The Secret of Narrative...

I’m obsessed with narrative. Mostly because I suck at it. When I start telling a story, crowds crumble. Adults remember to take their medication. Children suddenly need naps. It’s bad.

But in 2015 I stumbled onto the secret of narrative.

150 hours into prep for my first conference talk, my friend Brian raised a flag:

You know you’re stupid as a brick for thinking developers should write CSS in JavaScript.

He was wrong and he was right. The information I had was good but the talk was bad. It wasn’t inviting. There was nothing in it for someone who needed to be convinced.

So I rewrote it to speak directly to Brian — Removing unecessary details and focusing on what changed to lead a transformation my in thinking.

This shift from information to transformation made all the difference Because transformation is the secret of narrative.

There are plenty of frameworks for fleshing out narrative And I’ll talk more about those in coming weeks. Until then, one of my favorites is Dan Harmon’s Story Circle. He’s the creator of Rick and Morty and Community. So I’d say he gets it.

Where do you think communicating transformation could help you tell a better story?

🦋 chan