The Corporate Storyteller

A Writing Manual & Style Guide for the Brave New Business Leader

Clarion Rating: 4 out of 5

Between blog posts, tweets, and other updates on social media sites, it’s clear we live in an age when more people than ever are communicating through writing. But even with all this typing going on, many writers fail to get their message across because they don’t build a relationship with their reader. This problem has a particular impact in the professional realm, where many aspects of business, from customer service to internal productivity, rely on effective written communication.

While there are thousands of books that attempt to address this problem, few are quite like Elaine Stirling’s The Corporate Storyteller. This short, to-the-point guide shows professionals that it’s not necessarily the content of your proposal that gets people to act, but the mindset you have as you write. This is a revolutionary idea when it comes to business writing.

The Corporate Storyteller includes some tips on how to structure an overall message to be more engaging and generate excitement with effective sentence structure. Stirling even points out antiquated clichés to avoid in your writing. But this guide is clearly aimed at communicating to motivate people. Stirling advises professionals to consider three assumptions about all readers: that they want to live a good life, want to do a good job, and are no different than you. She also discusses ten intentions that you can use when you write to form a deep link with readers and five talents you can develop to strengthen your writing voice.

Stirling developed The Corporate Storyteller after spending years as a corporate communications consultant. Her book connects the importance of good writing with motivational and management theory. It won’t take long to see how getting into the mind of the people you’re writing to can help you connect with and motivate them.

Not just for “business leaders,” as the subtitle indicates, this guide is ideal for any professional who longs to truly write effectively in order to respond to business issues and motivate people. “It doesn’t matter where you sit on the org chart,” Stirling writes. “Our world is in desperate need of brave new leadership.” And in this age of writing, it’s clear we need brave new writers as well.

Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

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