The Anatomy of a Brand Story

The ability to tell stories is one of the greatest gifts mankind was ever given. One might have you on the edge of your seat while another might have you laughing out loud.

In some cases, though, a story might have you bored to tears – even if it was actually based on an interesting concept. Let’s be honest, brands are responsible for a whole lot of these.

That’s because the anatomy of a story is important – more important than most people (and brands) realize.

I’ve had the opportunity to learn from a variety of master storytellers, each with slightly differing philosophies on what makes a story great. But while the best storytellers may differ on a few details, most agree on the fundamentals for telling a great story.

 Here’s what you need to know to start telling better stories.

The Three Act Structure

The three-act structure is one of the most basic storytelling tools available. It’s what suggests that all great stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end (acts one, two, and three respectively.)

It’s not rocket science and most people are aware of the “rule” but that doesn’t mean that everyone follows it when they actually sit down to write a story…or start speaking at a party.

The three act structure informs us that a great story is building up towards something. In the beginning, we have the setup, in the middle, we have an adventure, and at the end, we have a conclusion.

That’s such an effective structure that even a relatively mundane story can come off as somewhat interesting if it perfectly follows the structure. A great setup piques our interest enough to at least figure out how the story ends – even if we don’t care to hear about the adventure that took place to get us there.

The Four Key Moments

A three-act structure lays a great foundation for an effective story, but unfortunately, there’s more to it than that.

Working within the three-act structure, you’ll find four key moments in almost every great story out there. The first two come in act one, the third comes at the end of act two, and the final key moment comes near the end of act three.

What are these key moments?

They’re known by many different names, but I like referring to them by the ones I learned from an incredible writing curriculum years ago: the inciting incident, embracing destiny, the black moment, and the showdown (in that order!)

If these names mean nothing to you, that’s okay: explanations are below.

But first, let’s look at a different question: why are these moments so important in the first place?

It’s because they are the most defining things that happen in a story.

In the inciting incident, something happens that causes the story to take place. In a typical crime novel it might be the murder or burglary that’s witnessed at the very beginning.

For a brand story, the inciting incident has to do with the customer. As Donald Miller with Storybrand often says, the customer is your story’s hero. The inciting incident is likely the moment that they experienced the very problem your brand can solve.

The embracing destiny moment is all about the point where the hero decides to take action. Going back to the crime novel example, this would be when the detective takes on the case.

For the brand story, it might be the moment that the customer first decided to take action to get rid of their problem.

The black moment is the low point of the entire story. In the crime novel, it’s the moment that you find out the detective has been pursuing a dead end. Maybe he assumed that he’d jailed the perpetrator, but then quickly learns that another murder has taken place.

For a brand story, this could be the point where your customer assumed that they’d found a workable solution but ended up back in square one again with the same problem.

The showdown is where the hero and the villain go head to head. The detective confronts the murderer face to face.

In our brand story, the customer, armed with your product, takes on their problem once more. This time, they’re facing it head on. Hopefully, they succeed!

Consider how knowing these four key moments could help you define your brand’s story to tell it better.

Character Roles

In a good story, every character has an important role to play. If you’ve ever listened to a story that seemed extremely long-winded and uninteresting, odds are that it included way too much information about characters who didn’t play an kind of significant role in the story.

Worse yet, maybe these characters did play a significant role in the story and were just not that interesting.

Some of the most common types of characters in a story are:

• The hero
• The villain
• The mentor
• The love interest
• The friend
• The henchman

Of course, you’re not limited to just these types. At the same time, you don’t have to have all of them either. However, it pays to know the role each plays.

Stealing from the Storybrand framework again, it’s typically true that effective brand stories have the customer as their hero and the brand as the mentor.

Who (or what) is the villain? The very thing that your hero’s main problem is stemming from. If your hero is struggling to keep their drinks cold at the beach, then the hot sun is their “villain” in that story.

Great characters are essential to most great stories – especially if you’re hoping for your customer to relate to what you do and why you do it.

Plots Vs. Subplots

Another key problem with rambling, uninteresting stories is this: they fail to differentiate between a plot and a subplot.

Stories can be both complex and effective at the same time, but even complex stories have one main goal. Interesting side stories may come up along the way, but everything worth saying in a story should always have some relation to the main goal.

Otherwise, you risk confusing your audience to the point that they lose track of the main goal while you dive deep on a subplot.

There’s a pretty gruesome saying in the storytelling world that “kill your darlings.” It’s a weird way of suggesting that sidenotes and other instances you love and want to add in to a story may just be distracting your audience rather than pushing your story forward.

Every word you use should push the reader, listener, or viewer one step closer to understanding the end goal.