Struggle with Storytelling?

A simple storytelling framework you can ACTUALLY use

Gabriel Klingman

6 min readOct 13, 2024

His eyes glazed over… again.

God damn, I thought… This is important! Isn’t story telling supposed to help people connect with the idea?

He’s my best friend, yet every time I tell a story, I see his mind shut down…

I know people connect with stories. But maybe I’m just not meant to tell stories?

I must have said this out loud because suddenly I’m getting ads targeted for storytelling books, courses, and classes.

I bought a few… and then a few more… and then a few more after that. I even hired a coach to help.

Before I realized it, I spent a few years (and more than $1,000) on storytelling resources…

And here’s what I learned:

There are thousands of frameworks for telling a good story…

And most of them don’t work.

Sure, they may work when you have 2 hours to tell a story on a big screen. But for a 30-second anecdote or a quick email, most story frameworks don’t translate. They’re complicated. And impractical.

How do you communicate the character's inner journey, outer journey, and the 7 turning points of a story… when you only have 30 seconds?

You can’t.

I needed something quick. Actionable. Something that I can remember on the fly.

If I can’t use this in daily conversation, then what’s the point?

After spending $1,000 on storytelling frameworks and studying them for a few years, I narrowed how to tell a story down to its essence…

How to tell stories that get people to pay attention.

But before I show you the simple framework I created for myself, I have to be honest about something…

I’m making an assumption… I’m assuming that you’re like me, in 2 ways:

1. You have something you want to say. You have a message you want to communicate. And you want to use story to emphasize that message.

2. You have a basic story in mind (quick crash course — a story is made up of 3 things: 1. A character (you) 2. who has a desire, and 3. some sort of conflict that gets in the way of the desire).

Now, I want to let you in on a secret… Something no story book is teaching…

Ready?…

HOW you present a story (the words you use, the story you choose), matters much less than you think.

If you’re using a story to illustrate a point, there’s 1 thing that matters more than the story itself…

And it’s the Angle.

This will make sense in a minute.

But first, here’s my framework for communicating a story that gets people's attention:

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Action, Angle, Antidote

When presenting the story, I follow the process in order:

Action — Start the story at the height of action. Stop when the action stops.

Angle — Connect the antidote and story to what the audience cares about.

Antidote — Give the audience the solution to their pain.

When coming up with the story, I follow the process in reverse.

Let’s dive deeper into each:

The Antidote

This is the reason I’m writing. The take away. The insight.

I think of it as the medicine I’m giving someone to help them get out of the pain they’re in.

I start with the end, so I can make sure the story leads here. Once I have the Antidote, I focus on the hardest part… the Angle

The Angle

This is where the magic happens.

People only pay attention if what you’re talking about is important… to them. Your audience is no different.

Every day I come up with 5 new ideas to write about for Writerpreneur. But I only work on 1. Even though I like all 5 ideas, usually only 1 has a clear connection to what YOU (the audience) care about.

So that’s the idea I pursue.

If my content isn’t resonating (meaning it isn’t getting traction), It’s not because the story wasn’t communicated well…

It’s because my angle was off.

Here’s how I come up with the angle:

I think of the Antidote, and ask… “Why is this antidote important to them?” After I get an answer, I ask “Why is this answer important to them?” I ask this question another 3–4x.

Each time I answer that question, I get higher-level answer. When I first ask the question, the answer seems obvious. After the 3rd or 4th time, it feels like I’m hitting my head against a wall. I get frustrated. Then, in frustration, I answer the question again.

This is usually when the REAL reason shows up. The reason my audience actually cares. Not the surface level reason why I thought they would care.

If you get the angle right, you can write a bland story and people will still respond.

The Angle how I bridge the gap between the story (the action) and the message (the antidote).

Now for the final step: the Action.

The Action

Come up with a story that connects to the angle.

There’s only 2 rules to follow:

1. Start the story at the height of action.

2. Stop when the action stops.

That’s it.

Let’s break these down:

1. Start the story at the height of action.

The action can be physical — someone yelling or punching.

Or it can be emotional — the moment you realize you won’t win the tournament, when the divorce papers got signed, when you realize you’re getting laid off.

We start in the action because action in a story naturally creates curiosity.

If I start a story with “3 punches to the face later, I knew I made a mistake…” are you going to stop reading? No!

It doesn’t matter what the email is about — you have to learn what happened! It’s human nature.

You want to know, “What happened? Why is Gabriel getting punched in the face? What was the mistake? Am I making this mistake? Will I get punched in the face?”

Don’t worry about curiosity and open loops. Focus on the action.

Action inherently has conflict. Where there’s conflict, there’s curiosity and open loops.

So start in the action.

2. Stop when the action stops

The second the action stops, I move on to the Angle.

Action moves a story forward.

If there’s no action, the story is dead and you will lose your audience.

The moment the action stops, explain why it matters to the reader (the Angle).

You’ve earned their attention — don’t lose it by continuing with a dead story.

BONUS:

This isn’t required (meaning don’t worry about this until you’ve got the rest of this framework down), but it adds weight to your stories:

3. Show the emotion and action, using your senses.

What does the action feel like?

Let’s take the above example and improve it.

Instead of “3 punches to the face later, I knew I made a mistake…” I could show you what this felt like.

“Blood falls from my mouth onto the floor. ‘This is gonna be a nightmare to clean up’ I thought… I see him winding up for a 3rd punch and accept that I’m going to get the shit beat out of me today…”

This intro still starts with the action. But now it’s full of sensory language.

Use your physical senses:

See
Hear
Smell
Feel
Taste

Explaining the emotion and the action using your senses adds weight to your story.

To recap: