Storytelling

---
name: storytelling
description: 'Create and critique marketing narratives, product or project pitches, and personal stories. Use for story structure, hooks, emotional stakes, and memorable endings.'
---

# Storytelling

A story is emotional packaging for a message: events let an audience experience why something matters. Use it to earn attention, make the message memorable, and help people care enough to act.

## Find the spine

Stories work best when they have a clearly defined audience, medium, core message, desired feeling, next action, and are grounded in facts. Optimize for relevant attention, trust, and that call to action. Ask only for missing information that changes the story; for personal narratives, seek a real turning point.

Distill a one-sentence **logline** to guide drafting or critique; show it when useful. Identify whose experience carries it, what they want, what gets in the way, and what changes. A short marketing story may use an audience's familiar situation instead of a named character.

For public-facing copy, make the core claim repeatable in one accurate sentence: what changed and why it matters.

Use supplied events, outcomes, quotes, and metrics. Label invented examples or missing facts as such; keep metaphors distinct from factual claims. Preserve the user's voice and the audience's level of knowledge.

## Useful frameworks

Choose the smallest useful structure; use these patterns / frameworks as guidance, not as mandatory.

| Tool | Apply it |
| --- | --- |
| **SUCCESs** | **Simple:** one core message. **Unexpected:** a meaningful surprise. **Concrete:** a scene or recognizable experience. **Credible:** something believable, with evidence for factual claims. **Emotional:** stakes this audience cares about. **Story:** change through events. |
| **Three acts** | Beginning → middle → end. Practical expansion: establish the situation, develop its conflict, resolve it through a consequential choice or change. |
| **Curiosity gap** | Bridge what the audience knows and wants to know. Give enough context to form a specific question, then pay it off. Keep them curious without making them confused. |
| **But / therefore** | Link beats by complication and consequence. If they connect only through “and then,” find the real tension or causal link. The relationship matters more than the literal conjunction. |
| **Significant moments** | Give the story a felt peak and an ending that lands its meaning. Spend detail where understanding or emotion changes. |

For concrete rewrites, read [source examples](references/source-examples.md), including the workshop's before/after scripts and the launch article's claim/demo examples. Adapt the technique to the audience and voice.

## Starting patterns

Compress or expand for the medium. The marketing pattern adapts the launch article; the others adapt the workshop's frameworks.

- **Marketing:** familiar problem → surprising, supportable claim → visible proof → relevant invitation.
- **Product / project pitch:** audience's current struggle → why existing approaches fall short → your insight → how it changes the outcome → proof → ask.
- **Personal story:** who I was / what I wanted → friction → choice I made → consequence → what I understand or do differently now.
- **Microstory:** “I wanted [X], but [obstacle]. So I [choice], which [consequence]. Now [meaning].”

Make the audience's stakes clear before describing features. Without outcome evidence, show the mechanism and frame the benefit as a hypothesis. Let real difficulty, choices, and consequences establish character; replace résumé chronology and self-praise with a revealing moment. A small, specific change can carry the story.

## Create or critique

**Create:** earn attention in the opening with a relevant question, tension, or surprising possibility. Draft from the logline, build causal beats, and land the promised payoff. End with a next action when the purpose calls for one. Return the requested artifact; keep framework explanations brief unless asked.

**Short product demos:** show the magic moment within the first five seconds: one meaningful result that makes the claim believable. Make it understandable without sound or prior context. Build curiosity about how it works or what becomes possible next.

**Stories across voices:** keep the claim, facts, and proof consistent across trusted narrators; preserve each person's perspective and wording. In a series, each wave should build on the last with fresh evidence or perspective. Genuine audience retellings reveal what landed and can become the next story.

**Critique:** identify the intended message and audience effect. Prioritize the few changes that most improve clarity, stakes, causality, credibility, or payoff. For each, quote the weak passage, explain its effect, and offer a concrete revision grounded in the known facts. Preserve effective lines; rewrite the whole piece when requested.

**Final pass:** Can a newcomer follow and accurately retell the point? Does each beat develop it? Can the audience picture the stakes? Does the ending answer the opening? Is the strongest claim supported? Cut lines that only announce importance or repeat the point.