A Framework for Writing Stories Only You (Not Machines) Can Tell
The quality of your stories is a direct reflection of the quality of your 'collection process'
Hello, it’s Michael here. Today, we’re going to be diving into the ‘story collection’ process I use for my writing as well as with my clients. But before we get into the actionable exercises, here’s a rant on how I define storytelling and the importance of betting on yourself.
The simplest definition of a story is a character faces a challenge and they’re willing to sacrifice everything, even their life, to overcome it.
However, the word ‘storytelling’ gets tossed around a lot today and has an array of definitions and interpretations.
Depending on the resources you pick up or the type of teachers you have, you may view storytelling as primarily a tactic to drum up business.
Many people encourage us to write with a specific audience in mind. To share our story as a way to build a personal brand and for businesses to embrace storytelling to show consumers the human side of their business. To shade our messaging in a way that says — “Hey friend, I’m like you. You should get to know me. I can help!”
Some marketers and copywriters encourage us to embrace tactics like “agitate,” “exaggerate,” and “twist the knife” to ensure the reader's pain points are amplified to the point they have no other recourse but to click on your offer.
There’s a place for this type of storytelling; the kind that’s geared towards persuading people to follow your flag.
But before we get to that point, we first have to define which flag we want people to follow. After all, learning how to persuade people prior to having a firm grip on your values and knowing what you stand for can lead to dangerous results.
The type of storytelling I’m talking about is rooted in the art of self-expression.
The type of storytelling that has existed since the dawn of civilization.
The type of storytelling where the only tactic is not having a tactic as you’re simply noting your unique human experience.
This kind of storytelling may not lead to the kind of mass appeal that sharing your story with an agenda and audience in mind can earn. But when your honest story — filled with bumps and beauty and warts and wonder — does connect with someone, worlds collide. Worlds where people don’t just want to follow your flag — worlds where instead, people are inspired to take your hand and carry your flag with you.
This is because, even though we all have unique drivers, one red thread that runs through humanity is that every one of us craves the power of choice.
The choice to make our own decisions.
The choice to decide what’s best for us.
The choice to decide whose story we want to be a part of.
This means your job when telling your story is not to try to push your agenda onto people, but rather to create the space for others to choose if they want to join your journey. Rather than worry about what people want to hear, we first root our story in exactly who we are, what we’ve experienced, what we stand for, and what we want to say. We treat our story like a piece of art — our unique expression of our unique human experience.
Like Rick Rubin, famed producer of many artists that can’t be replicated, shared in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being —
“Part of the process of letting go is releasing any thoughts of how you or your piece will be received. When making art, the audience comes last.”
This should give you extreme confidence.
This is because this kind of storytelling demands that you be yourself.
It entails that you first write your story for an audience of none.
One of the biggest challenges we face today is deciphering the smoke from the substance; the fact from the fiction; the artificial from the beating heart.
We’re also raised to believe the narrative that expressing fear, doubt, uncertainty, and embarrassment is a sign of weakness when, in reality, they are core attributes of what connects each of us as humans. We’ve all experienced these feelings, and being open about them has the power to build genuine connections with others.
By sharing your unique human experience, it’s the honesty that creates the market.
Let’s dive into the method I use religiously to capture and bring to life the stories we alone are best positioned to tell.
Embrace Becoming A Story Collector
The quality of your stories is a direct reflection of the quality of your story collection process. You may not think you have a story to tell, and that yours holds value. But it’s amazing what pops out when we commit to digging into our past experiences and becoming keen observers of our daily lives.
Our stories are already inside of us, and at times, sitting right in front of us. That is why we must embrace the mantra of becoming a ‘Story Collector.’
To make this process easy, I like to break down stories into two key categories:
Cornerstone Stories
Circadian Stories.
Let’s dig into what each of these categories entails:
Cornerstone Stories
Our Cornerstone Stories define the key experiences in our lives and show a transformation or state change (from poor to rich, lost to found, in the dark to enlightened).
For example, my Cornerstone Stories include the following journeys:
From a shy, stuttering kid to a still shy, stuttering adult who now teaches communication and leadership.
From losing my life savings in Central America to finding fulfillment when financially broke in Spain.
From being petrified to start a family to loving nothing more than being a parent.
I’m a big believer that the best way to start anything is by starting small. Whether I’m working with clients on their speeches or books, or teaching MBA students how to own their story and hone their voice, I begin by asking three questions.
What is one defining moment of your life (good or bad)?
What is your why for doing what you do?
Who is someone who’s had a profound impact on your life and way of seeing the world?
Though simple, these three questions demand thinking about just one moment, one motivator, and one piece of advice or influential relationship. However, an effective way to add to these themes is to create a Timeline of Your Life.
This exercise is similar to a Margarita pizza, and it’s a classic for a reason — it works, it’s easy to prepare, and allows for additional toppings as your story evolves.
Timeline of Your Life — The Macro Edition
Take a piece of paper, turn it horizontally, and draw a line across the middle from one end to the other. You can do this on your computer, but I recommend first completing this exercise with a pencil, as the act itself will slow you down.
Start from the day you were born and identify any events that have had an impact on your life up until now — personal and professional, big and small, good and bad. (These initial entries could include events or milestones such as graduating from high school or college, starting a new job, moving to a new city or country, reaching a big goal, falling short, romantic relationships, meeting your best friend, experiencing a loss or health issue, or going through any other sort of exciting or stressful time.)
