STORYTELLING PROTOTYPE
At this point you have your blueprint, that’s your brief, your big idea and a rough sense of how you would like to bring your story to life. Now you're ready to build the basic infrastructure so you can give your story what it needs to stand on it’s own.
Single idea to a polished story...
Time Out! How can you go from a single idea to a final and polished story? The short answer is you just get started, get your pen to paper. Draft up something and then re-tell it in other ways for different audiences, gather feedback and use that to make your next draft even better.
Tap into your be brave mindset, every time you tell your story you will get better at it, and you will have the chance to hear what other people think about what you have to say, which will help you make your point stronger and clearer with every revision.
We call this prototyping, it’s how we get from ideas to action. You can build prototypes out of sticky notes, build apps. out of paper and foam board or even mobile food serving stations out of old clothes rails.
Trying things out in low risk, low fidelity ways is one of the easiest methods of getting to the great, pressure tested solutions. So you can prototype just about everything you do, products, services, brands, experiences and stories.
The three steps of prototyping are build, share and reflect and these are the same steps for prototyping a story.
Build: build a first draft, it’s important to just get started, write a draft even if it’s rough, you need something to share with others. Get beyond your nerves, be brave and don’t worry about failing, embrace ‘fail early to succeed sooner’.
Share: share it with others, when you set out to craft a story you need to realize that it is probably going to go through a ton of drafts before it reaches your final audience. This can be a scary thought, but you need to learn to get over it, the more you share your story, the better it becomes and the more confident you become telling it.
Sharing your story is not only about feedback, it is also a great way to bring others on-board, what ever it is you want to achieve will always be more fun and more impactful when you have other passionate people alongside you working towards the same goal.
Reflect: reflect on what you have learned, receiving feedback can be tough, it can feel personal, but every bit of feedback you get is in service of making your story better. It doesn’t mean you need to incorporate every bit of it.
REMEMBER: Don’t try and get it all perfect, or get the whole thing done at once then ask for feedback an hour before you are set to tell your story. Sleep on it, give it plenty of time to breath, grow and change for the better.
Ways to prototype and build your story...
The following are three low-risk ways to build a prototype of the story you want to tell:
Hit Record: grab something you can record with, your phone is a good bet. Think about your story for 30 seconds, then hit record and start talking. This way you will not get all caught up into what to type, just tell the story as it lives in your own head. Then later you can transcribe what works and get rid of the rest, it takes the edge off of it, it’s just you and your phone.
Post it: use post it notes, the power of writing an idea on a little rectangle and then being able to move them around is truly amazing. If you post out the story you need to craft it makes it easier to dive into the details later on.
You can start with the most bare bones skeleton of your story. You can literally start with post its that say intro, back story or main point 1 just to get things moving.
Then fill in the blanks, maybe you have an idea of how to end your story but you don’t know how to get there, well put it on a post it and stick it at the end, the beauty is you can move it around, crumple it up, scratch it out or colour code it, anything you want, nothing is precious. Keep moving your post its around until you have an outline you are happy with. It doesn’t have to be your final story, it’s just a way to get things started.
Fancy a coffee?
Any story you tell should be interesting enough to tell over coffee. This sounds simplistic but at this point your story is just a prototype, a proof of concept. So grab some friends or colleagues and go to a local cafe. Now tell your story, don’t over think it just tell it. Get all the way through from start to finish and then let others ask questions and give feedback. They can tell you what is unclear, what is interesting or what they want to hear more, less of.
Your story won’t be perfect in your first draft. That’s perfectly natural. The more times you draft it out, the better it will be.
STORYTELLING
To convince people to go along with your vision, you're going to want to tell a story that’s smart, persuasive and emotional
Feedback makes you stronger...
So you now have a first draft of your story down, maybe it is recorded, written down on the back of a napkin or scribbled on post its. Now it’s time to share it. Frequent, iterative feedback loops will only make your story better.
The feedback is the critical piece of sharing, if you're just sharing and not getting any feedback then you are not able to iterate. So the question is how do you prompt this feedback so you can improve the next draft. You should start with specific questions in mind, things you would like to learn, things you are not certain of, this will help you focus and invite others to give you their thoughts to help you get your draft to the next level.
Questions to prompt feedback:
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What was most memorable?
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What do you have questions about?
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What moved or motivated you?
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What, in your opinion, was the big idea?
REMEMBER: You are not just telling stories for fun, you are trying to move people or motivate them into action for positive change.
Once you have received feedback return to your blueprint, it’s important to compare the feedback to your blueprint and your big idea, are you getting all the points across that you meant to make? or does your brief need to shift? Maybe you need to refine your understanding of your audience and their needs.
It’s good to get visual and tactile with your feedback, write each piece of feedback on a post it and then place it near to the part of the story it refers to.
Let it breathe: feedback that feels wrong in the heat of the moment might actually make more sense later on with a bit more perspective.
Some feedback is straightforward like cut this, it’s confusing but other pieces of feedback might need more exploration to find the right solution. For example someone might say this story needs to feel more empathetic. Maybe that means adding more photography of the people your talking about or maybe it means revisit your tone, don’t be afraid to try different approaches as you make changes.
Why not read Storytelling - Design for Impact >