Thanks to the wonders of our shoe maker and his missing elves, we know how wonderful it is to tell stories about you, your business and the things that make you special. But what if you’re no JK Rowling or Stephen King? Can anyone learn how to tell a great story? Let’s find out.
Before you do anything else, turn off the edit pen in your head. You are not allowed to hit delete for the next 15 minutes. Seriously. Delete, backspace, Ctrl+X? All off limits.
Now, ask your lovely brain some questions. What do you do? How do you do it? Who do you do it with? How long have you been doing it? Who have you gotten to know whilst doing it?
Write it all down. Nothing is off limits. Every single thing you write is a potential story waiting to be told. And what do stories make? Customers falling over themselves to work with you, buy from you and tell the world how amazing you are.
This next step is probably the most important part of the story telling process. You’ve just produced a mind map of your business, the skeleton that holds this whole story together. Now is the time to get some flesh on that bony old body of yours.
If you want to tell a great story, you’ve got to get out and live a little. I’m not suggesting you have to suddenly transform into Mr Stringfellow or Lady Gaga in order to crack this gig. You can tell a wonderful, heart-warming story from the side of a busy city street on a Monday afternoon.
Just start living your life with your eyes and ears open. When something tickles your imagination, make it a habit to always write that stuff down. Same rules apply. Turn off the edit pen. You may not use that little gem for another six months but keep everything.
Thanks to the wonders of technology and snazzy little smart phones, there’s no reason why you need ever be caught short again. Haven’t got paper and pen? Record a voice message on your phone. Draft yourself a text message (you don’t need to send it. Just hit ‘save’ when you’re done.) If you have a phone with a note feature you really have no excuses.
I’ll say it again: Record and keep everything. If it tickles you, it will tickle someone else.
OK, so you have a brain dump of all the stuff about your business. You have a littering of anecdotes, happenings and musings that tickled your fancy. Now is the time to mix them all together in the pot and out will pop your beautifully crafted tale.
This is the bit where the real magic starts to happen but you’re going to need to be patient. Have a look at your two collections and see what makes you sit up and pay attention. You’re looking for inklings of happenings that hold the two halves together.
Any one of the amazing things that you wrote down in your notebook has the makings of a wonderful story about your business. The trick is to not force the story.
Allow your wonderful mind to play around with the possibilities and it will work its magic. When it does, be sure to get that story down as swiftly as you can. Again, don’t edit as your write. Just let the story out and then go back and check for typos.
When you’ve finished writing your story, give it a quick read though and change any obvious errors. Get it to the point where you think it’s pretty much all great. Now, read it again but this time, read it out loud. Take your time. Don’t speed read. Just allow the words to trip off your tongue (and take time to re-phrase the words that don’t!)
And finally, having got your story to the point where you believe it is finished and ready to be published, put it to bed for 24 hours then go back and re-read it. You will find at least one thing to change. What happens during that magic 24 hours I don’t know but it works. Poor phrasing is illuminated. Excess words are trimmed. Think I’m kidding? This post was over 1200 words on the first draft! See? The magic is in the edit.
Follow these 5 steps to story telling heaven and then come back and slip us a link to your post so we can all enjoy your magic.
Step 4 for sure. But I post my stuff right away never wait longer. Unless I have written up a lot of stuff and am going to be busy soon
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Wait 24 hours – is the most important rule.
I always do that
For me the best advice is to sleep on it and in 24 hours go back and then edit as we can think we have written an amazing post (especially late at night!) then when we re-read it it isn't so great after all.
I was just watering my Mum's plants for her as she loves her garden and is ill at the moment, and I started thinking about a new blog post. I usually come inside and start writing my thoughts down in a Word document. Somehow the words seem to flow easier if I am typing them.
Patricia Perth Australia
I love the honesty you have to face by not deleting anything for the first 15 minutes! It's like a window into your brain, see whats REALLY going on. Also reading a loud is a good way to spot mistakes.
I absolutely agree,.You should take a lot of focus,.do not write just for the sake of having a post but you should take consideration if your writings are valuables:)
I really liked the tip of actually waiting some time before publishing an article and re-reading it meanwhile. Doing so will make you more like a visitor who's reading, which can help you spot grammar and structural errors more easily. I have used the same approach at school, but never thought of applying it to blogging. Thanks for sharing!
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I find some of the tips you are sharing here are what I do every day
I find it really hard to tell a story if I type and edit what I just type. It takes hours to finish a post! And I'm not mentioning about the poor quality because my idea is scattered when I go back and forth editing the article. So, great tips, I could say.
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Thanks for sharing the secrets on how to tell great stories in the business. Definitely, everyone has a story to tell+ Everyday life has different episodes, some amusing, some that are something to learn about. Surely these are effective in communication.
I think I received more information out of this one post than I have in all the books on "writing good copy" and other books that I have laying around the house. Simple and precise information. I have done the 24 hour wait and see, and what you say is true… my posts will get cut back to several hundred words sometimes. Thanks so much for this info. I'm going to copy this post and keep it in one of my notebooks for future reference. Excellent article… jj
A good idea is to always sleep over it. I usually start articles, then leave them for a couple of days, and look at them again. I'll usually correct and add some things, which increases the article quality.