Before – After – Bridge Storytelling Formula

• Star: An attention-getting, positive opening
• Chain: A series of convincing facts, benefits, and reasons
• Hook: A powerful call-to-action.

The star grabs your audience’s attention. The chain turns your audience...

One of the oldest and most straightforward storytelling formulas:

• Setup: Set the scene and introduce the character(s)
• Confrontation or “Rising action” : Present a problem and build up the tension
• Resolution: Resolve...

• Problem: Present a problem
• Agitate: Agitate the problem
• Solve: Solve the problem

First, you present a problem. Second, instead of presenting the “After”, you intensify the problem with emotional language. Fin...

• Why: Why the company exists (Why are you in this business? What motivates you)
• How: How the company fulfills its Why
• What: What the company does to fulfill its Why (i.e. your products and services).
...

Also known as Freytag’s Pyramid:

• Exposition: Introduce important background information
• Rising action: Tell a series of events to build up to the climax
• Climax: Turn the story around (usually the most exciting part ...

• Incident: Share a relevant, personal experience, to grab your audience’s attention.
• Action: Describe the specific action taken to solve or prevent a problem, showing that a change was needed.
• Benefit: State the benefits of...

• What is: The status quo
• What could be: The future that could be possible

Go back and forth between the two and end off with a …

• New bliss: The wonderful future with your idea/product/service adopted.
...

• Departure: A hero receives a call to go on an adventure, receives advice from a mentor, and heads out on her journey.
• Initiation: The hero meets a series of challenges but eventually completes the mission.
• Return: The hero...

• Introduce the character;
• Bring the story to its lowest point;
• Turn it around and finish with a happy ending.

Once you introduce the character of the story, describe how things went awful for him/her, using em...