Episode 170: Be the hero of your own story, with Donna Lichaw

Those of you who have read the book that accompanies this podcast will know that, in my opinion, one of the best explanations and representations of the way story works comes from the executive coach, speaker, and author Donna Lichaw.

Donna is not a creative writing professor, nor is she a best-selling fiction author. She comes from the world of tech, she knows about leadership development, product development, user experience, and how companies can create excellent products for their customers, and she knows how story is bound up with all of this.

I’ve been meaning to talk to Donna for years now. I wish we’d had three hours to really unpack this stuff, but we had 40 minutes and so we made the most of that, and so in this episode, Donna talks to us about how classic story structure is still a powerful tool for understanding how humans communicate with each other and have done since the dawn of civilisation; we discuss how this concept applies to the art of showing and telling, and how the most important story for us to work out as writers is our own story, the most important story for each of us is the one in which we are the hero, and if we can understand that story, we can better unlock the power of all the other stories we want to tell.

I had a great time talking to Donna, I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation, here it is.