I rarely address fiction in this blog.

While many of the same concepts apply to storytelling in business, there’s still a gulf between the two disciplines.

But Sarah Lafferty pointed me to a book of Kurt Vonnegut short stories published after his death. The introduction includes what Vonnegut calls “Creative Writing 101,” which offers sound advice for storytellers of all ilk:

1.Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Yes, Mr. Vonnegut can write even when he’s pulling together storytelling tips for us mortals.

I particularly like No. 6 and the point that “no matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them.”

The beauty of storytelling in business is you don’t have to fabricate “awful things” to confront executives. They happen on their own … as the President of Toyota Akio Toyoda will attest.

Instead, the question for communications professionals becomes how much to disclose.

The standard company line is always “little if any.”

The suits are linear thinkers; i.e., the word “awful” brings a negative connotation and we don’t want the company associated with negatives.

But it’s your executive or executives overcoming the bad stuff - even things that might have been self induced - which in turn creates the drama of a good story.

As Vonnegut puts it, how your characters respond to the “awful things” allow the reader to “see what they are made of.”

So it is in the business world.

Your customers, employees and prospects want to see what you’re made of.

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The title says it all, “Storytelling and Your Quest for Business Success.”

It’s rare for a magazine to examine the power of storytelling in business. This particular article comes compliments of the trade book One +, which caters to more than 30,000 meeting planners.

Before you scoff, consider the plight of meeting planners in matchmaking an organization with a venue. No doubt, if you’ve seen one convention center, you’ve seen them all (only the dimensions change).

Enter storytelling as a means to grab the audience by the scruff of the neck.

Writer Jason Hensel bravely kicks off the piece with a cliche that works as a stage setter:

One upon a time. Need I go further? You know you’ve entered a story. Perhaps you prefer something a little more straightforward: “Call me Ishmael,” “I am an invisible man” or “Mother died today.” The simple act of telling a story demands attention whether it starts with the fantastical or the concrete. It’s the difference between academic and business-speak and barroom banter.

He had me at “Ishmael.”

Hensel spoke with Pat Lencioni, author of several popular business books including “Death by Meeting.” Hard to argue with the writer behind “a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings,” who shares:

I think that people today are more distracted than ever. People are looking for something that captures their attention and provides an enjoyable experience.

Thank you.

Splattering a screen with a mind-numbing array of charts and graphs is not an enjoyable experience.

I was also pleased that my perspective on the importance of context in storytelling found its way into the narrative:

“Take the movie Rudy. If you jump to the end of the movie and see Rudy finally going into the game to play for Notre Dame, this has zero meaning. Instead, one needs to understand he originally got rejected, parlayed a [junior college] stint into admissions, walked on to the team as an undersized player, etc.

This is a big part of storytelling and especially relevant in markets of complexity like technology. Too often companies want to jump right to the innovation instead of providing context of how this was accomplished before. It’s the delta between what was and what is that delivers the drama.

And I like how Hensel puts a bow on the piece in closing:

The stories may all begin and end differently, but they all have the same core—we are one. The human story is the only story there is, and when you understand that, you’ll be able to move freely in any world, from barroom to boardroom.

I introduced a regular feature called Moes Takes last month.

As a refresher, I worked with Rob Moes who was VP of marketing for Philips in the mid 1980s. During an interview at COMDEX, a reporter pressed Moes for projections on how many CD-ROM drives would be sold looking out five years. Rob responded “That’s like asking Mrs. Magellan how many lunches to pack.”

That’s why I call these fresh quotes culled from recent publications “Moes Takes.”

Here’s Round II.

“If you’re going to climb Mount Everest, you can’t do it with gym shorts and sneakers.”

Alan E. Salzman, Chief Executive, Vantage Point Venture Partners
Venture Capitalist Dick Kramlich’s Last Stand
BusinessWeek (January 21, 2010)

It’s not enough to be clever. Accuracy counts too. I challenge anyone to find a photo depicting Sir Edmund Hillary in gym shorts and sneakers.

Dulled-down version:

“If you’re going to address a major challenge, it’s important to prepare properly.”

Thank you Amy Gooch for sending along the following:

If there’s one place the proletarian can visualize the bobbing of a cork in water and recognize something dodgy has transpired, it’s the UK.

Dulled-down version:

“Instead of changing his mind, David Cameron should make and communicate his decision to the British people.”

Next up:

“I am certainly not an acolyte or even a fan of the Holy Church of the Carbon-Free Atmosphere or its leader, the Reverend Al Gore.”

T.J. Rogers, CEO, Cypress Semiconductor
CleanTech: Silicon Valley’s Next Great Wave of Innovation
San Jose Mercury News (January 30, 2010)

T.J. Rogers knows how to turn a phrase, which explains a profile that belies niche semiconductor status. I haven’t seen him bust out the religious terminology since ‘96 when he publicly crushed a nun for questioning the diversity of his board.

Dulled-down version:

“I do not support the initiative for a carbon-free environment or the leaders of this movement.”

And last, from the sports world:

“They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but what if the tree is on a hill?”

Jim Irsay, Owner of the Indianapolis Colts
A Jam Session with Jim Irsay
Sports Illustrated (January 25, 2010)

I like this one because it shows how you can take a cliche and make it fresh by adding one simple twist.

