Everyone loves a good story

In preparation for an upcoming seminar, I've been reviewing the book: The Storyteller's Secret by Carmine Gallo. In his book, Gallo looks at how many renowned leaders accomplished so much in part because of their ability to tell a good story. I enjoy Gallo's books because as I read them, I'm pointed to several great talks by the likes of Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, and Oprah Winfrey. In addition to highlighting great storytelling examples, Gallo also breaks down what the speaker is doing to allow us to use some of these same strategies to bolster our own use of storytelling.

But before I dig into some of Gallo's suggestions, I'll back up in case you're wondering why I'm discussing storytelling on our grant development blog. Well, proposal writing is truly a form of persuasive writing, because what are you trying to do if it's not persuading your reviewers to give you money for your project? Gallo shows how people make decisions largely based on how they feel about something, rather than what they think about something. Now, this is not to say that any good storyteller can go get a research grant. Naturally, you have to have a good idea, a solid plan, and credibility to have a chance at getting a grant, but what makes a grant proposal the best is the story that's told along with the idea, plan, and credibility.

In Gallo's book, he suggests three steps to telling a good story that I believe applies to our proposals.

1. "Grab your [audience's] attention"
In grant-writing, we usually call this the hook. Right away in your grant proposal you want to highlight the problem you're solving and show how bad it is. How many lives have been lost? How many dollars wasted? How many have been socially isolated or are living a sub-standard life because of the problem you're outlining? Now, I will say here that you want to make sure to also describe your project right up front so your reviewers know what this is all about. This does diverge from more classic story-telling that allows things to unfold more slowly, but reviewers don't want a novel when reviewing dozens of proposals; they want an easy-to-read and compelling proposal.

2. "Give [your audience] an emotional experience by telling a story around the struggle"
It's true that reviewers will probably not want to read a single-patient or victim story in your grant proposal, but that just means that researchers need to work a bit harder to make their research into a story. The nice thing is that research usually has a great story if it's framed in the right way. Think of the disease or a flawed policy as the villain - show how nefarious that villain is; who's been hurt by the villain? Then you and your research project can be the hero. So frame your project and potential solution as those that are ready to save the day. Or consider framing your project as a great mystery to discover the weaknesses of your villain to ultimately destroy it.

3. "Galvanize listeners with a call to action"
You might be thinking that the call to action in a grant proposal is quite obvious. In fact, you've included a specific dollar amount and broken it down in your budget. However, this story-telling step still applies in the way that it calls on the PI to illustrate the vision of the project in such a way that reviewers and Program Officers get excited that they have a role to play in helping to fund the project. You want to present the possibilities in such a way that your readers aren't just thinking, "huh, they have a cool project," but rather, "we have got to do this now!" The former is talking about they/you, the latter is talking about we!

Storytelling in proposals may feel like a bit of a stretch for some PIs, but as Gallo reminds us, humans are wired to look for stories; it's how we engage each other and it's core to propelling us to do great things - so use the principles of storytelling all you can!

Resources
How to Win Grants with Great Storytelling - Mathilda Harris (Grant Training Center)
The Top 3 Tips for Telling Your Story So Funders Will Listen - Grantsedge