Whether you’re, pitching a big breakthrough to your business colleagues, or just honing the art of storytelling, creating a compelling narrative is no small task. However, when done correctly, you will have an audience captivated by your ability to effectively communicate a subject and its essential information. Let’s begin with what steps you can take to begin forming your compelling story and what you can do to strengthen its presentation to an audience.

Establish Your Objective or Call To Action

You have to establish your goal or the goal of your story at a logical point in your writing. Whether it’s to teach a lesson or inform a customer, this is an essential step to make sure all your efforts remain on target and you are constantly working towards your end goal.

If your presentation serves to be merely informative, you should understand what it is you want to inform your audience of. Is it something that affects them currently, will it in the future, or is it purely a concept you wish to share and serve to open a discussion.

If you are selling a product, you need to have a clear avenue through which you will convince your customers that this product is something they need and it will solve a problem they experience first-hand.

Information Gathering

The story is in the details. Before you set down to writing things down, you should commit to completing some extensive research. Be prepared to include as many details in your story as possible to further strengthen your narrative.

In the case of creative writing, it’s important to create rich backgrounds and traits for characters as well as compelling arguments for why they make the choices they do. This can be carried over into business and investor-focused presentations. The story can be that of your customers, the hardships they endure on a regular basis, and how your service or product can relieve that hardship effectively and at the right price. Understanding how you will build a compelling story by introducing personality, decisions, and conflicts makes them all the more real to your audience. As a result, your story is that much more convincing.

In marketing and sales, you have to marry an attractive narrative with raw facts. It’s not enough to spout out statistics or only use flowery language to describe how great your product is without backing it up. You have to have both to write a compelling story. Make sure you have both the complete product details at your disposal as well as a compelling story that fits your product and brand culture, use, and personality.

Establish The Problem

The first thing you need to identify is the problem that your story addresses. If it’s about a product or service, is there a need for it? Is it already being addressed, albeit incompletely? How could it be improved? Lead your audience along the path that eventually culminates in your product or service as a solution to their need.

Deliver the solution

Now that your audience understands the problem, whether they identify with it right away or understand its value as a non-affected party, you can explain how your product or service delivers a solution. This is done often with a real-world example of the problem in action, followed by how your offering conquers it.

Commit Your First Draft

While one draft is great, several are better. Try developing stories that take different paths to get to the same goal. You can then identify the one which will resonate with a given audience the most. If you are presenting to different demographics or audiences, one approach may work better than another. If your audience is an emotionally compelled one, use a romanticised story versus a data-driven one that would be more suitable for an intellectual or rational audience.

Edit, Edit, Edit

Nothing kills a good story like errors. It ruins immersion and discredits your background as a subject-matter expert. It also makes you and your work look unprofessional. Give your reputation and your story the credit they deserve by proofreading ad nausea. Once you’ve proofed your story several times over, give it to someone else for notes. A second pair of eyes can often catch mistakes you had overlooked. Your co-editor may also have questions or suggestion you will find useful in strengthening your story.