That’s a basic rule of turning an actual event into a story. I learned it during a group session at our annual work retreat. We had to tell our company’s story in an arc that spanned from the previous year all the way to 2030. The facilitator gave us a story template from Pixar, then sent us on our way.
Excited by the idea of telling a children’s story, we all jumped on what imagery we’d use. Was our company a farm, harvesting various crops for its ecosystem? Who were the main actors? Who was the villain? We spent a good deal of time on this until one member asked: “Yeah, but what actually happened with our company?”
He had a point. We were forming a nice story, but it didn’t map to the progression of events from real life we had to cover. So back to the drawing board we went. As it turned out, even agreeing on the real story was a challenge. Which events from the past year did we want to focus on? And what kind of future did we envision?
In the end, as group work often goes, we scrapped most of our story close to the end of the session. We reformulated the company progression completely, and our metaphor became a different one altogether.
Writing a good story is hard. Mapping a true story to an imagined one is even harder—especially if you start with the latter over the former. Reality first, metaphor second. That’s how we make sure our stories will have happy endings.
