Want to tell a better story? Murder will help

I’m throwing a Halloween barbecue for a bunch of families from my kids’ school. 

I finish cutting up a sausage, and start offering it around. 

One of the other parents asks,  

“It’s not pork, right?”

“Nope, this one is beef, you can eat it.”

“Wow, that’s great, thanks!”

I’d been told there was someone who was allergic, so I’d bought some beef sausage just in case. 

But as I go back to the grill, I start wondering. 

What if that’s not actually 100% beef? What if there’s some tiny bit of pork in it?

I look for the packaging, but I can’t see it. 

I dig around, find it in the trash… but it’s clear plastic, there’s no information at all. 

“Just out of curiosity, what would happen if you ate pork?,” I ask. 

“Oh, it would be terrible. My throat would close up, I’d start choking, it could actually kill me.”

My palms start sweating. 

I know that sausage is beef, I remember asking the butcher about it as it was so unusual. 

But that was… years ago. When they first started selling it. What if they changed the recipe since?

It still tastes like beef… 

“Well, I guess you always carry around some medication in case of an emergency, right?”

He’s chewing the sausage, so he just nods. 

Wait, was that really a nod? His eyes are closed. Did he even listen to me??

For the next hour, I keep looking out for that parent. 

Checking he’s talking normally. Moving around. Not clutching his throat in desperation while his eyes roll back and he goes towards the light. 

The barbecue ends and I breathe a huge sigh of relief. 

It’s fine. He’s fine.

I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t ruin Halloween and traumatise my kids and their schoolmates forever. 

But I still feel a bit shaken. 

I came so close to murder it's not even funny. 

Well… 

Maybe just a little bit funny 🤭

This is how most people ruin this

If most people told you that story they would absolutely butcher it (I mean, if they haven’t been reading this newsletter, that is 😉).

It would go something like this: 

“So I was throwing this barbecue, and I served this guy a beef sausage I’d bought especially, because someone told me he was allergic to pork. 

I got a bit nervous because what if that sausage wasn’t 100% pork, but it was fine, nothing happened so I guess it was.”

I know it because most of the stories I hear do exactly that. People get something that could’ve been a pretty cool story and ruin it because “nothing happened.”

And that’s only half true. Because nothing happened in the real world. But inside my head? It was a rollercoaster 😅

…And this is how you avoid that

Stories need conflict, tension, jeopardy, something to make them worth telling–but all of that can take place internally: 

• What do you think is happening? 

• How does that make you feel? 

• What do you think can (or will) happen as a consequence?

• How will that make you feel? 

Most of us leave pretty “normal” lives. The stuff that actually happens will rarely be worth making a movie about. 

But what goes on inside our heads?

Those are real blockbusters. 

Breathtaking action scenes. Epic dramas. Horror movies. Laugh-out-loud comedies. 

Those are stories worth killing for🤘

-Francisco 

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking on the Red Dot, take this Scorecard and instantly discover how likely your idea is to be accepted by a TED-style organizing committee

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

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