Storytelling Canvas

1 Before you start

What do you want to achieve with your story? Why do you want to tell it?

2 What do you want to achieve?

What you’ll need to understand when designing your story is that there must be a goal. What do you want your audience to know, feel, or do afterwards? Your goal needs to be quite selective: you can make only a few points in your story!

3 Who are in the audience?

In addition to knowing what you want to achieve, you need to understand who your audience is. What do they care about? Why should they listen to your story? Different audiences need different stories; one size does not fit all! You might even use the right side of the value proposition canvas or a persona canvas to map the audience. Test your assumptions: while designing and telling the story, revisit your persona, and update it with what you learned.

Tip! If you are pitching to an investor, the customers of your product are not necessarily the audience of your story. Your investor has a totally different set of needs than your customer.

4 Map the audience's before and after state.

In order to be meaningful, your story should change your audience in some way. Their beliefs, emotions, or knowledge should be transformed by the time you are finished.

First, ask yourself: How does your audience feel about your goal before they heard your story? Do they care about it already? And then, think about what you'd like them to think about once you’re through? Trying to define it from the audience’s perspective is key.

5 Create the story

Try to come up with arguments that may change their minds, and make sure you have a list of rational, emotional, and ethical points. What is your “proof”? Do you have examples? Anecdotes? Find the ones that will resonate with your audience.

There are different key ingredients that you can use to plot your audience's journey through the story. With your team, spend time to come up with a good number of these. Don't bother about the order yet, just try to find as many as you can.