Bo: What are the top elements you look for in a good story?
Mary: There are always three things I’m looking for—because one of the things people come to me for is figuring out which story to tell. Number one is it has to be something that makes you vulnerable. The one that you don’t want to tell very well may be the one because you have to exude some sort of vulnerability in the storytelling.
Second, I’m looking for something with conflict or struggle. As Bo said, without conflict or struggle, you don’t have a story.
Bo: What I didn’t say when I was talking about conflict and the enemy earlier is that a lot of time it’s ourselves. We’re always battling ourselves. We are our biggest enemy. Don’t discount yourself as being that giant Goliath.
Mary: The final piece is transformation. If you think of yourself as a character in the story, that character has to change or grow in some way from when the story began and where the story ends. You need to have learned something or had some type of enlightenment or shifted the way you think about something. So there has to be some kind of transformation that happened because of the story.
Those are three things I’m always looking for. It’s what shifts from telling an actual story versus just kind of giving an anecdote where you’re relaying something that doesn’t really have import or weight to it. If those three elements are present, it can usually be developed into a really well structured story.
Bo: So when you’re thinking about your personal story, think about the moments when you were most vulnerable. Who or what were you battling? And how did you change (or maybe are continuing to) as a result? To hear more from Mary, stay tuned to the blog and check out her website.
