touch the thermostat growing up without asking my father, and it would be freezing in the house.
I'd be like, "Dad, please, can I please just turn the heat up to like, I don't know, 32?
N***a, it's really cold!"
And my dad would say, "Just put more clothes on, David."
I'd be like, "Got all three of my outfits on, n***a! Well, you look at me, I'm freezing up here!"
And he said, "Just don't think about how cold you are, David."
I didn't say it to him, but I said it in front of him so he could hear.
I said, "I fucking hate being poor!" And my dad got really upset.
He didn't scream or holler; that wasn't his way.
He just threw his newspaper on the floor and he said, "David, David, David, you are not poor."
He said, "It's a mentality that very few people ever recover from.
Don't you forget it, son, you are broke."
3 Storytelling Prompts
Tell one story about a life-threatening event—either yours or someone close to you—and how it changed your life.
Tell one story that helped you get unstuck.
Tell one childhood memory using dialogue-based storytelling.
I really enjoyed the AIG story. Thanks for the reminder on the power of the first sentence. Great prompts!