Dulled-down version:

“According to the saying, sons are like their fathers, but there are exceptions.”

If an extraordinary quote catches your attention, please e-mail it my way (lhoffman at hoffman dot com).

I’m tired of reading how American students lag behind their international counterparts on the academic front.

Johnny can’t write.

Johnny can’t add. 

Johnny can’t spell.

Even The Wall Street Journal has piled on with an article which highlights that only 23 percent of the 2009 high school graduates taking the ACT admissions test have the skills to succeed in college.

Enough already. 

There’s plenty about today’s youth to prompt optimism.

In fact, one of my colleagues John Radewagen pointed me to a listing of metaphors and analogies purportedly from high school essays that - how shall I say it - show a certain “creativity.” 

I’ve pulled out my favorites: 

“She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.”

Shrewd to align storytelling with a timely topic like food contamination. But why Canadian beef? If you’re striving for the exotic angle, should have gone with Argentinean stuff.

“She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.”

The blending of Lauren Bacall and Old Yeller makes for narrative you don’t see every day.

“Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.”

On one hand, you shouldn’t feel like you’re taking the SAT to figure out a love story. On the other hand, the ambiguity pulls you in because you can’t be 100 percent sure when the lovers will actually collide.

“He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.”  

You don’t often see young authors pursue the mafia genre. While not exactly Mario Puzo, the personification of the East River shows promise.

“It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.”

You have to admit, fathers armed with chainsaws and the like deliver stronger imagery than men running around with wood paddles.

The future of storytelling is indeed in good hands.

This is a story within a story.

A journalist named Paige Williams had the story.

She just needed a publication to publish the story, a not-so-minor detail.

After multiple rejections and finally selling the piece to The New York Times, only to have the opportunity go south, she took matters into her own hands.

Specifically, Williams decided to self-publish the story called “Finding Dolly Freed” on her Web site www.paige-williams.com and include a virtual tin cup with the following copy:

“Finding Dolly Freed” is a piece of independent journalism that cost more than $2,000 to produce. To help the writer recoup her expenses and perhaps bank a small paycheck, please click here and pay whatever amount you’d like. Think of it as Radiohead journalism. Thank you in advance!

The Nieman Storyboard does a nice job capturing this second story and the “glamorous” world of publishing (5,885 unique visitors and $878.75 in donations as of Jan. 14).

Talk about sharing from the heart:

“If we don’t follow what we love, what the hell are we doing? That’s our job. If I backtracked over the course of my 20-year career as a journalist and played every move safe, I wouldn’t have done half the things I’ve done… For me the outcome has nothing to do with the money. I wrapped the money into it because I was curious about what would happen.”

The Nieman post also includes pontification from Tanja Aitamurto, a Finnish journalism researcher, who shares:

“I’m very excited about this project. It shows that people are willing to pay for in-depth journalism, not just blog posts or news stories.”

I’m impressed with Williams’ chutzpah. And Ms. Aitamurto certainly knows more about journalism than myself, but does $878.75 really mean “people are willing to pay for in-depth journalism?”

Turning to the actual story on Dolly Freed, the first thing that comes to mind: Williams has a gift for long-form storytelling with the kickoff sentence setting the tone:

By noon, Dolly Freed has composted peppers, studied a tadpole under an old Russian field microscope, sniffed and tasted a new supply of homegrown garlic, discussed Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, demonstrated how to turn an ordinary pressure cooker into a moonshine still, looked up “rose-breasted grosbeak” in Peterson Field Guides, and harvested cherry tomatoes from her garden.

In short, it’s a story that revisits the life of a middle-aged woman who at the age of 18 penned a book about her experiences living with her dad off the grid. Acclaim for the book generated a spike of fame that included an appearance on the Merv Griffin Show (think Larry King with a dash of Conan O’Brien).

Then she disappeared, or at least disappeared from public view.

As Williams slowly unwinds the look at Dolly’s life today versus back in 1978 when she wrote the book, it’s the contrast and juxtaposition that makes for a compelling read:

It isn’t often that readers encounter a recipe for fishballs in the same book that mentions Diogenes, Napoleon, Darwin, Wagner, Demosthenes, sixth-century Constantinople, and Ecclesiastes, but Dolly wrote as economically as she dressed rabbits for braising, wasting nothing.

And it doesn’t hurt for the protagonist to have a sense of humor. When asked about her social life in college after rejoining society on her terms, she shares:

“By then I had learned not to say too much about my possum living days,” she says. “Starting a conversation with things like ‘Have you ever watched a flock of geese sleep at night?’ or ‘You know how when you go spearfishing for spawning suckers … ’ or ‘Even though I’ve had road-killed dog and it was very good, I wouldn’t kill a dog just to eat it’ just makes people stare at you,” she says. “Don’t try these openers yourself—trust me it’s a mistake.”

I don’t know. An opening line around eating road-killed dog might work with the Pabst beer crowd.

Regardless, the storytelling concepts that connect the reader to Dolly also have a place in business.

If you’re interested in more information on the Williams saga, the Neiman Storyboard also published a Q&A with the reporter.