There was a gorilla video that went viral a few days ago.
It shows (wait for it…) a gorilla, sitting on its haunches, on a lawn in a zoo.
Then somebody offers to throw the gorilla some food.
To which the gorilla, by using a combination of sign language, nipple pinches, and chest pounding, effectively says,
“No thank you, we zoo gorillas are fed well by our keepers and don’t accept food from visitors.”
Smart ape.
And that’s why the internet went all warm and bubbly, saying things like,
“This gorilla has more impulse control than I do,”
and
“This gorilla has more impulse control than our president.”
But here’s the thing.
This viral video didn’t tell the whole story.
In the full version of the video, the visitor waits a few seconds and then throws the food to the gorilla after all.
The gorilla turns around to see if the keepers are looking, and seeing there’s nobody there, he sneakily eats the food, while staring directly at the visitor as if to say, “This stays between you and me, man.”
I bring this up for two reasons.
First, I want to bring gorillas down from their holier-than-thou pedestal. They lie and cheat when given the opportunity, just like other apes, including you and me.
The other reason is to point out the power of the story-within-the-story.
There are lots of professional tricks to telling a story in an engaging way.
But the easiest, and possibly most effective, is simply to crop your stories to make them more dramatic, impactful, and interesting.
That’s what happened in this case.
A gorilla that eats food thrown at it doesn’t make for much of a story.
But a gorilla with more self-discipline than your average human makes for good news.
So if you sense there’s a good story hiding in an anecdote you witnessed or in something you read, first ask yourself, “How could I cut this down for maximum effect?”
Because most of the details of the real event don’t need to be included — and can even weaken your case.
Anyways, if you need help writing stories, specifically for the purpose of making sales to your existing or potential customers, then you can find some ape-sized advice in the following little offer: