# lens-storytelling

**Lens mode.** Source authority: Steven Bartlett's "diary"-format storytelling — emotional honesty, scene-led narration, the turning-point structure.

## When to use

Use when the deliverable has to make the reader *feel something specific before they think anything.* Founder letters, origin stories, long-form social posts, podcast intros, keynote opens, case-study narratives, retrospectives. Trigger this lens when the brief is "we have the facts but it reads flat" or "we need this to move people, not just inform them."

## Procedure

1. **Find the tension.** Every story worth telling has a *problem the protagonist could not solve at the time.* State it as a single sentence: who wanted what, and what was in the way? If the tension is "we wanted to grow and we did," there is no story — there is a press release.
2. **Set the before.** One concrete scene from inside the tension. Specific time, specific place, specific sensory detail. Not "I was struggling in my business" — "I was on the kitchen floor at 2am with the laptop open, refreshing Stripe." Detail is what makes the reader's imagination commit.
3. **Name the turning point.** The exact moment the situation shifted — a decision, a conversation, a realization, a forced hand. The turning point should be *small enough to be believable*. Stories collapse when the turn is "and then I figured it all out." Stories work when the turn is "and then I emailed the customer who had churned."
4. **Show the after.** What is different now, materially? Not "everything changed" — name two or three concrete differences. If the after is identical to the before plus optimism, the reader does not believe the turn.
5. **Pull a quotable line.** One sentence from inside the story the reader could forward by itself. Usually it lives near the turning point and it lands harder if it is plain. ("I was building a business that wanted me to disappear.") Mark it; the chained pipeline uses it.
6. **Name the emotional tone.** One word: *grief, relief, defiance, vindication, wonder, dread, calm.* The asset is built to land that one tone. Multiple tones in one piece read as confusion.

End every output with this exact contract:

**STORY-ARC:**
- Tension: ...
- Before: ...
- Turning point: ...
- After: ...
- Quotable line: ...
- Emotional tone: ...

## Decision rules

- **Use this lens when the reader needs emotional traction**, not when they need information. A how-to article wrapped in a story usually fails as both; a story used to deliver one decisive insight usually wins.
- **Small turns over big ones.** The believable shift moves the reader. The cinematic shift bounces off.
- **First person almost always.** Third-person founder-stories read as PR. If the author cannot speak in first person, write in observed first person ("I watched her do this") not third.
- **Skip this lens for transactional copy.** A cart-abandonment email does not need an origin story.
- **One arc per asset.** Two stories braided together dilute both.

## Anti-patterns

- **Impersonation.** Adopting a confessional cadence ("I want to be honest with you all…") without the actual confession behind it. Readers can tell.
- **Inspirational mush.** "I learned that the only thing holding me back was me." Reads as a fortune cookie. Replace with the specific action that proved the lesson.
- **Hero-journey cosplay.** Forcing a real, messy situation into a 12-step monomyth. The reader feels the scaffolding and disengages.
- **Trauma display without insight.** Detail of suffering is necessary; insight is what makes the suffering useful to the reader. Without insight, the story reads as a vent.
- **Emotional tone-mixing.** Defiance in paragraph one, gratitude in paragraph two, grief in paragraph three. Pick one. Edit toward it.

## Before / after

**Brief:** A LinkedIn post about why a founder shut down her first company.

**Before:**
> *Two years ago I shut down my first company. It was hard but I learned so much. Failure is part of the journey and I'm grateful for every lesson.*

Generic, no scene, no turn, no quotable line.

**After:**
> *I shut down my first company on a Tuesday, in a coworking space with bad coffee and a dying plant. I had eight months of runway and one customer who paid us $400 a month. The turning point was not the meeting with the lawyer — it was the call with my mom, who asked me why I was still doing this. I didn't have a sentence. That was the answer.*

Tension named (sunk cost vs honest assessment). Concrete before. Small, believable turn. Quotable: *"I didn't have a sentence. That was the answer."* Tone: clarity.
