HOW to tell a powerful story + tips to transport and activate your audience

I’ve been leaning on beach reads this summer (to be honest, I lean on them year-round) and have always loved being transported to new places through stories.

But let’s be real, it’s easy to transport a reader to a beautiful beach on vacation. It’s a lot harder to transport them into, say, the lives of families in rural America.

But even stories about the same place and same community can be quite different from one another.

As J.D. Vance hits the news cycle as the Republican vice presidential nominee, I’ve been thinking a lot about an alternative to his Hillbilly Elegy (a memoir about life in rural America, which I did not read) - namely, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (a novel about life in rural Appalachia, which I read and found deeply moving).

Hillbilly Elegy (although it received critical acclaim from many upon release) has been described as condescending and inauthentic. I suspect the reason for this is the nature of the stories the book tells. As one Appalachian Studies expert put it, “One of the most troubling things to me about the book is that it talks a lot about unemployment and poverty, domestic violence, the opioid crisis, but it never gives you context for why those things exist the way they do in Appalachia.”

In contrast, one journalist notes, “Kingsolver slyly weaves the history of her home into Demon’s harrowing tale. From the Whiskey Rebellion to the boom and bust of the tobacco and coal industries, she describes a community preyed on for decades as governments and companies extracted their resources. And then came the opioid crisis.”

If you haven’t read Demon Copperhead yet, pick it up now - it’ll show you the power of story in transporting us much better than I can. But you know me, I’m going to try anyway! Here are some tips, strategies, and resources for transporting and activating your audience via powerful storytelling.

Can you share some tips for effective storytelling?

Storyboard. I have loved Echo Rivera’s trainings around presentations (which are, after all, simply a story you’re telling!) and one thing she emphasizes is that Step 1 is storyboarding. You have to map out the flow of the story you’re telling from the get-go and make sure it’s going to leave the audience with the right takeaways. So don’t jump to writing, slide creation, or anything else until you’ve taken the time to storyboard.

Get personal. Here at PoP Health, we’ve been working on a project for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused on how to improve public health cancer prevention messaging and one of our key takeaways has been the need to get more personal. What does this look like? It’s not about dry facts or abstract concepts. Instead, think personal true stories from “people like me” that are accompanied by the faces of those people, embedding health information in TV shows, appealing to one’s identity (tapping into a shared identity of being a mom, encouraging kids to “be a helper” instead of “help others”).

Be relatable. Use words your audience would use. Use metaphors to help boil down complex concepts into something your audience can wrap their arms around. Keep it local.

Get visual. Drawings, photos, videos, GIFs, all can be helpful, especially when they feature real people, make your audience laugh, or convey a powerful message. Infographics and data visualization - when done well - are also great tools.

What are some specific strategies for effective storytelling?

Co-create stories and messages: You know who already knows the real stories that will resonate with your audience? The people who’ve lived those stories. Also known as your audience. Co-create stories and messages with them.

Interpret your data for your audience: Use a storytelling sentence. Don’t leave it to chance or someone else’s interpretation. Don't assume the numbers speak for themselves. It's your story - so, tell it! Along the same lines, take this great advice from Stephanie Evergreen and make your data dashboard a webpage. Why? Because then, you’ll be telling an actual story! And as Stephanie says, “That narrative is where you get nuance. Expansion. Explanation. Clarification.”

Tailor content: First, you need to tailor content to your audience (based on a wide range of factors that are too much to get into here - more to come on that in the future), to the channel you’re using (please don’t post your static flier content to Tik Tok or vice versa!), and to the current and local contexts. Also tailor content to the type of deliverable (Website? Report? Social media post? Podcast?) and tailor the deliverable you’re choosing to work for your particular goals and audience. Even within a single deliverable, try to make it modular, so you can easily toggle in and out “modules” for different audiences based on who needs X background information or who cares about Y data.

What are some resources to help me tell powerful stories?

Echo Rivera’s free 6 Gears of Creating Engaging Presentations training

Stephanie Evergreen’s “delightful, strategy shifting, and totally free ideas for your next data viz”

Potential Energy Coalition’s Talk Like a Human guide (I think their lessons on how to communicate climate change apply much, much more broadly!)

Here’s the thing, effectively sharing what we know, do, and learn is essential to transforming health in our communities. And there is no better way to do that than to tell stories. So embrace your identity as a storyteller and get REALLY good at it - the results will surprise you.

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