This document provides guidance on crafting compelling stories to inspire audiences and further a cause or mission. It discusses how stories can influence perspectives and motivate action. Key points: 1) Stories allow sharing of values and lessons to encourage audiences to pursue higher goals. By expressing one's worldview through stories, audiences may be persuaded. 2) When choosing stories, consider the audience and desired action or perspective shift. Stories should facilitate an "aha moment" for audiences to realize how they can take the desired action. 3) Effective stories follow a challenge, connection, or creativity plot structure and track a character's journey of change from problem to resolution. Stories show audiences what is possible through relatable experiences.

1. Stories:
Your Secret eapon
W
Presented by ListenIn Pictures

2. You are the hero of your own life story.

3. The best news is:
You already know how to tell stories!

4. Your Deep Story Knowledge
• Groups of 4
• Each group gets either 2 or 3 cards.
• Choose which person is going to be
your storyteller.
• Craft a story around the information
given by the cards.

5. When listening to the stories, keep these
questions in mind:
What do these stories all have in common?
What makes a great story?

6. Write down:
What is a story?
A story that someone shared with you
that really impacted you.
A story that you’ve been telling yourself
that you want to let go, once and for all.
Limiting stories.

7. “The ability to dream up and
spread these solutions lives or
dies on the ability to tell great
stories that inspire people to
think differently.”
Jonah Sachs, Story Wars

8. “A story tracks what a person
wants, what he’ll do to get it,
and what costs he’ll have to
pay along the way.”
John Truby

9. Stories hold our identities together.

10. Stories influence our conception
of what is possible in our real lives.

11. The storyteller does this by placing
characters, real or fictional, onto a
stage and showing what happens to
these characters over a period of time.

12. Worksheet, Part 1
• List 10 experiences in your life that
changed you.
• They can be good memories or hard
memories.
• Either way- they taught you
something.

13. Each character pursues
some type of goal in
accordance with his or
her values, facing difficulty
along the way and either
succeeds or fails according
to the storyteller’s view of
how the world works.

14. Stories are designed to persuade an
audience of a storyteller’s worldview.
How do they do this?
Stories express values.

15. Stories allow us to create
order out of the chaotic.

16. They do this by editing out irrelevant details

17. and defining a cause for each effect.

18. Stories provide meaning
in the strings of things
we have seen, felt or
even just imagined.

19. 20% get married
of girls in before they turn
Bangladesh 15.

22. Sacral Agenesis It affects 200,000
causes deformities people in the
to the spine in the United States.
womb.

24. Your Epic Narrative
Vision:
an invitation for people to join you

25. “A good story is a fundamental
ingredient in allowing humans
to create a sense of us.”
Jonah Sachs, Story Wars

26. Great stories contain lessons encouraging
people to pursue their higher values.

27. By sharing your values, you can offer your
audience encouragement to seek their own
higher-level potential.

28. Values
Wholeness:
The need to feel sufficient as an individual
and connected to others as part of
something larger, to move beyond self-
interest

29. Values
Perfection:
The need to seek mastery of skill or vocation,
often through hard work or struggle

30. Values
Justice:
The need to live by high moral values and
to see the world ordered by morality, to
overthrow tyranny

31. Values
Richness:
The need to examine life in all of its
complexity and diversity, to seek new
experience and overcome prejudice

32. Values
Simplicity:
The need to understand the underlying
essence of things

33. Values
Beauty:
The need to experience and
create aesthetic pleasure

34. Values
Truth:
The need to experience and express
reality without distortion, to tear down
falsehood

35. Values
Uniqueness:
The need to express personal gifts,
creativity and non-conformity

36. Values
Playfulness:
The need for joy and self expression

37. Worksheet, Part 2
• Wholeness
• Perfection
• Justice
• Richness
• Simplicity
• Beauty
• Truth
• Uniqueness
• Playfulness

38. What are three core beliefs that are at the
heart of why you do this work?

39. Your Epic Narrative needs:
• Heroes
(audience is a key character in your epic)
• Villians
• Conflict

40. We are a movement for _____________.

41. Today, we’re going to identify some core
stories that will fill our story basket.

42. ?
We’re going to learn four core stories and
three plot structures.
With all these story options...how do you
choose which story to tell?

