19 methods · each one ready to run on a board
Storytelling methods
Story structures and techniques for case studies, pitches, talks and research read-outs. Each one is explained with an example of when to use it, credited to where it came from, and opens as a board where your team can build the story together.
Start a blank boardWorkshop methods
Story structures
The skeletons stories have been built on for centuries.
Story spine
Eight sentence starters, from "Once upon a time" to "And ever since then", that give any story a beginning, a turn and an end.
Hero's journey
The pattern behind many myths and films: a hero leaves the ordinary world, is tested, and returns changed, with something to share.
Three-act structure
Set-up, confrontation and resolution, with two turning points that move the story from one act to the next.
Freytag's pyramid
Five parts of a drama (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution) drawn as a rise to a peak and a fall.
Kishōtenketsu
A four-part structure with no central conflict: introduce, develop, twist, then bring the parts together.
Start in the middle
Open on the most gripping moment, then go back to explain how you got there, so the audience is hooked from the first line.
Story shapes
How the hero's fortunes rise and fall from beginning to end.
Man in a hole
Someone gets into trouble and gets out of it, ending better off: the story shape people never seem to tire of.
Overcoming the monster
A hero faces a threat that seems too big to beat, struggles, nearly loses, and wins against the odds.
Rags to riches
Someone starts with little, rises, loses it all in a crisis, and wins it back for good by growing into who they need to be.
Voyage and return
Someone goes into a strange world, is fascinated, then threatened, and escapes home changed by what they saw.
The quest
A hero sets out for a distant goal, meets trials and setbacks on the way, and finally reaches it after one last ordeal.
Make the case
Structures for a pitch, a proposal or a talk that asks for something.
And, but, therefore
Context joined with "and", a problem introduced with "but", and a consequence with "therefore": a story in one sentence.
Situation, complication, question, answer
Open a report or a pitch with what's true, what changed, the question that raises, and your answer to it.
Sparkline
A talk that moves back and forth between how things are and how they could be, then ends on the better future.
Monroe's motivated sequence
Five steps for a speech that moves people to act: attention, need, satisfaction, visualisation and action.
Positioning statement
Who it's for, the need, what it is, the key benefit, and how it differs from the alternative, in two sentences.
Tell it well
Small techniques that make any story easier to follow and remember.
Rule of three
Group your points, examples or reasons in threes, which audiences find easier to follow and remember than two or four.
Show, don't tell
Replace a statement about something with a detail that lets the audience see it for themselves.
Types of conflict
Check what your character is up against: another person, nature, themselves or the system, since conflict is what gives a story its pull.
Every method here is explained in our own words, and each page credits the person or organisation who created it. Collecting them in one place was partly inspired by Pip Decks (opens in a new tab), whose Storyteller Tactics card deck is worth a look if you like planning sessions on paper.