Story+PD: How do stories come to be?

Part of a series at the intersection of Storytelling and Product Development.

What could another framework possibly add?

I’ve made this framework because I felt storytelling in PD has different emphases in different contexts.  We’ll talk about intentions or modes for Telling a Story (eg to rally the troops vs to convey status). But what bugged me is the idea that sometimes, we shouldn’t be Telling a Story. Maybe we are and it’s not landing. Maybe we’re doing something wrong by focusing on the Telling. Maybe our Telling would be better if we stopped and listened and learned first. 

So this is my half-baked framework on Story Creation as cycle in 2x2 space.

Four-stage cycle: story-finding, story-writing in the interior realm of thinking, and story-telling that inspires story-living in the exterior realm of action.

With no experience in the world, there is no interesting story to write. And if we don’t share it no one to act on its lessons. With no internal processing, there is no story worth telling, just a ‘word salad.’

Think of the last time you told a story.

Maybe you brought someone up-to date on your activities. Maybe it was in a meeting, or over coffee, or in a Facebook post. Did the creation of the story take place externally, words flowing in the space between you and and other person? Of course not. It started before that. The content of your story came from lived experience in the external world, e.g; you went shopping for a suit, tried some on, bought something, and wore the suit later at a wedding. That’s what happened, but probably didn’t know the story when it was happening.

So did the creation take place in your mind, afterwards? Was it a literal log of events transcribed a page in your notebook? Or, did you think about what to tell and not to tell, whether this was a happy story or one about disappointment? Did you choose to center the story in the shopping for the suit or wearing it at the wedding? In the internal reflection and interpretation of experience, you were finding the essence and composing the story before the words ever left your lips.

Stories come to exist in a space of Learning-Expressing and Exterior-Interior Realm.

One axis is about observability.  Exterior Realm, or External Action, Deployment vs Interior Realm, or Internal Thinking, or Creation. It could also be Solo vs Social, in the way that telling and living your story is largely in the context of other people (Tom Hanks in Castaway is an exception.)

The second axis is about learning vs expressing, or analysis vs synthesis, listening vs talking. 

Storytelling is an iterative act of creation. 

Storytelling is also an iterative act of discovery, and expression, and action.

It’s depicted as a cycle, because stories, and products, are iterative. 

A simple Express-Test Cycle diagram greeted students every time they entered Terman, home of the Stanford Product Design program. 

There are several well-known versions of design processes (e.g. the “double diamond” ; IDEO’s design thinking model.) Iteration is a key tenet of almost all of the design and design thinking frameworks. Of course, these activities are fluid (all frameworks are wrong!)  Editing is writing, as writers will tell you, especially in the throes a long slog between that excitement of the first draft and the relief of finally going to print. Often we find the story through writing and rewriting, or by telling it to a collaborator and getting their feedback and insight.

Explaining the Four Stage Cycle  

It seems to me that story creation is a process that brings the creator between two realms, the external and the internal, and flows between thinking and doing, between learning and expressing. We are in some form of story creation when living in the external world, finding narrative through analysis, writing/shaping story to express our learning, and telling the story outside your internal realm, to other people.  

LIVE

Some stories are made to influence the audience to live in a certain way. 

We find out how well a plan works only when we put it into action.

A story of a company’s founding may be told to inspire us to act more boldly, for example, or to inspire us to embody a value of resourcefulness, as another. 

FIND

Some stories are made to find a human truth in the life we (or another) is living. 

We study and analyze the world and its stories to find a larger pattern or through-line. 

A story of a mother attending night school to become a nurse for higher wages may be gathered and heard for the purpose of finding a community’s narrative of how to achieve wealth equity.

WRITE

Some stories are made for the act of writing, and the telling is deemphasized. 

We write to report what’s happened, or order and edit our thoughts into coherence.

A story of a customer’s disappointment in buying insurance may be written so that a product requirement is created for an engineer to solve and clear from a backlog in Agile. 

TELL

Some stories are made for telling, to express, reassure, or entertain, not necessarily to persuade or inspire the audience to do anything except feel an emotion. 

We translate and share the stories we’ve lived, found, and/or written to others through media and performance. 

A story of how a team has overcome setbacks to achieve its deliverable may be told for senior leaders to feel confident in the team’s management and outlook for future milestones. 

Some story creation is centered in different activities or processes. Most of us are just living our stories, all the time, never captured or giving second thought, never told. Hours of research is digested into a data table in a report. It may or may not be interpreted into paragraph or an infographic.  Oral traditions are about the telling of a story that’s been found years ago and told a thousand times. Each one of these activities is a domain of skill we can spend a lifetime developing. 

The Risks of Skipping/Shrifting Steps on the Way to Storytelling

Two ears for listening, one mouth for talking.

When we are moved by an authentic story, it is from the creator’s thoughtful journey through realms. A good story is evidence of introspection and reflection and connects us to the internal experience of the storyteller, and is not just a glossy reporting of events. And that starts with curiosity and openness to experience, to be wiling to “listen as twice much as we speak,” as Epictetus advised.

“So, why is that important?”

We are living in stories all the time, but we don’t always tell the story that is most useful. Why? Often, it’s because we don’t take the time to reflect and FIND the essential thread or truth. And we don’t know how to craft an insight such that it lands and moves our audience. 

Don’t rush your research! Process it with someone and read your findings and insights out loud, and really listen to it.

“What do you want from me in this meeting?”

We may have a story we must tell, and we may begin writing it by filling out a pro forma slide template for the quarterly review… but if we don’t ask, “What action do we expect our audience to take?” or “How do we want our audience’s life to change?” then our efforts in writing will be for naught.

Imagine how our reader/listener/counterpart will LIVE the story, perhaps when they face a decision in the coming days and weeks.

“Where is this going? You lost me.”

If there’s lack of coherence or clarity in a story or presentation despite showing up with a killer truth you found, did you give the WRITING short shrift, and expect the telling to just come out great? Outlining, distilling our message, sequencing, paring away extraneous details… I’m not saying you have to treat every story as a senior thesis. And wordsmithing the last 20% can make you late for dinner, trust me. But a rough draft or an outline can be enormously helpful for clarity.

“So what have we learned from that experience?”

You have to be curious about life to learn what stories are worth writing and worth telling, and where to find the truth in those stories. After-action reviews, debriefs, journaling…. the learning is in the reflection.

If you don’t LIVE a story and learn from it, how will you FIND anything worth TELLING?

We are always engaging in creating and editing our stories. 

Storytelling expert and author Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) talks of telling stories as ‘band-aids”  or to solve problems, in other words, versus telling stories to “build bricks.” I take that to mean that we can always seek experiences in our lives, find meaning, and write stories that we have at the ready, instead of only responding to problems and then engaging in the cycle from scratch, when under pressure, we don't have access to the same insight and creativity. If something has moved you or shed some light for you, and you feel like you could write about it but you don’t have a use for it right now… write something now. Even if it’s just a sentence or a phrase. A time may come when that insight is needed.