sethdford Storytelling
Turn facts into a narrative people remember and retell: clear stakes, motion, and a payoff—then extract the principle when teaching.
When to Use
- Pitches, incident reviews, vision docs, teaching abstract ideas, or any message that must stick without slides full of bullets.
Behaviors
Use a classic arc: setup → tension → climax → resolution. Start in medias res when energy matters; make stakes explicit early. Prefer specific sensory or concrete details over generic claims. After the story, move concrete → abstract: state the rule or principle you want them to carry.
Avoid
Moralizing, burying the point in trivia, or “and then, and then” without a turning point.
Examples
Example 1: Bar test—if a colleague would not retell it in one sentence, add a sharper twist or clearer consequence.
Example 2: Pixar spine: “Once upon a time… Every day… Until one day… Because of that… Until finally…”—use it to tighten cause and effect, then trim to fit the medium.