What great storytellers can teach us about writing great thought leadership

Dive into the art of captivating thought leadership storytelling, drawing lessons from Orwell to Morrison. Learn how starting with a bang, embracing clarity, being concise, acknowledging nuance, and showcasing a unique voice can transform your content, making it not only engaging but unforgettable. Discover how to harness these techniques to capture and retain your audience’s attention, ultimately driving your message home.

You’ve planned your thought leadership campaign and it’s looking good: it has original ideas and valuable insights.

But then you sit down to write it, and that’s when you realise you’re not sure how to capture your audience’s attention, keep them reading, and, ultimately, convince them.

The answer lies in how you tell the story. Thought leadership storytelling is not an easy skill.

Our Learning from Leaders report found that a clear and compelling narrative is executives’ second most-valued feature in thought leadership — only 1 percentage point behind credible research. Strong storytelling is a powerful way to make an audience care about what you’re saying, and if you don’t tell your stories well you’re missing a massive opportunity.

So let’s see how five great writers make us want to read their work, and how they make it memorable.

1. They start with a bang

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
1984, George Orwell

The first sentence of Orwell’s classic starts like a conventional scene-setter, then veers off script with a sudden twist. It’s unlikely that anyone will put down the book at that point.

Too often, thought leadership pieces open with something formulaic and obvious: “Recent years have witnessed [X trend] in the [Y] sector.” Or: “These are difficult times for [X industry], but there are many opportunities”.

The kinds of audiences we want to reach already know all this, and they’re very short on time. Unless we give them the impression that they’ll learn something new and surprising by reading on, they won’t.

Instead, grab their attention with something they don’t know, such as an eye-opening statistic or an anecdote featuring an interesting character or group of respondents from your research. Or maybe pique their curiosity with a provocative statement or question.

2. They write clearly

“When he saw the shark he leaned over the side and punched at him. He hit only meat and the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in. The blow hurt not only his hands but his shoulder too.”
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Thought leadership pieces often bury their messages under layers of jargon and passive phrases that lack a protagonist: “These innovative solutions will be optimised and disseminated in order to attain the scalability to become world-class,” and so on.

Hemingway would not have approved. One of his famous writing rules was “Use vigorous English”. That means active verbs, minimal adjectives and simple syntax, and it creates a style that’s natural, direct and clear.

There’s nowhere to hide in Hemingway’s prose: we know exactly who’s punching the shark. Contrast that with the “innovative solutions” example, and you realise that no one is taking responsibility for all that optimising and disseminating.

Simple stories are stronger. So is simple language.

3. They’re concise

“Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the machine.”
The Machine Stops, EM Forster

When we have a lot to say, it’s tempting to put it all into our writing. But your busy readers want to learn as much as possible in the shortest time, and they won’t bother wading through waffle.

Instead, emulate Forster’s prescient 1909 story The Machine Stops by making every word and sentence count. Unlike Hemingway, Forster does use adverbs. But they don’t feel indulgent or like padding, because they’re used sparingly — he makes them count.

And like Hemingway, Forster keeps his sentences to a manageable length. In The Old Man and the Sea, the short sentences create a sense of pace; the syntax creates a drumbeat that’s difficult to resist. We get swept up in the action.

Long, rambling sentences do the opposite: they lose the reader. Research* shows that comprehension drops off sharply as the word count increases:

• At 14 words, readers understand 90% of the information
• At 43 words, they understand less than 10%

Elmore Leonard was another writer who understood the importance of brevity. “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip,” he says in his 10 Rules of Writing. “Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.”

4. They know that nuance is interesting

“He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description… He was moody, too… But I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies.”
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Complexity and conflict are part of life, and business is full of both. And Brontë knew that nuance is not just realistic — it’s also interesting.

So don’t be afraid to acknowledge difficulties, risks and human failings in your thought leadership. Most business scenarios are neither 100% positive nor 100% negative, and many involve sacrifices and compromises. Acknowledging this and being open about it will make your brand more authentic and relatable.

5. They don’t sound like everyone else

“Anything that happens after this party breaks up is nothing. Everything is now. It’s like war. Everyone is handsome, shining just thinking about other people’s blood. As though the red wash flying from veins not theirs is facial makeup patented for its glow.”
Jazz, Toni Morrison

You could never mistake Toni Morrison for Jane Austen or George Orwell. Stylistically adventurous, she uses language that ranges from elaborate to colloquial, and allows multiple perspectives to disrupt the traditions of her medium. It’s a lot like jazz.

Too often, corporate content has a generic style and tone. It’s formal and a little distanced. If your piece about technology sounds very like another, you could be wasting an opportunity to leave an impression on your audiences.

Your tone of voice has to be in keeping with your brand, of course. So first decide on your personality. Are you authoritative or approachable? Caring or commanding? Next, define it somewhere so everyone in the organisation can use it consistently. Then, show that personality through the way you use language in your thought leadership.

Get it right, and your distinctive brand voice could be a secret weapon that cuts through the noise.

^* ‘Readers’ Degree of Understanding’, American Press Institute (not available online)