Six-Way Stories: A Practical Method for Becoming an Effective Storyteller
As the story goes, once upon a time, Hemingway was challenged to write a story in only six words.
This is the story he allegedly wrote:
For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.
...oof.
Whether or not this actually happened, the six-word story has become a phenomenon. There are heart-wrenching video montages about Hemingway's original (again I say: oof), New Yorker articles lampooning it, tips to write your own six-word story from brands hoping to capitalize on its popularity, and even an entire media company dedicated to the craft of writing what they call Six-Word Memoirs.
Yes, there's something powerful about the six-word story, and I just haven't been able to stop thinking about it lately.
Over the last few months, I've been tinkering on a methodology that I believe can help us all transform into masterful storytellers. We may not aspire to be Hemingway, but we should all want to communicate in ways that resonate deeper and spark action in support of whatever cause we hold dear.
Inspired by the six-word story, I've been developing something called Six-Way Stories. And I'd like to introduce you to a draft before I feel totally ready.
Today's essay is broken into three parts. We're going long today, but I hope you'll stick with me. This is the culmination of years of my work. The three sections in today's story:
How Masterful Storytellers Spark Action (Namely, they don't "tell" stories. They mold them.)
Why Six-Word Stories Resonate (They're "theater of the mind," but they ask the reader to direct.)
Six-Way Stories (Start thinking like an author to develop the skill and posture of a masterful storyteller.)
If I had to write a six-word story about how I feel in this very moment, here's what I'd say:
Here goes nothing. Or maybe everything.
* * *
How Masterful Storytellers Spark Action
(They don't "tell" stories. They mold them.)
Storytellers have this way of creating connections so deep, others feel called to act. I've defined resonance as the urge to act when a message or experience aligns with us so closely, we feel amplified. Well, the best damn vehicle ever invented to resonate with others is the story.
When we tell more resonant stories, we serve others better, and so we are better served.
But masterful storytellers don't just hand out the same story in more and more places. Even if the story is "good," that won't make it effective.
Effective stories align with others enough to inspire action, whether that is immediate or over time, internal (e.g. earning trust, shifting perspectives) or external (e.g. subscribing, sharing, responding, buying). Effective stories create action, it's hard to be effective if you just tell the same story, the same way, to different people in different places.
Instead, great storytellers mold their stories to fit both the moment and the audience, thus making it effective.
To fit the moment, consider two questions:
Did you consider the medium?
Did you consider the channel?
When and where is the story being delivered? What's happening around it? Is your podcast meant to inspire someone on a Monday morning as they head to work or ease them into the weekend? Are you the opening speaker or closing? Is this a long-form newsletter or a tweet? A video on YouTube or a video embedded on your website?
A keynote stage is not a breakout room, while a webinar is not a podcast interview, which itself is not an interview for a blog. Text is not audio, and audio and video are NOT the same thing (despite what many B2B podcasters would like you to believe).
The moment changes. New variables emerge. The storyteller considers those, then changes the story to fit the moment.
For example, one of my go-to stories for several years was about Merriam-Webster, and how this previously boring brand evolved into something wonderful -- while selling a dictionary! A rather undifferentiated, uninspiring product. Quite the story.
Except it was never quite the same story when I told it.
I started by telling this story on stages, in front of hundreds or thousands of people at a time, so the story sounded like this:
Over time, I decided to tell it on my podcast, where it became my most popular episode ever and even featured the great Tom Webster as the voice of Merriam-Webster dictionary.
(Side note: Three new stories recently topped the Merriam-Webster episode, all three of which are now linked to my show's home page as a Starter Pack for new listeners.)
Acknowledging the subtle differences between mediums and channels makes all the difference in the world.
Speaking of important differences, what about speaking to a different audience? Or, said better, a different person? After all, unless your audience is sitting in view of each other, you're only ever speaking to ONE person at a time. I'm writing to only YOU right now. Because that's how you experience this. (I'm guessing you don't host parties to read my essays.)
