If You Want To Tell A Compelling Story, Do These 3 Things
There’s a great, although perhaps apocryphal, story about Franz Kafka and a little girl. The relatively unknown author — he wouldn’t achieve great fame until after his death — met a young girl who lost her doll. Kafka helped her look for it, but to no avail. The doll was lost forever and the girl was heartbroken.
But then Kafka told her a story. The next day he brought her a letter from the doll. “Please do not mourn me, I have gone on a trip to see the world.” Kafka would bring her letters telling her of the doll’s adventures. He eventually bought her another doll and gave it to her with another note that said, “my travels have changed me.”
As the story goes, after Kafka’s death the girl found another letter hidden in the replacement doll that said, “Everything that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.” We can’t all write like Kafka, but with a little bit of knowledge and some practice, we can all learn to tell stories that give meaning and purpose to our messages.
1. Create Tension
The first element of any story is its exposition, which is the world you build around the story. It includes the setting, the characters and other background information. That’s where most people start their stories, but it can…
