1131: Start With The End

Business storytelling techniques: 5/30

START WITH THE END

Most movies resolve their TENSION in the final act, but in 1999, a low-budget film swept to success by doing something different...

The Sixth Sense had one of cinema's great, unexpected endings, but it didn't resolve all the tension.

In fact, it created more.

The audience kept talking long after they left the theatre, and word of mouth powered the movie to multiple box-office records.

Here's the lesson...

When we seek to influence or persuade, our job is to create tension that ONLY RESOLVES when our audience takes action...

Which is why it is so important to START AT THE END. What do we want our audience to do?

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In this list, the tension required grows with each level...

Every action has costs and consequences, and the harder they are for our audience to foresee, the harder our story has to work.

But when we are clear on our goal, we can work backwards and build a persuasive chain of tension and belief...

Consider a simplified chain I need to sell my storytelling course...

My audience needs to believe that:

Humans are wired for story
Stories are persuasive
Nick knows storytelling
The right story could 10x my business
$150 is a no-brainer to learn this skill.

Tomorrow, we'll consider two techniques to create tension – questions and contrasts.

This is Business Storytelling Technique 5/30. Please SHARE this post and follow me to get the whole series.



Question:

Which part of the simplified chain above is this series 'telling'?

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