Is it an idea or a story?

Hello, and welcome to the se

cond episode of “Here’s One Thing About Writing,” a short-video series I developed to help you navigate some of the most common challenges we face when putting words together into a product that an audience will consume, whether it’s a magazine article, a book or that presentation you’re expected to make in front of your team. In this video, I’ll talk about how to differentiate an idea and a story. I’ll help you visualize this distinction so that before you set out to write, you’re able to find out if what you have in mind is still too general — in other words, if it’s still an idea — and, if it is, how to narrow it down into something that’s focused and specific.

For years, I struggled a lot to find the stories amid the ideas swirling inside my head. The excitement of creating something new worked against me and I wasted too many hours writing a piece that lacked clear direction. As I say in the video, …

The problem when you start working on something that is not a story, but an idea is that you might go into so many twists and turns that by the time you start putting stuff on paper, you will be dizzy and likely your readers will be dizzy too.