Six-Way Stories: How to Turn Your Observations Into Powerful Stories Audiences Love
A couple years ago, I created a system to develop and strengthen stories to resonate. I called it Six-Way Stories, because I realized as a speaker and author, developing a signature story actually meant telling the same story six different ways over time. By making that process more visible and repeatable, we can make it more useful and thus tell more and better stories in our work.
Today, I want to revisit that idea, given a new realization had while working with a client. The following piece has been updated and tightened from my essay two years ago. I welcome your comments in a reply!
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How much chiseling do you do?
Okay, go with me now. I realize you probably don't work with marble or any kind of stone. Your raw materials are expertise and curiosity and ideas and stories. Still, the question applies:
How much chiseling do you do?
Recently, I was talking with a client who looked utterly shocked when I shared something I assumed was a very simple and obvious thing. I was wrong.
We'd worked together for a couple of months developing his premise, the big idea he can own in the market and use to inform everything he creates. We'd landed in a good spot and shifted gears to develop his signature speech, and we realized he needed stronger stories to include in his speech. We had an idea for a good story he could tell to illustrate the power of his premise in-action, but of course, once you have an idea for a story, the key question becomes: how the heck do I tell it?
On my podcast How Stories Happen, author and keynote speaker Andrew Davis dropped this all-important gem for us:
"The only way to really figure out a story is to tell it."
(You can listen to the full episode here.)
I wholeheartedly agree with that idea, but it also leads to the most important dividing line between exceptional communicators and everybody else: You don't suddenly "come up with" great stories. You have to build them. Which means you have to do a ton more chiseling than most humans think is proper to do.
I told my client, "You gotta be bad for awhile in order to find the good."
Shock. Horror. Disgust. Et tu, Jay-Zo? he seemed to think.
(Nobody has called me Jay-Zo since high school. Well, nobody except Ann Handley.)
"Be bad" — yes. "Be more willing to make bad things" — also yes. "Aim for bad" — absolutely freaking not. As with all the things I try to put out into the world, there's nuance to be found here.
The only way to really figure out a story is to tell it.
The only way to tell it is to get out of your head and write it or speak it.
But you have to write it and speak it TO other people, and so now you start trying to make it "final" before you do.
Which causes you to make tons of choices and changes which may or may not be necessary or good in improving the thing ... if you ever end up shipping it at all.
But putting your work in front of an audience is the only real way to pressure test, validate, and improve your ideas, right down to the very words you use. In other words, the best way to rapidly get better is to create a feedback loop with your own mind (by forcing yourself to actually MAKE the thing, you figure out what it is you're TRYING to make) and a feedback loop with others (because even no response is still useful data).
Comedians have small comedy clubs. They work out materials.
We have social media. And newsletters. And coffee meetings. And the next talk we give. And the next video we post. Each thing is preparation for the next thing. There is no "done." There is only "better."
Framed another way:
How much chiseling do you do? Or really, how much chiseling are you willing to do? That's what separates the strongest communicators from the rest. They don't produce brilliance on-demand. They work and rework and rework again. They know the process is a mess, but they approach it with more confidence and even more joy than others. (That's the subject of my behind-the-scenes, weird-and-wonderful series showcasing my own messy creative process. It's here if you missed it.)
The simple fact that I am willing to put things out just to "see" and with the intention of tweaking that same thing over and over again gives me more cycles of improvement than others who might compete with me. This doesn't require anything of you but your decision to do it. To become a stronger storyteller and figure out the story you want to tell...
Tell it badly.
Find the good.
Build on that.
Arrive at insights.
It can be a repeatable process, but make no mistake, it's an iterative process. And I think it looks like six distinct steps.
Introducing Six-Way Stories: A Simple System to Develop Stronger Stories
Start with an idea for a story—any story. It can be about yourself or someone else. It does need to be about a person, however. Logos don't stand up, walk around, make mistakes, and get better.
First, consider the question: "Who and what is my story about?"
Then ask: “Why tell this story to others?”
What are you trying to show them? What idea might you be exploring or teaching? How do you want your audience to feel?
With your answers in mind, proceed through the system.
1. Create a messy draft.
Get out of your head and onto the page. That's all you need to do here. What you see on the page doesn't need to feel good. In fact, it will probably feel bad. That's okay. That's the process.
