Story Brief – Storytelling Blueprint

Your Story Brief should include the following elements:

1. Background: Provide brief background information and context for a real-life brand, group, government agency, or political campaign. Summarize the organizations mission and core objectives, the problem or need it fulfills, and its primary audience(s). (150-200 words)
2. Past/Current Storytelling Efforts: Describe how your subject has used storytelling to communicate with its audience. Evaluate how effective this storytelling has been in supporting its mission and goals, identifying the main platforms and formats used. Include two specific examples of current or past storytelling efforts. (200250 words)
3. Target Audience: Describe the primary target audience for your two stories, including their demographics, motivations, and current behaviors. What does the audience care about? What are their pain points? How do they currently think of behave in relation to the organization, brand, or social cause? Explain whether this audience differs from the target audience described in Prompt #1.
4. Please cite 2-3 authoritative sources to support your ideas for this prompt. You may draw from class readings, research articles, library databases, government sources, industry reports, and news articles. (300-350 words)
5. You may use bullet points for the audience section, but they must be written in complete sentences.
6. Purpose and Call to Action: Identify the primary purpose of the two stories you will develop for this organization. Specify 1-2 concrete call to action(s) you aim to inspire. Explain what you want the audience to do after engaging with your stories and why these actions make sense for this audience and the organization, brand, or social cause. Your calls to action should be specific and realistic. (200250 words)
7. Proposed Narrative Architecture for Your Two Stories: For each of the two stories you plan to develop, identify:

• Who is the protagonist?
• What do they want?
• What stands in their way?
• What decision changes everything?
• What does the world look like after?
• What emotional sequence do you intend to create (initial escalation final
• emotion)?

Then write a 150250 word draft of each story using the Story Spine format:

• Before…
• Every day…
• Until one day…
• Because of that…
• Until finally…

6. Justification: Provide a strong rationale for your project decisions using course readings, lectures, outside research, and relevant theory. Use APA style with in-text citations and a reference list. Focus on explaining why your approach makes sense rather than summarizing sources. (200-250 words)