Storytelling GYM #5
You get better at storytelling not by studying theories, but by telling stories.
#1
Most people believe that writing a great story has to be fancy, like Harry Potter.
But the reality?
A great story is just raw conversation.
How do you write a simple but killer story?
You only need two things:
Use dialogue.
Narrate the scene.
Then bring your readers through:
Act 1: The beginning.
Act 2: The pivot.
Act 3: The transformation.
That’s it.
Just these two patterns, and you can become a storytelling king.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s an example.
Story #1 by Russel Brunson
"Russell, are you a smoker?"
"What?" I responded."No, I've never smoked in my life ... why do you ask?"
"Well, I noticed that your teeth are turning a little yellow, and I wasn't sure if you were a smoker ... or maybe you drink coffee?"
"No, I don't drink coffee either ...," I said."My teeth look that yellow!?"
Those were the first words my new dentist said to me about 10 minutes into our first appointment.
When I started my new business a few years earlier, my wife and I had no insurance of any kind.
I was just hustling to sell things online to try and put food on the table.
Then about four or five years into my business, I started hiring employees.What I didn't realize when I first hired them was most "real" companies give their employees benefits.
Because I had never had a real job before, I wasn't really sure what benefits were(besides hanging out with me all day, which I assumed was the best benefit ever!).
No, they wanted health insurance and dental insurance.
So I decided to cave and get them all a benefits package.
Within days of getting our new dental insurance, I got a postcard in the mail offering a free teeth cleaning.
Sweet. We've got insurance. It's a free cleaning. I'm in.
And that's where it all started...
Within minutes, the dentist commented on my "yellow" teeth.
“No, I don't drink coffee or smoke.”
“Are they really yellow?”
"Yeah, they are. But don't worry. If you want, I can go out back and make some custom teeth-whitening trays for you. You'll have to use them for a few weeks, but if you follow the system, your teeth will be white again."
Well, I'm sure you know what my response was...
“Yes, please. I don't want yellow teeth.”
The dentist kept working on my teeth, and a little while later, he said:"So, did you have braces when you were a kid?"
"Yeah, I did. How can you tell?"
"Well, your two bottom teeth are shifting again, and that usually happens to people who had braces."
My teeth are shifting? Seriously? What can you do about that?
"Well, if you want, I can build a retainer for you, which will help keep your teeth in place."
“Yes, please.”
When I walked into the dentist office that morning, I had come in for a free teeth cleaning.And in less than an hour, I walked out paying over two thousand dollars for my whitening kit and my new retainers.
This dentist had strategically taken me through a powerful process that I call a Value Ladder.
#2
It’s hard to convince other people using only your own story.
Sometimes people think you’re not telling a story. They think you’re bragging.
The solution?
Leverage other people’s stories.
How?
Tell their stories and link them to your personal story.
This is a simple writing playbook but it is really effective.
Why?
Because you give readers two stories.
Someone else’s story to convince them and your story to confirm it.
Story #2 by Jeff Goins
In the 1930s, the streets of Japanese cities were overtaken by a group of artists who sold candy and performed picture-based plays for children.
At the height of this phenomenon, there were 2,500 vendors called kamishibaiya in Tokyo alone. Each performed up to ten times per day for as many as thirty children. That’s over a million kids watching every single day.
For artists who might have been unemployed during a depressed economy, it was a lifeline.
This mobile, candy-selling form of theater was called kamishibai.
It means "street theater using painted illustrations."
The artists traveled from town to town by bike. A miniature wooden stage was mounted on the back. They would stop at a corner, bang two wooden sticks together, and yell out:
Kamishibai! Kamishibai!
Kids came running.
If they had money, they could buy candy from the back of the bike and get a front-row seat.
The candy paid the bills. The storytelling was the art.
The storyboards were part of a business. Dealers would commission and rent artwork to the storytellers for a fee. Some kamishibaiya created their own art. Others relied on these dealers.
The process looked like this.
First, the artist would sketch with pencil. Then they’d go over the lines with a thick brush and India ink. Next, they added watercolor to show background and foreground. After that, they brushed on tempura paint. At the end, they applied lacquer to give it a glossy finish and protect it from the weather.
Kamishibai characters often had oversized eyes and high contrast between light and dark. This helped the story pop, even for kids sitting in the back row.
Each show had three stories. Each story lasted about ten minutes. The storyteller would act out the scenes while a picture sat inside the frame of the little stage.
As the story moved forward, they would pull out one picture and slide in the next.
The final story always ended on a cliffhanger. That way, the kids would want to come back tomorrow.
This form of street theater faded away when television arrived in 1952. But the storytellers didn’t disappear. And neither did the art.
Many of those same artists helped create something new. It was called manga.
Today, manga is a global billion-dollar industry. And kamishibai is being revived at festivals and fairs around the world.
The spirit of kamishibai still lives on. You can see it in comics. In animation. In every story told with pictures and heart.
