make-stories-stick

name

make-stories-stick

description

Turn true experiences, business examples, project updates, customer cases, speech ideas, and rough memories into memorable audience-centered stories that earn attention, build trust, transform a belief, and leave a useful recall anchor. Use for business meetings, leadership presentations, pitches, keynotes, customer conversations, Toastmasters speeches, story discovery, story refinement, audience adaptation, or diagnosing a story that sounds like a report, lacks relevance or credibility, has no clear lesson, or ends without a memorable callback.

Make Stories Stick

Create a truthful story that changes what the audience understands, believes, or does. Read references/stick-framework.md before drafting or diagnosing a story.

Choose the job

Identify the user's primary need:

• Discover: Find story candidates inside notes, updates, or memories.
• Build: Turn a true event into a ready-to-say story.
• Refine: Strengthen an existing story without replacing the user's voice.
• Diagnose: Explain why a story is not landing and recommend concrete changes.
• Adapt: Retell the same event for a board, team, customer, or speech audience.

Do not force a story when a direct update, answer, or recommendation would serve the audience better.

Establish the message contract

Infer what is safe to infer, and ask only questions that materially change the result. Determine:

• audience and setting;
• target length;
• desired audience belief, feeling, decision, or action;
• the true event or evidence available;
• why this speaker has standing to tell it;
• confidentiality constraints;
• any line, image, or action worth recalling later.

If details are sparse, provide the strongest useful draft or reflection available before optional questions.

Protect truth before improving drama

Maintain three mental buckets:

• Confirmed: The user supplied it as fact or exact wording.
• Approximate: The meaning is remembered, but wording or detail is uncertain.
• Unknown: The source does not establish it.

Never invent metrics, dialogue, sensory details, thoughts, reactions, praise, causation, or outcomes. Paraphrase approximate dialogue openly. Use placeholders only when clearly marked for the user to verify.

Select the story-worthy moment

Choose an event that provides relevant proof or meaning for the audience. Prefer a small, authentic, relatable moment over a grand but weakly connected anecdote.

Rank candidates using:

1. relevance to the desired belief or action;
2. real tension, uncertainty, choice, or surprise;
3. credible personal involvement;
4. a defensible belief shift;
5. an anchor that can help the audience act later.

If no candidate clears that bar, recommend a concise direct message or truthful reflection.

Build the audience journey

Use four moves. Treat them as functions, not a rigid script.

1. Earn Time

Open in the first 10 to 20 seconds with a relatable problem, tension, question, or moment. Quantify only with a verified number that improves understanding. Remove biography, company history, and setup that the audience can infer.

2. Build Trust

Show why the story and speaker are credible through relevant lived experience, observable evidence, honest vulnerability, or responsibility for the work. Use only the credibility needed for this audience. Avoid credential dumping, self-congratulation, and borrowed authority.

3. Transform Belief

Make one change visible:

old belief -> event or test -> new belief

State the new belief in plain language and connect it to the audience's situation. Do not attach several unrelated morals to one story.

4. Anchor It

Give the audience a future retrieval cue. Connect a specific situation to a memorable image, phrase, question, or action.

Useful shape:

The next time you [specific situation], remember [image or phrase], and [useful action].

Keep the anchor natural. Do not repeat it like a slogan or promise an outcome the story cannot support.

Bring the story to life selectively

Use sensory and emotional detail as a toolbox:

• choose one or two meaning-bearing details rather than mechanically listing all five senses;
• express emotion through a truthful thought, body response, choice, or consequence;
• preserve the speaker's natural humor and boldness when appropriate for the audience;
• remove decorative detail that slows the story or changes its tone.

When the story needs close scene work, use $zoom-into-moment if available to develop Place, Action, Speech, and Thoughts. Keep this skill responsible for the wider Time, Trust, Belief, and Anchor journey.

Adapt for the room

• Board or executives: Emphasize strategic tension, evidence, risk, belief shift, and decision relevance.
• Team: Emphasize the human moment, practical behavior, shared learning, and next action.
• Customer: Emphasize recognizable friction, proof of value, and a non-exaggerated outcome.
• Toastmasters or keynote: Emphasize emotional progression, conversational language, and a closing callback.

Keep the event true across versions. Change emphasis and length, not facts.

Coach incomplete inputs constructively

Never stop at "place missing," "emotion missing," or another deficiency label. For every weak or unavailable element:

1. explain why it matters;
2. give the best truthful substitute now;
3. recommend one retrieval prompt, omission, or capture-next-time habit;
4. show how the revision would improve the audience journey.

Useful retrieval prompts include:

• What problem would this audience recognize immediately?
• What gave you the right to learn or share this lesson?
• What did you believe before, and what do you believe now?
• When should the audience remember this story again?
• Which physical detail carries meaning rather than decoration?

If the user cannot recover a real scene, write a reflection instead of manufacturing one.

Produce the response

Unless the user requests another format, provide:

1. Purpose and belief shift: Current audience belief -> desired belief.
2. Recommended story angle: The strongest candidate and why it fits.
3. Ready-to-say story: Match the requested time; default to 60 to 90 seconds.
4. Story map: Earn Time, Build Trust, Transform Belief, Anchor It.
5. Detail choices: Sensory or emotional details used, omitted, or needing confirmation.
6. Anchor line: The exact closing recall cue and where to place it.
7. Delivery cues: No more than three high-impact notes.
8. Integrity and upgrade plan: Assumptions, uncertainties, and the next improvement to make.

For multiple candidates, rank no more than three and fully draft only the recommended one unless asked otherwise.

Quality gate

Before returning the answer, verify:

• The opening earns attention without clickbait.
• Trust comes from relevance and truth, not status theater.
• One belief genuinely changes.
• The anchor tells the audience when or how to recall the lesson.
• Sensory details carry meaning and are supported by the source.
• The story is concise enough for the setting.
• Confidential identities and claims are handled safely.
• A direct message was considered before recommending a story.