(But, um ... if you did? Can I cook you all dinner or offer a private talk or something? I mean, you threw a party to read my writing together. You're awesome. In need of a hobby, but still awesome.)
Anyway, in the speech version of my Merriam-Webster, it's clear that I've molded it to fit a certain type of audience: 400 marketers in a room together. As a result, I play the story really big. I accentuate the moments a marketer would love hearing about, like their creative content or tone of voice or ability to spread on social media. But if that room shrank to just seven of those very same marketers, I would tone down the performance and have to chuckle softly after my own jokes to encourage others to laugh.
(Fun fact: in a big group, people take their cues from each other, so laughter rolls more easily. In a small group, the first to laugh feels exposed, so people hesitate. Thus, you need to chuckle a little bit after your own jokes to provide that permission, then people tend to chime in. Just a quirk of performance I uncovered on the road!)
Let's change the audience yet again, this time from marketers to lawyers. Whether on a stage or in a blog post, now the deliver of the story needs to change in some way. I can tell the SAME story despite the different demographic, but I might accentuate different parts of it to mold it and make it more effective for the new type of person listening. For instance, speaking to lawyers instead of marketers, I might emphasize Merriam-Webster's struggle to evolve a legacy brand, rather than spending so much time on their quirky, irreverent content. Or, if I did highlight the latter, I might need to explain to the lawyer crowd, "It's not about being irreverent, nor even creating tons of content. It's about showing up with a relatable, human tone of voice." (Something like that.)
I could -- and did -- use that same story, molded to fit different moments and audiences (or, really, a different person) with each keynote, article, and episode wherein the story appeared.
Same story. Different execution. Same power.
Still, I wonder: why are six-word stories so powerful?
I think it's because they do something most stories don’t do nearly enough: trust the reader.
* * *
Why Six-Word Stories Resonate
(They're "theater of the mind," but they trust the audience to direct.)
A six-word story forces the writer to trust the reader. There's no room for extra details or over-explaining stuff or spoon-feeding the reader the key takeaways. All the writer can do is deliver a few choice words which allow the reader to build out the rest of the story (often instantly) inside their minds.
Were I to tell a six-word version of my Merriam-Webster story, I might say, "A dictionary brand defined by irreverence."
(Not gonna lie: I got there in just three tries, and I am VERY proud of myself.)
Here's the script. Flesh out the details. Make this story real to you.
Let’s try a one-word example instead of six words: storm. If I said the word "storm," what do you picture?
I gave you the script. It was ONE word. You made an image. You might even have heard sounds or felt temperatures or emotions or perhaps played back entire moments of your life when you experienced a storm. All from one word.
(I mean, what literal sorcery is language?)
You'll often hear marketers talk about how the customer is the star of the story. I disagree. I think they're the director. In our type of storytelling, used to support our businesses, we play the role of screenwriter. We provide the script, the prompts. The reader then brings it to life and gives it meaning.
Here are a few more six-word stories just for funsies. Note the larger story you inevitably create (direct?) inside your mind:
Hint of summer in the air...
From sand to stain-glassed window.
Talking the walk inspires more walk.
Now I'll provide a bit more of the script for you, using my own additional six-word explanations. Notice how the additional details changes the story unfolding in your mind?
Hint of summer in the air... (Summer frees us from our worries.)
From sand to stain-glassed window. (A beautiful change requires intense pressure.)
Talking the walk inspires more walk. (Don't undervalue the power of words.)
Let’s go one step further, even:
Hint of summer in the air... (Summer frees us from our worries. Even with the pandemic swirling around us, and the stress of waking up at 5 with the kids, getting them ready for school, rushing out the door and down the street, returning feeling tired, then needing to find the strength to start our day … when we feel that hint of summer, it’s like we can finally take a deep breath, and daydream about the beach.)
