Save that Awesome Idea for the Greater Good
The first lesson building trust with yourself is knowing when your idea won't work
If you’re reading this on the day I sent this out, I’m currently conducting a 3-hour storytelling workshop for a marketing team in NYC. Like any good host, my rehearsals have included crucial feedback on my presentation. Is this section needed? Would they find this valuable?
Slides that I spent a lot of time creating and giving thought to were being pushed to down to the appendix. They weren’t serving a purpose for this workshop, but I could keep them in case something came up during the session. No biggie.
But I couldn’t let go of 10 slides. If you had asked me at the beginning of the project what I felt was necessary for this workshop, it was encompassed in these slides. How else would the team understand the power of storytelling without these carefully crafted slides?
But during each walk through, these slides wouldn’t work. I’d shift them to the top, move them to the end, and I still couldn’t make them fit.
This is when William Faulkner’s quote “In writing, you must kill your darlings” comes into play. These 10 slides were my darlings, and I eventually realized I had to get rid of them to maintain the structure of my story.
Kill your darlings is a piece of advice given to creative writers so that they don’t become attached to content that doesn’t work. It’s just as important for screenwriters to consider as it is for anyone in business. Get over your clever self for the greater good.
If you don’t ruthlessly edit your content, your audience or customer will do it for you. They’ll feel lost trying to understand your point, and naturally fill in the content gaps with their own stories.
Even beyond content - kill your darlings so you’re open to trying something new and not protecting the darling you do at work because it’s “always been done this way.”
We must be willing to remove elements of our taglines, story angles or ways of doing things, even if they’re beautifully written or part of our success stories, if they don’t serve the big idea.
What darling can you let go of?
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