Walt Disney once said, “I don’t make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures.”
That’s what most of us want. Not to get rich from our work. But to earn enough to keep going. To create what matters. To have time and freedom.
When I became a full-time writer, I knew I couldn’t rely on books alone. I had friends who were authors. I heard their horror stories.
So I taught my craft. Just like Lewis Hyde talked about.
That turned into an online business. That business gave me what I needed. The freedom to write without pressure. The ability to say no without guilt.
Even today, I still follow that model.
Your art can help you build the life you want. And you don’t have to deliver pizzas to survive.
For the kamishibaiya, candy paid for the art.
No candy meant no show. No audience. No storytelling.
The business side made the creative side possible.
And that little street corner theater helped launch a genre that’s still thriving today.
#3
This story can teach you two lessons.
First,
People don’t want to listen to your yesterday’s dinner story.
If they do, the only reason is that they’re being polite.
But what kind of story are people actually willing to listen to?
It’s a story that relates to them.
And this story relates to most people,
because most people work hard and get no results.
Second,
A story is one thing, but how you tell it is another.
How do you make it lively?
Use dialogue to make it feel raw.
Make the scene vivid to make the story less abstract and more concrete.
Add characters worth rooting for — in this case, someone working hard, 60 hours a week.
Use simple language to make it feel like you’re speaking to friends.
Tell Act 1 fast, keep playing Act 2, and write a clear Act 3.
Good news: this story does all five of these things.
Story #3 Jeremy Miner
I got started in selling 22 years ago, a broke, burned-out college student, and I got my first job selling home security systems door to door.
Most door-to-door companies back then hired on straight commission, pretty much hiring everyone, giving them a script, a couple of books by sales gurus, and then driving them out in a van.
They’d kick you out of the van and say:
Hey, go make some sales. It’s going to be easy. We’ll pick you up after dark.
My sales manager, Exan, gave me advice:
When you knock on the door, show them how excited you are about the product. Show them you believe in it. Be enthusiastic — they’re going to believe it if you do.
I thought that made sense: if I showed excitement and belief, they’d magically believe too.
I started knocking on doors, excited.
Talking about features, benefits.
Saying we were the best this, number one that, with the best quality and service.
But right from the first door, I started hearing objections:
We don’t need it.
We can’t afford it.Your price is too high.
I need to talk with my spouse.
I’ll call you back.
After seven or eight weeks of nonstop rejection, I thought,This is not very fun.
I remember working 12 hours one day and making zero sales.
That whole week, I worked 60-plus hours and made zero sales.
I started feeling pretty defeated as a human being.And I thought to myself,Maybe selling just wasn’t for me.
One day, my manager picked me up and popped in a Tony Robbins CD.
Tony said:You will fail for one simple reason — you haven’t learned the right skills necessary to succeed.
He explained that everyone is taught some skills, but most people fail because they haven’t been taught the right ones.
There are levels to skill.
For the first time, I realized maybe the skills I was learning from the company — and from old-school sales gurus — were just outdated.
Or not the right ones at all.
That day, I committed to myself:I’m going to figure this out.
I’m going to learn how to do this properly. I need to develop the right skills.
Even when I used the traditional selling skills that sometimes worked, I noticed a pattern.
A lot of the time, they’d actually cause me to lose the sale.
When I was more assumptive, prospects shut down.
They got defensive.
They gave more objections.
I found myself chasing and begging them to fix their problems.
And when I asked questions, I got vague, surface-level answers.
At the same time, I was in college, majoring in Behavioral Science and human psychology.
Behavioral Science is about how people make decisions — how the brain really works.
My professors, including Robert Cialdini, were teaching that the most persuasive way to communicate looked nothing likewhat the sales gurus were teaching.
So I hit a wall:
How do I take everything I’m learning about the brain, behavior, and decision-making... and
build that into a step-by-step sales structure?
That structure didn’t exist at the time.
I started developing my own questions and techniques — ones that worked with human behavior.
I shifted my tone.
I lowered buyer resistance.
I stopped pushing.
Instead, I focused on getting the prospect to do the work.
Instead of me selling them...They started selling themselves.
They persuaded themselves.
They overcame their own objections.
They pulled me in, instead of me chasing them.
Suddenly, selling became easy.
Exceptionally profitable.
Almost overnight.
3 Storytelling Prompts
Tell a story using only dialogue and narrate the scene.
Imagine one person and one message you want to share. Then craft the story using these tactics: start with someone else’s story to convince, and tell your story to confirm.
Tell a story about your dentist experience.
Happy storytelling.
Ron (your silly cat)
P.S.
Storytelling is one thing, showing up is another.
I know showing up is hard. Talking to the void is not fun.
Writing and feeling like no one cares is the pain that makes most people quit.
Now, I’m creating a “21 Days Writing Challenge.”
The name of it?
You vs Yourself.
If you feel showing up is intimidating, this challenge is for you.
Talk soon.
How do you find such stories to share breakdown?