From sand to stain-glassed window. (A beautiful change requires intense pressure. Sand is one of those things you don’t really notice most of the time. Sure, you may occasionally feel it under your feet and relax a little, or brush it out of your shoe and grumble to yourself. But sand can turn into something gorgeous through the right level of craftsmanship: stain-glassed windows. With heat and color and the right person carrying the blow-torch, you’d be amazed what this simple stuff can become.)
Talking the walk inspires more walk. (Don't undervalue the power of words. Everyone love to talk about how ideas are cheap and execution is everything. But great ideas are the foundation of building something special. Furthermore, if you are heads-down executing all the time, developing the next new social network or writing a lengthy newsletter, you may fail to recognize the need to both communicate or share with others AND find the right words to ensure others understand the value of what you’re providing. Words inspire action, when delivered correctly. Yes, walk the walk, but don’t forget to talk, too.)
So many more details such that I lead you down certain paths, or provide better prompts for you to direct the subsequent story playing out in your head. Even simple word choices to illustrate a point (like saying “heads down” or “developing the next new social network” provides a more specific prompt in your head, and while I think about software engineers in a dark room or the movie The Social Network, you might have pictured something else — that is, until I just wrote out “software engineers” and “The Social Network.”)
Across different moments and people, we can share the same stories, but to ensure they continue to be effective, we must mold them to fit. To achieve that, we can…
Provide, emphasize, and/or omit the right details and right amount of them such that the story aligns with the audience and they become the director of the story, thus pulling them closer to it.
At the same time, don’t go TOO far or provide TOO MANY details such that we leave no room for imagination and introspection. This hurts our ability to resonate. In other words, mold the story, but don’t over-engineer it such that you no longer trust the reader. You may have five takeaways in mind. Do they? Are they THOSE takeaways? Provide at least some space for the reader to interpret the story through their own life experiences. That’s what makes a story about someone else feel personal to the reader.
Here's my script.
I trust you to bring it to life. Cast it, design it, film it, edit it, color it, score it, and ship it to an audience of one.
Yourself.
* * *
We are so hesitant to trust our audience. We feel pressure to connect, pressure to be liked or viewed as smart, so we over-explain and spell out each and every detail. We stuff people full of our own prescribed Key Takeaways, never giving them space to synthesize things on their own.
What if we trusted them more? When we give the reader a bit more space, they can't help but synthesize our stories through their lives. This of course draws them into the story further. They feel more aligned with us, and because of that alignment, we resonate deeper.
(Ever experience a touching final scene in a film or documentary when nothing is said? Just some video footage and music lingering awhile? It hits you hard, doesn't it? That's because it's trusting you to "direct" a bit. You're given the space you need to extract your own meaning, your own interpretation, and you do so through the lens of your own life. It hits harder as a result. It resonates deeper.)
Sorry to say, my dear reader, but you are not the star of my stories. Those are people like Lisa Schneider at Merriam-Webster or Mike Brown at Death Wish Coffee or Anthony Berriola at Razor's Barbershop. They're my stars. They feature heavily in my scripts. I'm then trusting you to take my screenplay and make something out of it -- namely, meaning.
This takes trust, and we don't trust our audience nearly enough. And why?
Because we don't trust ourselves.
* * *
Six-Way Stories
(Develop the Skill + Posture of a Storyteller)
I think it's time we trusted ourselves as storytellers more fully. To start, we can stop focusing on the abstract ideas of “story” and put ourselves in the driver’s seat. You see, everywhere I look, I see folks teaching "story" in two rather abstract ways:
Brand story (positioning and differentiation -- a very foundational and mission-critical piece of a brand's development to be sure)
The nature of story (these are “front doors” into the concept of story, allowing us to access the notion — the science of story, story structures, use cases for stories in our work, and rationalizing why stories are so critical in our communication -- e.g. "Humans are hardwired to respond to stories!")
Yes, these are both valuable. But these focus on “story” … not the storyTELLER.
How useful are those front doors into the idea of story if, once we're in the building, we can't make it past the lobby?
