🪑 If you love an analogy, here's one I made up today to explain the importance of evolving your construct in storytelling (you're building a story brick by brick).
If you want to sell a secondhand wooden chair. A really expensive one. And your audience can clearly see: A wooden chair. Nice curves. Many glorious asses probably sat on it. Why would you continue describing the chair to your audience as — a wooden chair?
Evolve your construct. Go wild. Be divergent.
Was this chair hand-carved from a beloved tree that fell in the backyard of a carpenter who spent half a decade perfecting their craft and made nothing but chairs? Were no nails involved? Were the very precise tools and methods used in the making of this chair exclusive to only this carpenter? How does it feel when you ease into it? Do you feel cradled? Protected?
Was the form of this wooden chair inspired by something else that’s not a chair? A river stone? Or is the symmetry of that very chair inspired by a beautiful nest woven by the migratory inhabitants of that very tree before it fell? Who was the chair designed for? The carpenter's grandchild? The carpenter's spouse?
A lot of words. All fiction here.
In the real world, what it means is that there are always better questions that can be asked. Ask mischievous questions. Ask audacious questions. Be stubborn about seeing the BETTER version of a story — in whatever and whoever is sitting before you.
A painter looks beyond, and that's storytelling.
That's brand building.
Because everything and everyone is a walking story.