Set a timer for thirty minutes to get your initial experiences down on paper. Once this first draft is done, since the exercise is brewing in your head, revisit it a day or two later, and then also a week or two later, while asking yourself, “What am I missing?”
Lastly, make this a breathing document. Our lives, and therefore our story, are a continual work in progress.
Even though I’ve lived in a handful of countries, worked in numerous sectors, experienced my fair share of both loss and love, and have overcome a decent amount of challenges, I didn’t see my story as inspiring. Nor did I think it was worthy of being shared, as it was simply my life, and I thought it was normal, even boring at times.
But that changed after I was finished with this exercise. I looked down at the piece of paper and immediately thought to myself, “I’m not normal, and my life has been far from boring.
I’d be willing to bet you’ll come to the same realization after doing this exercise.
You can never go wrong with this simple structure to get your stories mapped out — “I was here, and now I’m here. Here’s what happened.”
Timeline of Your Life — The Micro Edition
The biggest breakthroughs for not only me but also many of my coaching clients have come from taking the standard Timeline of Your Life exercise one step further by designing it around specific themes and digging deeper into the details of these experiences.
These could include the following areas:
Create a timeline solely of your defining career moments. This could entail
getting more specific regarding the challenges you’ve faced, the milestones you’ve
reached, projects you’ve worked on, key decisions you’ve made, or relationships you’ve formed for each year you’ve worked.
Create a timeline of your defining relationships. This may consist of intimate relationships or friendships that allow you to zero in on key lessons you’ve learned from these people and the experiences you’ve shared. Revisiting old
photos, emails, text messages, and social media posts can help iron down the time-frames while serving as a spark to remind you of the circumstances.
Create a timeline of the moments you got seriously pissed off. It’s amazing what
we uncover when we sit with the moments that made us angry. If you dig a little, you may find that writing the wrongs you want to right in the world helps you uncover your values.
You may find that creating a timeline of the moments you felt embarrassed, scared, or ashamed provides you with a bunch of kick-off points. By asking myself how I felt in these moments and what happened after, one major theme popped out — I survived.
In many of the cases, someone appeared in my life to either ease the pain or they helped me to completely destroy it — which are key ingredients for an engaging story.
After all, we rarely accomplish our goals on our own. Positioning other people as the hero in our own Hero’s Journey shows humility and that we’re strong enough to accept help.
If you put these timelines together, you get the content for many of my most-read articles and a big chunk of the stories in my book.
Circadian Stories
As storytellers, our job is to keep tabs on our lives and what we are seeing, hearing, learning, thinking, and feeling. To give readers a glimpse into our daily human experience and how we see and interpret the world.
It’s for this reason I recommend collecting your Circadian Stories, which come from the Latin roots circa, “about,” and diem, “day.”
To get started, jot down anything throughout your day in your notebook or phone that makes you go “Hmmm, that’s interesting!” “Awww, I remember that!” “Aha, I figured it out!” “Ouch, that hurt!” or “I love that!”
One thing I like to do to make sure all my “Hmmm’s!” “Awww’s!” and “Ouch’s” are cataloged is writing one sentence every day in response to the following five questions:
What’s one thing I learned today?
What’s one memory that popped into my head today?
What’s one thing I got wrong today?
What’s one thing I’m proud of today?
What’s one thing someone did that helped me today?
This should be the only homework assignment we’re given in school. The beauty of these questions is that the longer you stick with them, the more they will teach you how to see — which is arguably the most important life skill that very few people talk about.
You’ll naturally look for learning opportunities from your past and present, areas where you can improve, the good in others, and the good inside yourself.
You may find that by doing this exercise, you feel more confident in not only having stories to share but also in interviews, preparing for presentations, and conversations on the street.
This is because you’ve begun to collect stories of your highs and lows as well as the lessons you’ve learned along the way as you become a serious life observer.
From doing this one exercise for a month, you’ll have 150 potential stories to pull from. Sure, maybe they won’t all be hits. But it’s amazing how our story dots begin to connect when we make an effort to collect them.
My favorite stories (and the ones my clients most often reference when reaching out to work with me) are a result of doing this very exercise.
Think hard about the conversations you had, the missteps you made, the things you got right, the little lessons or human insights you gleaned, and the ways people helped you.
You can even begin by taking readers through your average day to share what you think, feel, and learn.
For my second post on Substack, I did just that and wrote about my average morning, trying to promote my book while my ADHD was flaring. Even though nothing groundbreaking took place, readers left dozens of messages saying how much it resonated and how much they enjoyed a peek into my daily life.
Your life is worth examining
When you can combine your Cornerstone and Circadian stories, you’ll create a magnet that has the power to pull the right people towards you for years to come.
When you zoom out, storytelling isn’t just a tool for marketing or influence — it’s a mirror we hold up to better understand ourselves and offer others a glimpse of what it means to be human.
The more we commit to collecting both our Cornerstone and Circadian Stories, the more we realize they’re not just content — they’re connection points. By leading with curiosity instead of strategy, and reflection instead of performance, we begin to attract the people who see themselves in our story, not because we tailored it to them, but because they are drawn to our honesty.
The stories that stick aren’t always the loudest or most polished — they’re the most felt. When you tell the truth about who you are, where you’ve been, and what matters to you, you do more than share a narrative. You give people the courage to see the value in their own.
And in a world full of noise, that kind of truth has staying power.