Storytelling with Impact: How to Craft a Good Story and Have Impact
Tip and tricks from my head, my heart, and my full presence
All my life, I have been a writer. Writing, crafting stories, is in my bones, my skin, my breath. And yes, I have earned my money with it in the past. Within an advertising agency writing long copy, as a business journalist, and as a fiction writer being published in magazines such as Cosmopolitan when I was only 26 years old.
But that being said, my writing was always somewhere at the edge of my life. It never took off, it never flew on its own wings. My writing was never powerful enough to touch people’s lives, I guess.
First of all, I was in business. Being an international marketing manager or commercial manager, or business unit manager. Busy. Sidetracked. Reliving the past and worrying about the future in my oh-so-rational head. And all the time, I asked myself: “What do I want? What do I really want?”
Only when I went to the Blue Economy Summer School in 2013, my life started to shift. I studied lots and lots and lots! I found my passions in systemic thinking, innovation in line with nature and aligning economy and ecology. And I became a freelancer one year later.
My life has taken its course and impact is now written all over it. Initiating my own impactful projects and giving attention to what I find important in life. And I’m so glad that writing is in it again. Big time!
Last year I found my voice, started publishing on Medium and the words flow since then. Nearly every day I feel the vibe and craft my stories with inspirational colors.
And my stories are finding their audience. Slowly, steadily. No rush. The people in my niches of ‘a more beautiful world’, ‘influencers with a purpose’ and ‘innovation beyond sustainability’ will find me when they are ready.
And hopefully, they will become inspired to take action in their own lives. Listening more deeply, connecting to other people with care, distributing more love in the world and creating the business models and policies that will really make a difference.
In my article “Work: 6 Professions Most Needed in 2020 and Beyond” I write that we need storytellers. Lots of them! We need you!
“We do need them desperately. Storytellers with words, with images, with film, with music. As a human species, we need to evolve. And seeing the bigger picture helps. We need influencers with a purpose.” — Desiree Driesenaar
So what lessons can I give you that might help you become a great storyteller with impact? What lessons will make you more successful social entrepreneurs?
I’ll try to give you some tips and tricks. And I’m always open to questions or stories about how YOU do it in the comments. Let’s learn from each other.
How to Craft Stories?
1 Write, write, and write even more. Writing, creating stories, is a process. It will start to come more naturally the more you build your craft. And don’t think I only mean writing.
Use your broad scope of storytelling talents in all creative processes! Whenever I say writing in this article, I mean all output! Just tell stories. Make films, take pictures or paint. Connect to people through these stories and get a feeling for what works. When does the story really land? What impact do your stories have?
Don’t analyze with your head, just observe. Do it differently next time and observe again. You will get a feeling for what works. And you will again build your craft with the lessons learned.
Learn with your head, heart, and body. Lessons are only valuable when you can implement them in your life, in your writing. And this is a great way to make learning intuitive.
And the best outcome of all this advice? You will need much less effort! If you write intuitively, the quality will be better and the time spent is less, much less… and much more enjoyable…
2 Read about the craft of writing. Study with your head. Then follow step 1 again. Implement all the things you read by writing, writing, writing. Once in a while, take up the list of tips and scan your texts to see if you implemented them. How you implemented them. Where you implemented them, or not…
Observe, smile to yourself if you see a need for improvement and do it better next time. You will notice that every time you scan your own texts with the list in your hand, you will have improved. And it prevents you from getting too rational about all these tips, trying to fit them all in.
The common tips, such as “show don’t tell” will emerge in your texts miraculously. You smell the seaweed in the ocean and hear the roar of the waves. You lick the leaves of mangroves and be surprised at their salty taste. You feel the sun on your back and the wind on your cheeks. Jumping with joy!
You will use “active verbs”, not “too many adjectives” and create a feeling of being there! Go for it!
3 Use all visual sets available. Readers are loving words. But all people, including readers, have the strongest developed visual senses. So, they love a clear structure. They love headlines in a clear font. They love short paragraphs. They love pictures that complement the words.
And don’t think I did this right the first time around. I’m learning, just like you. Some practical things I did differently when time progressed?
