How to Use One Story for Many Purposes

If you are using storytelling in your life, whether it’s personal or professional, you need to learn how to take one story and apply it to different goals and purposes you have.

You can take a story from your experiences and change it based on the details that you share. This might include certain setbacks or supporting characters who were involved in the event.

Another thing you might want to do is put a different emphasis on something in the story to set it apart. In one story presentation, you might be focusing on a physical injury while another pinpoints the financial burden it caused, or in another the emotional toll it took on you.

You can change entire theme of a story that you plan to tell. If you’re doing a motivational speech using storytelling, you might deliver a “rags to riches” type of tale showing how you came from nothing.

Or if you’re trying to raise funds for a cause your tone might be more serious and solemn, shining a light on a certain tragedy happening in the world that you feel needs to be changes.

You can alter the tone in different ways, such as going from serious to hilarious. Just because it’s a serious subject doesn’t mean you can’t be funny about it. Watch any comedian and you’ll see them talk about very serious matters but in a way that lightens the mood and still has potential to make people engaged and willing to take action.

You want to think about your purpose overall. Is it to give clarity about a topic? Maybe clarity about what your product can do for consumers or what your intentions are? How will you clear up any misconceptions?

You might instead try to make a connection with your audience that wasn’t there previously, and let the clarity occur for themselves once they feel as if they’re closer to you or your brand.

You can tell more gritty stories for certain audiences and if you’re using it for clients or customers, clean it up and tell a less harrowing account. Storytelling will allow you to pitch products without it sounding like a sales pitch.

Many companies put their mission story on their websites, but if your business has a blog, storytelling being woven into the posts is a great way to make them go viral and get more engagement, too.