“Great stories happen to those who can tell them”
- Ira Glass
The Story Rules Content Hub
Welcome to the Story Rules Content Hub – the best place on the web to learn all about storytelling techniques for work. Here’s where you get rich storytelling examples, analyses, viewpoints, interview nuggets, visuals, quotes, and much, much more. To find out how you can make the most of this resource, please watch this 12-minute video.
You can explore this (for now free!) resource in four ways:
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The most important question before any project
In September this year, I’d taken the popular course, ‘The Art of Clear Writing‘ by Amit Varma. I’d written about him in an earlier post and had highly recommended the course to anyone who needs to write at work. The course was eye-opening for me in many ways. I learnt about the dos and don’ts of word choice, sentence construction, rhythm in writing and other obstacles that impede the reader’s understanding. Oh, but that’s not why I would recommend the course. The real value from Amit Varma’s course Don’t get me wrong – the writing guidelines are valuable. After the …
That moment of blinding insight in a Zoom breakout room
About 10 days back. I’m in a Zoom breakout room of a course that I’m participating in. The coach has given us an exercise and asked us to share our response with each other. It’s my turn. I talk about my ‘ABCD’ Data Story framework. You could tell I’m excited about it. After all it took me several years to distil it to its essence. I’m expecting words on the lines of: “Oh that’s so simple yet clear!”, or “You’ve broken down the topic so well!”. Instead, I get a few points of feedback that make me go: …
E11: Brent Dykes – Author of seminal book on Data Storytelling
Sajith is a VC at Blume Ventures and arguably the most astute observer and thought-leader on India’s vibrant start-up ecosystem. …
The art of stealing well
Hope you had a memorable Diwali celebration with friends and family. Let me know if any of you tried the Story Housie game! Welcome to my content recommendations and reviews for Nov-21: a book, a podcast, articles and a couple of videos. Let’s get started. 1. Book a. ‘Decoding Greatness: The Hidden Strategy for Achieving Extraordinary Success’ by Ron Friedman The year was 1983, and Steve Jobs was incensed. He had realised that a certain Bill Gates of Microsoft had gone ahead and launched his own operating system, something called Windows. Here’s how the author describes what happened next: Jobs was livid. …
Storify your Diwali gatherings with this game
When you’re reading this, I’ll be on vacation in the lovely hill state of Sikkim! So this edition will be a short one. But it does pack a punch. I have a suggestion that can dramatically improve your family/friends gathering this Diwali. So, what happens when we meet friends and family during Diwali? Card games. Food. Catch-up conversations. More food. Gossip. Sweets. All good. But here’s a brilliant game that you can use to transform your get-togethers. It’s simple and fun to organise. It gets everyone involved from the youngest to the oldest. And what’s more, you get …
Every Story Framework Ever. Explained.
Aristotle’s Three Part framework. Freytag’s Pyramid. The Hero’s Journey. SCQA. The 7Cs Story Framework (ahem). There is no shortage of story frameworks. But why are there so many of them? What are the similarities and differences between them? And which one is the right framework? All questions answered in today’s email. This is a different kind of post – I decided to tell a visual story, instead of the usual long mail. And then I said, why don’t I go ahead and make it a video… Led to a fair amount of stress given that I was travelling this week …
E10: Max Dickins – Improv Principles for better outcomes at work
“So, I have this concept which I call ‘Listening to Ignite’, which is, you’re listening for things that can really light up the other person. So, it’s about what your curiosity clicks into. And (so) can you ask a question that allows them a launchpad to show the best of their skill, their experience, their expertise, their background? And I think in that occasion, when you’re thinking of those questions, when you’re thinking of something you remember, not being present with that person is almost the more generous act.” That is Max Dickins, an improv artist who helps leaders and …
