What’s a Story? What’s a Good Story? What’s a Great Story?

 

Articulating pain, followed by a few features, and then a value statement is not a compelling story: it is simply an advantage or benefit statement. 

 

That’s like saying a human needs to move, and a few leg bones and muscles provide the ability, enabling people to cross a street. Boring and insufficient. 

 

There needs to be more to make it a compelling, resonating story that gets remembered and retold.

 

Chip and Dan Heath in their seminal work on storytelling, “Made to Stick,” identified five key attributes to make a story successfully sticky:

 

Simple Message:         The concept or message needs to be clear and easy to understand

Real Experience:         It must be believable and perceived as being true 

Element of Surprise:   An unexpected twist, event or outcome generates interest and tension

Evokes Emotion:          The best stories are those that generate an emotional response 

Relevant:                     Good stories relate directly to the subject or key point

 

The “pain, features, value” structure may satisfy three of these five, but ignore two. 

 

Is there an element of surprise? Nope.

 

Does that structure evoke an emotional response? Hardly.

 

Triggering our emotions is what makes a story great and memorable. For example:

 

   Empathy: “I’ve also been in this position!”

            Shock: “OMG – that’s terrible!”

            Surprise: “Oh no! What happened next?”

            Humorous: “Well, that’s sad, but also very funny!”

            Cleverness: “Oh wow, that’s a really elegant solution!”

 

Evaluate the stories you use – how many of these five attributes do they communicate?

 

Let’s take storytelling up a level or two!