Why do you need a story?
As human beings, we are hard-wired to love a good story. Stories shape our emotions and vice versa. We use them to define ourselves, to justify or explain our existence, the things we do, value and believe. Put simply: we define our stories and our stories define us, (beware the sub-text!).
Despite this, (or perhaps because of this) many of us find telling our own story difficult. Especially when we focus too closely on irrelevant details. Up close, it becomes almost impossible to find the central thread and make a coherent shape out of the complexities. Counter-intuitively, we need to zoom out and lose our personal perspective, to put ourselves on the outside of our story and look in.
This problem is particularly difficult for sole-traders, when you are your business and you are your brand. More than anything else, you need to get your story straight. Simply telling your audience who you are is not enough: you need to SHOW them. Your story must resonate on an emotional level, communicating your good value for them, your passion for quality and desire to meet their needs.
How we fail, and triumph, determines our journey and there’s always room for improvement. In the same way, it doesn’t matter if you’re struggling or have struggled, success is not the key here. The key is reflection, a sense that you are learning. You also need to leave your reader with a keen sense of hope and resolution…that you’ve reached a sustainable and useful solution that’s worthy of emotional investment.
How to Write Your Story?
This is not like taking part in a race. “Just do it!” won’t work. And doing it on your own will be very difficult, if not impossible.
The best environment in which to write your brand story, without a doubt, is a storytelling workshop.
Benefits of a Workshop:
- supportive and detailed guidelines for every stage
- immediate, varied and comprehensive feedback
- an opportunity to compare and contrast story types, devices and styles
- valuable insights in to your story from a distance/ other points of view
- suggestions for on-the-spot editing, improvements and revisions
- a chance to re-arrange, fix omissions and delete repetition
I am hoping to run monthly storytelling workshops on the last Monday of every month. Please contact me at ruthmcintosh9@gmail.com for more details. One-to-one storywriting services are also available.
Slow-Cycle 