When you cook dinner, grabbing the recipe and the ingredients and then cooking the darn thing are considered separate acts. Why is the act of making our ideas visible on the page and making our ideas worth consuming somehow considered the same thing? Those are separate acts! Write. Then edit. Make a mess. Then clean it up. I will give you steps to do the cleaning up next.
But before you do anything, get out of your head and onto the page. Create a messy first draft.
🧠 ProTip #1: It might help to finish this step, then take a break. Putting space between a messy draft and your attempts to clean it up typically leads to clarity more quickly than remaining in the mess too long.
🧠 ProTip #2: If you need some constraints to make this easy and avoid this first step being your entire day, give yourself a page limit (2-3 maybe) or a time budget (after 30 min, you have to stop).
2. Find the 4 building blocks of the story.
Stories can be broken down to their base components if you know where to look. These base components then allow you to clean up your messy draft more confidently and perhaps even more quickly (though IMO, speed should never be the goal in this step or really in most creative things we do).
Inside your messy draft is plenty of useful material, yes, but underneath the material are several categories of material.
I think there are four of them—four building blocks to a story:
STATUS QUO: What's the character's starting situation?
TENSION: What problems and questions did they encounter?
TURNING POINT: Why did they continue?
RESOLUTION: How did they achieve their desire?
We've just forgotten how natural this can feel, thanks to the conventional wisdom of our work, but it turns out, we've been learning this since we were kids.
STATUS QUO: The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout
TENSION: Down came the rain and washed the spider out
TURNING POINT: Out came the sun and dried up all the rain
RESOLUTION: And the itsy-bitsy spider went up the spout again
Remove any one of these things, and the story feels flatter, maybe even confusing. Specifically, tension is the carbon element of stories. Without carbon, you don't have life. Without tension, you don't have a story, just a statement. To tell stronger stories, you need some tension, so rather than think, "Here's what happened," think, "Here's what changed." That prompts you to find the tension (questions and answers; problems and solutions; before and after).
You've made a mess, then you've found the building blocks. Next...
3. Build up the story.
I say build UP so we remember to rely on our building blocks. Telling the story the second way, we're left with a skeletal structure. Telling it this third way is when we flesh it out.
🧠 ProTip #3: This can balloon rather easily, so give yourself a runtime if speaking (5 minutes) or word count if writing (1,200 words).
Below are some prompts to help you build up the story from the four building blocks. I've bolded the things you might need to include.
STATUS QUO: What's the character's starting situation? ➡️ At a time, we meet a character, in a setting, and they have a desire (which creates stakes) so they take action.
TENSION: What problems and questions did they encounter? ➡️ Stories need to be surprising in some way. That's what makes them interesting.* That process starts here (though adding quirky, interesting details in the status quo section can also be useful). Here, use the building block of tension to describe your character as they encounter obstacles and setbacks and the subsequent questions they and we are left to face. The best storytellers use this section to raise the stakes further.
TURNING POINT: Why did they continue? ➡️ This is a necessary change. This is where the rising action and stakes have been leading us. It's the peak of the story, making it even more interesting or surprising. The turning point provides hope and new possibilities and clarity, or such dire conditions they are forced to continue forward, or both. Regardless, the turning point leads to the characters next actions.
RESOLUTION: How did they achieve their desire? ➡️ Relieve the tension, answer the questions, and describe what happens next which helps them fulfill their desire (but, ideally, better or differently than they'd initially imagined, given what they learned along the way).
Even without filling in the blanks with actual material, doesn't this just sound like a story?
At a time, meet Character, who works/lives in setting. They desired this thing, so they acted. They did this, then that, then that.
But then they encountered some obstacles and setbacks. This created questions.
Then suddenly, a change happened. That gave the character cause to continue. Character then did this, then this, then this.
This fulfilled their desire, and thanks to this journey, in better or different ways they could have anticipated.
The ... End...
Sweet dreams!
Well, not quite. We can't go to bed yet. We still need the next few versions of the story. But we certainly have "a" story now! Next, we need to make it a "signature" story. That means personalizing it. We can sign our names to it. The first step towards that is this:
4. Extract the insight(s) from the story.
Remember the first two questions before we started the Six-Way Story process? (Who and what is the story about? + Why tell it to others?)
So far, we've focused on the first one: the "what" of it all. Now, we reveal the why. Why tell it? Because others need to know THIS lesson.
To prompt ourselves to arrive at the lesson, I like to remember a simple phrase to close:
"That's the thing about..."
