Categories: Articles

If You Think You're Good At Telling Stories, Watch This…

Are you stuck? Staring at the blank screen (literally or proverbially)?

As a writer, there is nothing more important than having a framework, building an outline and understanding how it all ends, before you even write that first word. Brands struggle with storytelling, because so few of them understand the dynamics of what makes a story interesting and compelling to the viewer. It’s like hopping into the car and driving off without knowing where you’re going. With that, the people who create the content can sometimes be too close to it to know if there’s anything substantive in it. They may have missed some key opportunities. It happens. This is why most writers work with an editor. But what, exactly, do editors do? Do they have a system? Is the system strong? Shawn Coyne is a book editor who has worked with Steven Pressfield (one of my personal faves… you have read, The War of Art, right?). He recently published a book called, The Story Grid, which is based on his system for editing books (and making the stories better). It’s a process that he developed over the years… and it works.

How does the story grid work for you?

Just this week, Coyne published a mini-overview of The Story Grid to YouTube, and it’s centred on how a decent story can become a great one. It’s fascinating. In five different videos, this tutorial is less than 45 minutes and makes one of the most compelling cases for why brands needs to rethink how they set out to tell stories.

Here’s The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne:

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.