What good is a brand story if the people carrying the brand’s flag internally to the team or externally to the audience can’t … yanno … tell stories? The founder pitching investors, the executives aligning the team, the recruiters interviewing top talent, the candidate up for a promotion or meeting a mentor for coffee, the mentor teaching their mentee, the product leaders launching new features, the marketers creating content, the sales people chatting with prospects, the thought leaders appearing publicly — everywhere we show up in our work is made better if we become masterful storytellers. I’ll say it again:
When we become masterful storytellers, we serve others better, and so we are better served.
To become masterful storytellers, I suggest we start learning more proactively from the people I consider among the best storytellers of our time, who also do work that most closely resembles our own:
Authors.
What if we learned to Think Like an Author?
Like most professionals, authors tell stories to spark action. They speak to an audience to change that audience in some way. To do so, authors learn how to say something that matters and use their work to hold attention. They communicate in ways intended to connect emotionally, and they consistently reinvent the work to avoid stagnation and remain relevant over time.
In many ways, authors are in sales. They're always selling whenever they show up, but it feels like a generous, welcome, refreshing form of sales. Whether they’re selling us on their ideas for how we might see the world differently and better, or they’re selling us on the various projects informed by their ideas (some free and, yes, some paid). Authors are in the change business, the action business.
Aren’t we all?
Authors: they’re just like us! Except unlike many of us, when authors want to sell something or create change, they don’t demand action. They inspire it.
What if we could too?
When I wrote my first book and built my speaking business, it took me three years of finding and developing stories, telling the same ones over and over again to improve them and customize them, across my podcast, newsletter, blog posts, speeches, and social media content, along with each and every guest interview appearance. It took me three years to create my go-to list of stories, honing the skill and developing the posture of a storyteller. But once I did? Man, I felt unstoppable.
I wish I could bottle that feeling.
Maybe it's time I tried.
That feeling is too empowering and the advantages too great to be limited to a few privileged people such as myself and my friends who (oh by the way) also selected careers that force you to spend MOST of your time finding, developing, and sharing stories.
You might be a founder, an executive, a practitioner, a contractor, talking to people outside or inside your organization -- or maybe you, as an individual, are your organization. It doesn't matter. If we all learned to Think Like an Author, we'd all be better for it, I'm convinced.
No matter the role, no matter the need, if it involves communicating, it's enhanced by story.
And authors treat their stories like products. They DEVELOP them, iterate on them, much like a comedian taking to stages to refine their act, authors aerate, update, and disseminate their stories, and once proven, they add various features to their stories too — a version for THIS crowd or THAT medium; a version for THIS product or THAT service offering.
The thing is, the best authors do this so effortlessly, it feels like it's simply ... them. It’s a gift they were given, and maybe you weren’t.
But it's not a gift. It's a practice. It requires the right skills (the ability to find, develop, and deliver stories that inspire action) and the right posture (the vision to spot stories everywhere and the confidence to deliver them as answers or examples consistently, even when nobody overtly asks, "Tell us story?")
By internalizing the skill and assuming the posture, something magical happens: It's no longer what you do. It's what you are. You move from understanding “story” to being a storyteller.
I have a name for that:
Unthinkable Storytellers.
When you’re an unthinkable storyteller, you help others rethink important things and take action to break from conventional thinking. But you, yourself, no longer need to think about the mechanics of your stories. It’s just how you communicate.
If Iron Man's powers come from his external super suit, then you're more like Spider-Man. It's part of you. It's inherent, intuitive, and reflexive. You wield stories the way you wield your own limbs. It's not something you do. It's something you are.
For too long, this superpower has been reserved for a few. I'd like to change that.
I'd like to help 100,000 creators and marketers become unthinkable storytellers.
I don't want to talk about story. I want to help storyTELLERS.
Introducing... Six-Way Stories.
I believe we can compress the time it takes to become an unthinkable storyteller from the years it took me (and most authors) into months or even weeks. To do so, we can toss aside the various parts and pieces of writing and promoting a book or a keynote to instead focused narrowly on the driving force within those types of projects: finding, developing, and molding good stories into effective stories.