You tell the story, then you arrive to a pivot point where you move from the resolution of the story to its meaning. You move from your topic to your insight.
"That's the thing about [what I'm teaching] + [how I see it]."
That's the thing about marketing. It's not about reach. It's about resonance.
That's the thing about innovation. We're more afraid of the unknown than the task itself, so rather than debate or agonize, move quickly to make the unknown known.
That's the thing about creativity. It's not the instant manufacturing of brilliance. It's the constant pursuit of curiosity.
Over time, the more comfortable you get with your own teachings and this specific story, you can editorialize your insight further, expanding with definitions or supporting points or other signature material you've workshopped before. I might say...
"That's the thing about marketing. It's not about reach. It's about resonance. Reach is how many see it, but resonance is how much they care. No amount of reach guarantees that they care, so we're better off mastering that skill in and of itself. Because if they don't care, they don't act. If they don't act, they don't see results, so really, it's from resonance that we see results. We can define resonance as the urge to act people feel when a message or moment aligns so closely with them, their thoughts, feelings, and even abilities feel amplified. We all want to spark action, but we don't often impart that spark, that energy. We keep demanding people act. We CALL them to act (call-to-action). But the strongest communicators inspire action, because first and foremost, they communicate in ways that create the energy to act in others."
I might then pivot to methods for how to do that, so my story, then my insight ("that's the thing about..."), then the methods all seamlessly connect.
Now that we have a signature story, we need to take it with us. It goes everywhere we go, and we can use it in multiple ways, communicating with greater impact everywhere. That means we need to learn how to customize it, so we continue with our fifth way of telling it:
5. Tell the same story, shorter.
We created a messy draft, which likely ran long.
We found the building blocks, which were sturdy but brief.
We built up the story, making it long again.
And we arrived at the major insight they needed.
But of course, you can and should use your proven material in writing and speaking, podcasting and video, as a guest elsewhere and as the creator of your own projects. This means you're going to need to flex this story to fit various mediums and containers, and it's always harder to shrink the written or spoken word rather than expand it. That's the fifth way we tell the story. Consider a version that drops from five spoken minutes to two. Now you could tell it as a quick example on a podcast or in a shorter webinar. Maybe you wrote the story to be 1,200 words. Try it at 500 or even 300. Now you can use it as a powerful opener to an essay or a book chapter or even a social post.
🧠 ProTip #4: It's probably tempting to use AI to do the shortening, but I would hold those tools at arm's length as long as you can to first internalize the process and practice the steps yourself. This also equips you to communicate in realtime like a professional can, which is the true test of an exceptional communicator: when prompted to use your voice live, what do you say and how do you say it? You can't pause life and go ask the tool to revise your ideas for that moment. You just have to open your mouth ... and deliver. Can you? That's practiced. Don't skip the practice by using a tool. Worry about training AI later, if you want. Train yourself first.
If this fifth way of telling the same story helps us customize the material for different places, then the sixth and final version helps us customize the story for different people.
6. Tell the same story (long or short), but extract a different lesson.
After "that's the thing about" (or however you pivot to an insight), try to arrive at a different lesson entirely. What else can the same story teach us? You won't always speak to the same exact audience. Maybe the differences will be subtle, or maybe like me, you show up in front of all kinds of job titles, experience levels, and industries. Or maybe you just want to create something today and want a good story to include in it, and you realize your signature story could work ... if you customize it.
Can you tell the same story to arrive at an entirely different lesson?
In doing so, you turn your signature story into what I call a super-story.
🧠 ProTip #5: Decide on the new lesson first, but then go back to the details of the story and ensure you add, subtract, or accentuate certain details to better match the ending. You have leave "breadcrumbs" all the way through. For instance, if I switched from telling a story about an entrepreneur named Mike meant to teach the idea of resonance and decided to instead teach you about curiosity, I'd want to revise moments in Mike's day less like him deciding to do something and more like him wondering something first, before he decides. That's just one very tiny example, and you can go back to the templates I provided above to decide if and when you want to play with the story details to better match the ending. But if you can aling them more closely, the ending with feel more satisfying and the insight more profound. Because you connected all the dots.
In the end, if you can...
slap down a messy draft
identify the building blocks
build it up.
extract some lessons.
shrink it down.
extract some different lessons entirely
...then my friend, I have some wonderful news for you.
You're a masterful storyteller.