Tell the Story

Tiffani was working on an outline for a story and struggling a little. I hate to see people struggle in the outline because it is the easiest place to find and fix problems! So I asked her to try a storytelling trick: To tell the story, like we tell people about stories - as you’d tell your friend about a movie you just saw. Summing up all the high points and cool points, without quoting every line of dialog and without getting too deep into the weeds.

Naturally she killed it; and it was very illuminating seeing the story told in this fashion. We tell other people stories like this all the time in real life - hey, there’s this book you should read or this movie you should watch, and it’s about this guy and he has a dog and these goons break into his house and - you get the idea. Most of us instinctively break a story down to the key elements without even thinking about it - protagonist, their problem, and what escalating risks they take in order to tackle the opposition to the problem.

Using this tool is also great if you don’t have the ending quite worked out yet, because you’ll get to the end of the story way quicker than you would with just writing, and with more soul that you would if it was just an outline sentence on a 3x5 card. And even better, you can tell people the story because you’ve made it a little story in a tell-able format.

So, next time you’re working on something new and you’re not sure where it goes or if the outline really sings or if it needs a little extra something - try to just tell the story, like we tell people about stories.