Here's how Six-Way Stories work:
Start with a story -- any story. It can be about yourself or someone else. (Note: It does need to be about a person, however. No abstractions. The protagonist is not “one” or “a marketer” or “the team” or “Google.” Who is the story about? Name them. What is the story? Don’t overthink it — whatever comes to mind. Start there.
Next, consider the question: “To what end am I telling the story?” What is the desired action you want to inspire or change you want to see in others? What’s your work’s mission, or what’s the idea or big question you’re exploring.
Pick any story about a person — yourself or someone else. Whatever pops to mind.
Consider, “To what end am I telling this story in my work?”
Then, tell the same story six ways:
1. Tell the story however you want.
Slap down a messy draft. You have no restrictions. Write it or speak-and-record it. GO!
2. Tell the same story in just 3 foundational parts.
This is the One Simple Story framework. In branding, an organization can be distilled into One Simple Thing (e.g. Disney = magic). In storytelling, each story can be distilled into One Simple Story, containing the three most foundational building blocks. You need to find yours.
STATUS QUO: What is the protagonist’s current or starting situation?
TENSION: What do they want, and what threatens their chances of getting it?
RESOLUTION: How did they overcome or succumb to that obstacle?
Give yourself one sentence per section. Forget impressing others with your language. This is just about finding the “beats” of the story. Identify and write or record the building blocks.
3. Tell the story in 10 minutes (if spoken) or 1,500 words (if written).
You slapped down a messy draft. You identified the One Simple Story, the 3 main beats of the story. Now, flesh it out. You've got the building blocks. Now build up from there.
Given the larger space, you can play a bit more. Be more vivid with your details and more nuanced in your exploration of the person and their story. Deploy your tone of voice and other unique quirks you can offer. If you speak in metaphor, start dancing through the fields of your imagination. If you love asides (as I do), knock yourself out. (Not literally. We have three more versions of the story left to complete!)
4. Repeat the same long-form story (10 minutes/1,500 words), but this time, extract lessons from the story. Do not exceed three.
Here, you move from telling a good story to an effective one — or at least, your first attempt at being effective. Because here, the story is a teaching vehicle. Since this is the second attempt at your long-form version, you should be able to tighten it up. That little extra space underneath your 10-minute/1,500 target should allow you to fit 1-3 lessons into the telling — without exceeding those constraints.
Remember: “To what end am I telling this story?” Think about your brand or personal mission or goals. You're not just entertaining others, after all. You have something to say. (The best entertainers often do too, by the way.)
Don’t overthink where or when you should reveal your lessons to the audience. Over time, moments of reflection or teaching might become more naturally interwoven with the narrative itself, kind of like how Ira Glass and This American Life execute their episodes: a bit of story, a bit of reflection, more story, more reflection, and so on. But at this stage, deliver your lesson(s) when and where it feels easiest to you. You can always make changes later.
When you’re done, you now have the long-form version with 1-3 lessons added. This is now one of your "lead" stories. (That's “lead” as in “leadership,” not the heavy material). Lead stories are quite literally the stories you can lead with to illustrate to others what things look like when done well, when they’ve adopted the change you’re proposing.
Effective lead stories are also "universal-specifics,” in other words, understood by many but still somehow personal and emotional to each individual. Everyone can grasp the basics just fine without needing tons of experience within a single domain, but thanks to the protagonist’s relatable desires and moments of tension and personality quirks or flaws, each individual feels a personal connection to the story. (Said another way: each individual feels a personal connection to YOU, the storyteller.)
My lead stories include a dictionary, a coffee brand, and a barbershop -- all pretty universally understood things. But between my storytelling choices and the relatable tension experienced by Lisa Schneider, Mike Brown, and Anthony Berriola, these universal stories still feel personal to each person receiving them.
