Emotional Storytelling Cheat Sheet: A Business Owner’s Guide To Writing Empathetic Stories For Short-Form Content

Sep 17

When I first started learning how to translate my journalistic storytelling skills into marketing copy, one piece of advice showed up everywhere: call out pain points.

You know the style. Hooks like:
“You’re lazy because you don’t stick to your goals.”
“You can’t make sales because you’re afraid to ask.”

Those hooks may not be factually incorrect. And they do grab attention.

But they also put people on the defensive.

Consciously or subconsciously, accusatory language makes people feel attacked, making them less open to hearing your solution.

Yet—we’re told the most effective way to get people to buy is to scare them into taking out their credit card.

Ick.

Calling out pain points is why so many business owners I work with hate selling.

Building a business by telling customers what’s wrong with them just to make money is a betrayal of their values—and many end up on the brink of going out of business because they believe it’s the only way.

As a journalist, content marketer, and writerpreneur who’s more than tripled her corporate income by sharing values-driven storytelling content, I can tell you fear tactics are not your only option to sell.

Empathy-based marketing is about naming, not blaming.

It’s giving language to the frustration, doubt, or disappointment your audience already feels—without making them feel less than for having a problem.

Naming builds trust through shared understanding (empathy), which makes sales a byproduct of confidence in your solutions rather than pressure to act out of fear.

If you’re wondering how to do this with storytelling, this article will show you how to use empathetic storytelling marketing instead of fear-based tactics to sell your offers—by identifying the specific emotions your audience feels, so they’re more open to hearing your message and more trusting your solutions.

Storytelling Framework: One Emotion, One Story, One Promise

Do you ever notice when people are having feelings they tend to use a catchall term to describe them?

If they’re overwhelmed, they might say, “I’m stressed.”
If they’re angry, they default to, “I’m pissed.”
If they’re sad, maybe it’s, “I’m drained.”

Researchers call this emotional “clumping”

It’s the tendency to reduce the complexity of our feelings into one general word.

But like a painter’s palette, there are many many shades to emotions.

It’s not just anger, it’s enraged or frustrated.

Precision isn’t semantics.

On a personal level, not being able to put words to specific emotions leaves you feeling stuck.

As a storyteller, not being able to put words to specific emotions makes your reader feel misunderstood.

Empathy is created through understanding. Understanding is generated through specificity.

The more precise you can be, the more emotionally relevant your message becomes—and the fewer words you need to express it clearly.

But in most marketing, you’ll see people mash emotions together like “stressed” and “overwhelmed.”

They’ll clump everything their audience is feeling together as a way to cover all the bases.

But your audience’s brain can only process so much at once.

When you throw two or three different emotions and meanings into one story, you're not being thorough—you’re creating confusion.

That’s why effective short-form storytelling follows this principle:

One story, one emotion, one promise.

Choose the emotion.
Your audience can feel many things about the same situation—but for this story, focus on one. See the cheat sheet below for the most common emotions to anchor on.
Illustrate it with one moment.
Once you’ve chosen the emotion, share one story from your own life that shows it. The situation doesn’t have to match your audience’s — it just needs to reflect the same emotion. If your audience feels frustrated that their SEO isn’t working, you don’t need an SEO story. You could share a time you tried several solutions to a problem and nothing worked. The point isn’t to mirror their circumstances. It’s to name the emotion clearly so they feel understood.
Offer one promise.
When you name an emotion precisely, you’re not just describing a feeling — you’re pointing to the problem behind it. If someone says they feel “anxious,” that usually means they’re stuck between too many choices and don’t know which way to go. The problem isn’t anxiety, it’s the lack of clarity. Once you describe the specific emotion, you can give them an aha moment by showing them the deeper issue. Once the problem is clear, you can give a clear action step — whether that’s offering a paid solution, reassurance, education, or a new perspective.