- Short paragraphs. I have been a journalist, so I know how to craft structure and paragraphs. But it took a reader to tell me that my paragraphs were too long for the internet. When reading on a phone, you want short snippets
- Visual links. At first, I made my links underneath the text. Like this. “Climate Change Is Not Our Most Important Problem.” But people want to be triggered visually. So I started using the embed function… Click + on a new line and then click <>. Or just copy the link on a separate line, press ‘Enter’, and it will show like this
- Be careful with links, by the way. Use them sparsely and just when relevant. ‘Medium’ doesn’t like spamming and neither do your readers… It’s much better to involve them and ask them questions than to force your thoughts down their throats
- Use all fonts available for headlines and paragraph division. Large title font for the top-title, smaller title font just beneath and for all the in-between headlines. Use numbers or first letter boldness for visual enhancement. Just judge how it looks as a whole. If you would like to read it, others might too
- Use pictures that complement your words. Pictures that are relevant. Pictures that are beautiful. The best ones are your own pictures that tell relevant stories. In impactful stories, REAL is what counts. So, so don’t hesitate to use your own pictures when they are beautiful and relevant enough. But I also find them on free websites, such as Pexels or Unsplash.
- Always credit the maker of pictures, the quote-giver, the inspiration that started your story in the first place. They gave you their gift, the least you can do is make them famous with your own work…
- Use variety. A quote here. A link there. Some more text. A picture that illustrates your story well. Think about your headlines. Read other headlines to see what might work. And then experiment. There is no recipe for success set in stone…
How to Create Impact?
4 Head, heart, and presence. There is a time for everything. And finding your passions inside yourself is the start of all. You cannot be impactful if a subject doesn’t touch your heart. And your words will not start to fly on their own wings if you don’t feel touched by what you are putting out in the world.
So, find your unique set of passions. The following inspiring words are spoken by one of my friends, Li An Phoa, who is a very impactful storyteller.
“Listen to what makes your heart sing. And then follow the music” — Li An Phoa, Drinkable Rivers.
I translate it as ‘Head, Heart, and Presence’. My ‘head’ has been trained for a long time. My heart and my presence have had a shorter time of training, but a large intensity recently. And that pays off now.
The ‘heart’ is where my passion is. It definitely helps my writing to make time listening to my heart. Meditating, spending time in silence, connecting to nature… I MAKE time…
The ‘presence’ is my bodily awareness. I never really knew what presence meant until I trained it enough to feel it. Nowadays, I am floating in and out of it and at least notice when I’m firmly in the ‘here and now’. And that’s when the words flow best for me…
There are still no easy words to describe it. But one book that explains it is ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle. When I first read it, I had no clue. Now it makes a bit more sense to me…
5 Impact comes when the audience finds you. So it’s wise to use different social media to cross-link. Post snippets. Facebook for more general and personal things, LinkedIn for business-stuff.
Although it can be great fun to cross-over. To post unexpected things somewhere and make colleagues in the workplace wonder… I’m starting to dare bring my heart into the workplace and with it comes the fun.
Go where your audience already is. It’s nice to have your own blog on a website with no visitors. But it is much more impactful if you post a relevant article in a LinkedIn group with a certain interest. Or a Facebook group. Post a friends-link so they can read for free. And they might become your fans afterward…
On Instagram, until recently I only posted my more personal pictures because I have mainly friends from my daily, physical life following. On Facebook and LinkedIn I get so many requests for links, that many followers are not people I really know personally anymore.
However, there’s always an opportunity to learn, so in the near future I will check out the tips in this article by Fab Giovanetti I liked. Who knows what impact it might bring…
Well, enough for now. There is a time to learn and a time to wrap up. I really hope my contribution to your impactful writing (or filming, or painting, or music-making) will pay off. And I’m very interested to follow your progress. Have fun making an impact!
Keep up the good work, great purposeful storytellers of our time! I applaud you all. I love you all. And if you want to connect, please find me on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. Or join me somewhere, enjoying nature, building my craft…
Thank you, Mike, for adding your wise energy to my creative writing words. You are definitely part of my impact!