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Why the story you love may be bad for your business
Business storytelling means knowing when to let go of the story you’re most eager to tell.
Most writers understand the experience of becoming strongly attached to something they’ve written: a scene, a paragraph, a metaphor, and yes, a story.
Note: Prefer to listen? A version of this article is available as Episode #103 of the Strategic Storytelling Podcast.
Writers soon learn that attachment signals, “This needs to be removed.”
In a classic book on the art of writing, Natalie Goldberg wrote about the time an editor insisted on removing a scene from her novel. It was something about a chicken and she really, really loved that scene.
“Maybe I’ll use it somewhere else,” she thought. But of course, over time, she added the chicken story to a long list of discarded ideas.
In the same vein, clients often come to me with a story they love.
For example (a composite of 3 clients):
Tom, a relationship coach, had a story he really wanted to tell. He got into the business because he’d gone through a bitter divorce and struggled to get back into the dating scene. “Maybe I should give up and enter a…
