Stop at the end.

We’ve all enjoyed a movie only to suffer through a superfluous wind-down. Be quick about it.

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https://www.speakeasymedia.tv

With the exception of tweets, your shortest stories will probably be summaries of experience on your corporate website or qualifications package. 

In these contexts you’re relating a single contract or type of experience in less than a page, with space reserved for pictures or graphics. 

I find project write-ups to be the most challenging format for short stories.

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https://www.speakeasymedia.tv

Getting to the point is timeless advice, more so in our era of flittering attention. 

Is the story about planning a new park? 

Start with the kids playing soccer at the edge of a grocery store parking lot. Open well and you’re halfway there. 

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https://www.speakeasymedia.tv

You’ve got an idea for a plot. Now what? 

Every story has a method of narration. 

A project description for a procurement your office is issuing, a proposal for your firm to build a hydroelectric dam, an About Us page on your website, a bike share case study for a webinar -- each of these has a point of view.

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https://www.speakeasymedia.tv

I have some encouraging news after teaching thousands of people like you in dozens of courses, workshops, and webinars. 

Few people in your industry are putting storytelling into practice. You may feel like you’re the last to learn a new skill, but you can make an immediate impression.

Clients will turn away from the piles of industry mediocrity and fix their gaze on you.

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https://www.speakeasymedia.tv

Scott Adams is the brilliant creator of Dilbert. Besides his work on the painfully true comic strip, he's written a lot about persuasion.

One of the concepts he talks about quite a bit is the observation that two different people can watch the exact same thing at the same time and draw opposite conclusions. 

One screen playing two movies.

Here's how that applies to your marketing and storytelling.

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https://www.AndyBoenau.com

Someone asked me recently if I had any advice for people who work in advocacy. I said Write, Publish, Repeat.

Doesn’t matter if you feel unqualified or out of your element. Write. Publish. Repeat.

Maybe it sounds like aspirational advice, but I have practical motives for sharing it.

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https://www.AndyBoenau.com

In the last episode I told you one of my favorite quotes:

One way to change the stories is to get out of a defensive posture. Avoid the point-counterpoint stories. Any boring politician or statistician can do that, and it persuades no one. 

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https://www.AndyBoenau.com

One of my favorite quotes is from a writer named Michael Margolis: “If you want to learn about a culture, listen to their stories. If you want to change a culture, change the stories.” 

Thousands of books have been written about how to write. You could spend the rest of your days on earth learning about story formats, language, sentence structure, and so on. 

But I want to give you an easy way to get started. 

Storytelling in 3 words: Hero. Conflict. Resolution. 

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https://www.AndyBoenau.com

Pie charts, line graphs, and bar charts are only as good as the tweetable caption. 

Tell bold stories with your data.

I promise you there's a way, no matter how boring you think the topic is.

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https://www.AndyBoenau.com