Step-by-step plan to fail at storytelling

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Hey friend!

A few years ago, I was standing at the bus stop, watching a route taxi driver argue with a woman selling peanuts.

From what I gathered, she had accused him of short-changing her on a bag of peanuts. He swore he didn’t.

A man sitting nearby shook his head and muttered, "Mi tell yuh, every day is a new episode."

And he wasn’t wrong.

For years, I documented these moments in my Walking Foot Chronicles and Bus Chronicles on Facebook. Random encounters. Hilarious arguments. The kind of raw, unfiltered Jamaican storytelling you can’t make up.

But the thing is, those stories had structure.

They weren’t just random observations thrown together. They had a beginning, a middle, and an end. They made people feel something.

Then, I didn’t even have the storytelling knowledge I have now.

Most people think storytelling is easy. Until they sit down to write and suddenly…nothing.

And when they do manage to get something down, it reads like a report.

Too stiff.

Too predictable.

No hook, no emotional pull, no reason to care.

So if you want to fail at storytelling, here’s exactly what to do:

1. Start with a long-winded intro.
   Make sure you bore people before they even get to the point. Instead of grabbing their attention, ease them in with something dull like, “Storytelling is an important part of human communication.”

2. Forget the conflict.
   Great stories have tension. Something that hooks the reader. If your story is just “I started a business, and it was great,” no one cares. Tell me about the part where everything almost fell apart.

3. Make it all about you.
   People don’t just want your story. They want to see themselves in it. They want to feel something. If you’re just reliving your personal highlight reel, you’re missing the point.

Shakespeare understood this. That’s why he gave us “To be or not to be” instead of “Life can be hard sometimes.”

That’s why his characters struggled, doubted, and failed before they won.

And that’s why, hundreds of years later, we still remember them.

If you want to tell stories that people actually care about, start with conflict. Make it relatable. Give your audience a reason to see themselves in it.

Or just keep writing stories no one remembers. Your call.

See you tomorrow,

Stephen

PS…did you notice I changed the name from The Lime Letter, to The Yellow Bite?? Awesome if you did….

This has to do with my branding

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