43. Start with the end in mind
Audience
Choose the story that will
get them to take that action
Goal
(the action you want them to take)

44. Think about the shift in perspective you
want the audience to have.
Do you have a story of when you had that
shift in perspective yourself?

45. Example: You want them to support your
organization financially.
So perhaps you tell the story of when you
realized that you could make a difference in
the world.

46. Questions to ask when choosing a story:
Who is my audience?
What action do I want them to take?
What aha moment can I facilitate to get
them to take that action? What do they
need to realize in order to take that action?

48. Perhaps they need to realize:
• Awareness:
– The problem exists.
– Your solution exists.
• Attitudes:
– You are trustworthy.
– There is a new way to tackle this problem.
– The proble is different from how they’ve
always thought about it.
• Behavior:
– They are powerful.
– Their actions matter.
– They can be a part of something important.

49. Worksheet, Part 3
• Fill out worksheet for your 3 main
audiences that you want to develop
stories for.

50. Three Plots that Inspire
Challenge Plot:
Someone faces a challenge (personal or
external) and overcomes it.

51. Three Plots that Inspire
Connection Plot:
Two people come together across a divide and
teach each other something.

52. Three Plots that Inspire
Creativity Plot:
Someone comes up with a new solution
to a long standing problem.

53. Ultimate goal of a story:
Present a change in a character – a journey
where they learn something about the world.

54. The Beginning of Your Story
The hook: set the stage and introduce who,
what, when, and where.

55. Present Your Problem
Set up what the character wants, so the listener
wonders how they will get it.

56. A story is a puzzle-the
audience is putting together
different pieces to figure out
what’s going to happen.

57. Include a detail or anecdote about
how the challenge was experienced.

58. Journey to Change
Struggle of the journey makes
the character change.

59. The Moment of Change
The AHA! moment.

60. After
How is life different because of this realization?
Include a detail or anecdote about how the
impact was experienced.

61. Call to Action
Relate the story back to your audience.
“I used to think the world was like this (where your
audience is now, where you were at the beginning of the
story), but know I know that this kind of world is possible.”
Empower them to apply the moral of
your story to their lives.

62. This story structure applies to all 3 plots.

63. Structuring great stories is all about choosing
the details to leave in and leave out.

64. Your Core Stories
The Calling
The story of how you came to
realize that you have to dedicate
your life to this work.

65. Your Core Stories
The Calling
Story power: inspires others to wake
up to their changemaker destiny,
just like you did. Also known as the
Moment of Obligation.

66. Your Core Stories
The Origin
The story of how
your venture got started.

67. Your Core Stories
The Lesson
What lessons have you learned along
this changemaking journey?

68. Your Core Stories
The Impact
A story of how your work has
affected the world.

69. You can use the 3 plot structures
for all of these.

70. The Calling:
– Connection: A person you met who
made you realize you had to dedicate
your life to this issue.
– Creativity: How you came to
understand this problem in the first place.
– Challenge: Your personal journey to
realizing your power in the world.

71. The Origin:
– Connection: A relationship that pushed
you towards starting this.
– Creativity: How you came to discover a
new solution to the problem.
– Challenge: The risk that you took to
tackle a big problem. What you had to
overcome to take that leap.

72. The Lesson:
– Connection: a person you served who
convinced you that you should change
your approach.
– Creativity: The story of how one of
your assumptions at the beginning of the
project was challenged.
– Challenge: How you’ve had to
overcome the great hurdles that have
been placed in your way.

73. The Impact:
– Connection: A person who you serve
who bonded with someone on your
team and discovered something new
about themselves.
– Creativity: A person who came up
with a unique way to solve their problem
because of your intervention.
– Challenge: A person who has faced
an incredibly difficult challenge but
overcame it through your intervention.

74. NOTE:
• THESE 3 WEEKS WILL (HOPEFULLY)
SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON A LOT OF
THESE POINTS.
• YOUR STORIES & BELIEFS WILL SHIFT.
• THIS IS A GOOD THING. BE OPEN TO IT.

75. Refining the Story:
• Choose one story to hone in on.
Decide what kind of plot it is. Choose the
worksheet that applies that plot structure.