Over time, you’ll develop a few “lead” stories. You’ll also likely find a few stories that are specific but not very universal. Don’t overlook those! They’re powerful as “supporting” stories. If your lead story illustrates something in action, end-to-end, then your audience may respond, “Great! How do I do that, too?” This is where more narrow examples help, whether to illustrate a piece of a methodology you’re teaching them, or simply to provide examples more similar to the audience.
For instance, in my list of supporting stories, I have my B2B enterprise stories and B2B startup stories; consumer enterprise and consumer startups; stuff for freelancers and indie creators and stuff for leaders of large teams. I have supporting stories about nonprofits and stories about non-Americans. Even when telling my personal stories, I have two groups of them: my personal lead story (useful for those broad bio questions: “Jay, tell us about yourself”) and my personal supporting stories (useful for illustrating narrow points using my own experiences, or when asked to pull from my own career; These include the story of quitting Google, the launch of my podcast, the worst advice I’ve ever received, my most embarrassing moment, etc. — each with various lessons tied to them).
This happens over time. For now, focus on continuing to tell your ONE story, six ways, with #5:
5. Take that same long-form story and tell it in short-form (2 minutes/300 words). Ensure the 1-3 lessons from #4 remain in the story. (It’s OK if you need to focus on just 1 lesson.)
As Twain said, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." It's harder to make it shorter, so this section deserves more attention and therefore more explanation.
You aren't just reworking this one story. You're honing an underlying skill that makes you a masterful storyteller. If you're able to move from longer runtimes to shorter, you're able to fit your story into many more mediums and channels, whether you proactively create there or you're being interviewed.
To create this version, first consider the lesson(s) before revisiting the story. How does your intention to teach help you make tough tradeoffs to shorten the story? What stays in or gets removed as a result?
Other helpful questions:
Can you performance or emphasis do the work of accentuating something that's now much more important to the story, or do you need to add new details or sequences of events?
Does the tension itself need to change, because the "main" event or question is maybe less important than something that previously felt smaller or supportive, but is now THE big question, given the lesson you're teaching now?
Remember: you have less time and space. You need to really bring a sense of drama to it. The tension does the heavy lifting because most details and "experiential" stuff (e.g. metaphors, jokes, asides) must be removed. The stakes need to be immediately clear and very relatable to the audience. Grip them or lose them.
6. Finally, tell that same short story (2 minutes/300 words), but extract an entirely new lesson not yet used above.
If the underlying skill of #5 was to learn to mold the same story to fit different moments (e.g. places you tell it long vs. short), then the underlying skill here is to mold the same story to fit different people (e.g. different places you’re interviewed and/or insights you want to provide).
Start with the lesson, then allow that to inform how you mold the story into something better suited to what you wish to teach. Do you need to add or omit anything to further isolate the parts of the story that illustrate the 1 lesson you're teaching?
Can you begin to see how the story you worked so hard to develop can be molded to fit different moments and people?
This is the final test to really internalize this story in such a way that we can wield it however we choose, wherever it's needed.
If you can...
Slap down a messy draft.
Identify the building blocks.
Tell it long.
Extract some lessons.
Tell it short.
Mold it to be effective everywhere.
...then you've become a masterful storyteller.
Remember:
Think like an author. Develop your go-to stories, and take them on a roadshow, both to aerate and improve them and to inspire change through storytelling, wherever you show up. Hone the skill and adopt the posture of a masterful storyteller.
Trust your audience. Yes, stories are theater of the mind, but you shouldn't micromanage the production. Be the screenwriter. Give others your script. Trust them to interpret it and add the details to it that align it more closely with their own life experience. They know themselves better than you ever could.
Above all, don't tell stories. Mold them. The same ingredients, used to cook different dishes. The basic spine of the story, shaped in many ways, customized to teach different things to different people.
The more you do this, the more this becomes internalized. It becomes subconscious, effortless -- an intuitive yet inspiring approach to communication. When you possess the skill and the posture, to others, you'll seem somehow superhuman. To you, it will come naturally. It's powerful, it's worthwhile, and it's time.
It's unthinkable.