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A fun game from improvisational theater is to tell a story in turns
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everyone's allowed a single sentence.
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Then the other person continues again, only one sentence.
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You'll be amazed at how quickly a story can break down.
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Let's look at an example.
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You and your partner play this game.
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You might think of a story about a man proposing marriage to his girlfriend.
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But before you even begin, your partner has said the first
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“Alex is seeking revenge.” Okay, you think, let's adapt.
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You figure out the reason and continue last summer: “Casey
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had stolen his girlfriend.”
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Your partner is unimpressed.
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“But that's not the reason why he’s seeking revenge.”
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Boom!
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Your story’s just broken down.
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A second time because your partner wouldn't go along with it.
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She was stuck with her story.
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Which is quite a common behavior.
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Look around and you'll see instances of people being stuck
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in the stories that they've built inside their minds everywhere.
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Worse, people are rather quick at constructing these stories.
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Many won't even listen until the end of what you're saying before
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starting to construct their own story.
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And once they've built it, it's hard to let it go.
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As a communicator, there's no use in complaining about that.
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Which leaves us basically two ways to deal with this.
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First, we can insist on our story, keep correcting their story.
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No, that's not what I mean.
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No, that's not how I mean it.
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No, that's not what I was trying to say.
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Or we could start from our audience's perspective, try to understand
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which stories they construct, where these stories are coming from.
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What do we know about their struggles?
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About their lives?
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About their beliefs?
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And attach to that so that the stories we tell are more like the stories they tell.
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So that it's easier for them to look at our story through their lens.
