Four people attended “Is Your Story B.R.A.V.E.?” live. Even though the room was small, the stakes were high. I didn’t record it, on purpose, so everyone in that room could say the bold thing out loud without wondering who else might hear it later.
One of them, a writer, came in to sharpen her pitch for the book she was nearly finished with. She worked through the B.R.A.V.E. exercise, stayed to the end, and booked a Narrative Architecture Spotlight as soon as she logged off.
Then, overnight, she got what I call a divine download.
The exercise had cleared enough space that a second idea, a memoir she’d written off as a lower priority, claimed the spotlight instead. By morning she knew: that was the book. Not because the first one stopped mattering, but because the second one was more personal, more timely, and closer to the story the world actually needed from her.
That’s not a confidence shift. She didn’t suddenly get braver overnight. She got clear.
Run the Five Elements Out Loud
The architecture she’d built the day before is what made room for the truth to surface after the room ended. Here’s the exercise itself, the same one we ran live.
- Bold. Write the true, specific sentence you’ve been cutting before it reaches the mic, the version you’d say to a friend, not the one approved for a press release.
- Resilient. Name the obstacle, what it cost you, and what it taught you.
- Active. Make it cinematic. What would the camera show first?
- Vibrant. What are the sensory details? What does the room look, sound, and feel like?
- Expressive. Read it out loud, and notice how your body responds.
The exercise in one line: write your true sentence, then say it out loud. The version that gets goosebumps, or makes someone lean in instead of nod politely, is the one worth building the rest of your Signature Story around.
That last step is the one people skip, and it’s the one that matters most. Writing the true version down is a start. Hearing yourself say it, maybe for the first time, is where the shift actually happens.
It Doesn’t Always Land Where You Expect
The writer with the divine download wasn’t the only shift in that room.
Another writer got to the end of the exercise and realized her first draft was carrying anger. By the time she’d revised it out loud, what surfaced underneath was grief, the chink in the armor that made her story specific enough to be hers and universal enough for a room full of strangers to feel it too. She hadn’t set out to write about grief that day. The exercise found it.
And one of the founders in the room realized she’d been sitting on two separate stories the whole time: her company’s origin story, the one she’d told a hundred times in pitch decks and press; and the personal story underneath it that could become a keynote or a memoir of its own. She’d never separated the two before that hour.
Different starting points, same result. Once the architecture was in place, each woman’s truth rose to the surface on its own.
Try It Yourself
You don’t need a Zoom room of strangers to run this. The same five-minute test works in the elevator before you walk into the boardroom, or in your car in the parking garage before the client call. The room doesn’t have to be big for the truth to surface. It just has to be honest.
- Step 1: Read it to yourself. Say your thesis, the true sentence you’ve been sitting on, out loud, alone. Notice how your body responds. That response is information.
- Step 2: Read it out loud to 2 or 3 people. Move past the mirror or the smartphone. Find a friend, a colleague, or a writing group, and say it to them. Notice what happens in the room this time.
The version that receives the goosebumps, the leaning forward, the pause before anyone responds, is the one worth keeping.
Run Your Own Diagnostic
If you want the pre-flight version of this exercise, one you can run solo before any stage, camera, or high-stakes room, start with the B.R.A.V.E. Checklist. It’s built around the same five elements above, and it takes less than five minutes to show you exactly where your story is still breaking down.
More From the Expressive Series
This is Post 3 of 4. Catch up:
- Post 1: What EXPRESSIVE Means in Leadership (And What It Doesn’t)
- Post 2: Why Executives Mistake Confidence for Clarity — And What It’s Costing Them
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you find your usable soundbite?
Run the B.R.A.V.E. exercise: write the true, specific sentence you’ve been cutting (Bold), name the obstacle and what it taught you (Resilient), make it cinematic (Active), add the sensory details (Vibrant), then read it out loud and notice how your body responds (Expressive). The version that gets a physical reaction, yours or a listener’s, is your usable soundbite.
Why does reading your story out loud matter?
Writing the true version down is only the first step. Hearing yourself say it reveals whether it actually lands, on you and on a listener. That’s often where the real shift happens, sometimes hours or a full day after the writing is done.
What if the “true” version turns out to be about something you didn’t expect?
That’s common. One participant in a live B.R.A.V.E. session set out to write about anger and found grief underneath it instead. The exercise is designed to surface what’s actually there, not confirm what you assumed was there before you started.
About The Author
Windy Borman is a documentary filmmaker, Narrative Architect, and creator of the B.R.A.V.E. Framework™. After 25+ years on both sides of the camera and the stage, she helps female and non-binary executives build the narrative architecture that gets the real version of their story from the Green Room to the Mic. Her films, including Mary Janes: The Women of Weed and The Eyes of Thailand, have screened at festivals worldwide, and her work has been featured in Variety, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Forbes, NBC, and ABC.
0 Comments