Recently I heard a short, inspiring story about a young girl named Maddie while I was listening to NPR. The story was about four-minutes long and talked about how this twelve-year-old girl outed the video game industry for discriminating against girls.
Image source: Imangi Studios
The story captured my attention so much when I heard it on the radio that later I went looking for it on the MPR website and found that, in fact, there was a longer seventeen-minute version of the story.
Both versions of the story are very interesting. Go ahead, I encourage you to listen to them both. Then notice the the differences between the short, tight version of this story vs the longer, more detailed version.
Listening to the two versions of the same story, side-by-side will help you hear what you can leave out from your story when you shorten it. AND if the story is well told in the shorter version people will be compelled to WANT to learn more, like I did.
Remember: Once you have captured people’s attention you have permission to go into more details. You cause your listeners or readers to be hungry to know more.
Leaving people wanting to know more — THAT is the true power of using stories to build deeper relationships.
Visit the Resources section for a free 2-page storytelling framework and other storytelling tools.
