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Or How Stephen King Would Build A Story For Your Project
Everyone is talking about generative AI right now. How it creates content, writes copy, produces images, and automates ideas at scale. But there is a kind of generative thinking that humans have always been capable of, long before the algorithms arrived. It is the ability to take two things, combine them, and create something entirely new. It is the foundation of every great story ever told. And it is one of the most underused tools in business.
This is generative story thinking. And in a world where AI can produce content in seconds, your ability to generate meaning is what sets you apart.
Living generates stories. Stories of our experiences, our world, our relationships. Businesses and organisations are also story-generating machines. These stories are an underutilised resource that can take projects to a new level.
Generative story thinking is what allows us to function in the complex system known as life. It is an act of sense-making. It can also be used to generate meaning from any situation, from business transformation to personal change. It is also how a professional writer farms their life for story inspiration.
I get my ideas from everywhere. But what all of my ideas boil down to is seeing maybe one thing, but in a lot of cases, it’s seeing two things and having them come together in some new and interesting way, and then adding the question ‘What if?’ ‘What if’ is always the key question.
— Stephen King, On Writing
If life is constantly generating stories, how do we harness their power? A good story should never be wasted. Using story thinking to generate meaning can be the difference between a project that flatlines and one that grows legs and creates momentum of its own.
What Is Generative Story Thinking
Generative is defined as having the power or function of generating, originating, producing, or reproducing.
A generative methodology combines different stories to form new relationships. Or, as Stephen King said, seeing two things and having them come together in some new and interesting way. This may sound difficult, but it is actually very natural. Our human brains are story-producing machines. We are so good at it that if we put any two words together, we can generate a story.
Try the exercise below. Pick one noun and one verb, combine them, and make a story.
Noun (Person, Place or Thing) Verb (A doing or action word)
algorithm — resist
meeting — dissolve
data — whisper
leader — disappear
deadline — bloom
inbox — escape
team — rebuild
screen — remember
strategy — unravel
voice — return
Here is an example of how this exercise works:
Noun: Voice
Verb: Return
Story: After six months of remote team video calls, Bianca noticed something had gone quiet in her weekly meetings. Not the conversation, that was still happening. But the real conversation, the one with texture and honesty and friction, had disappeared somewhere between the mute button and the shared screen. She started ending every meeting with one question: ” What are you not saying? Slowly, the voice of the team returned.
How does this work in a business context? Products, projects and change initiatives all need a story to explain what they do and why they matter. The intersection of generative story thinking and design thinking is particularly powerful right now. Organisations navigating AI adoption, cultural change, or rapid growth desperately need stories to create sense-making throughout the journey. Story thinking acts as a tool for internal alignment as well as external communication with stakeholders who need to understand not just what is changing, but why it matters.
The Business Exercise
Choose an imagined or real project you are working on and fill in the blanks below.
Name of your project or product: _______________
Now choose a verb to describe what it does or the impact it will create: _______________
Now write a one-paragraph story based on what you have chosen.
Here is an example:
Noun: AI Onboarding Program Verb: Translate
Short Story — The new system had everything the team needed. But no one was using it yet. Not because it was wrong. Because they were never told why it was there, what problem it had come to solve, and what it meant for their work. The onboarding program had many features that required translation. A bridge between the language of technology and the language of the people using it. Between the vision of the leadership team and the daily reality of the people on the ground.
The power of generative story thinking is that it provides different ways to test and explore concepts from early ideation through to delivery. But there must be a clear strategy around why you are telling the stories and what impact you want them to have. Why you are telling the story relates to the need or problem you are trying to solve. The impact relates to what you want someone to do or feel as a result of hearing it.
The Power of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that is not literally true but helps explain an idea or make a comparison between two concepts.
In On Writing, Stephen King explains that metaphors help people see an old thing in a new and vivid way. He describes them as a kind of miracle that occurs between writer and reader, allowing both to see something just as the storyteller intends. But only when they are done well.
How often have we heard phrases like “The Netflix of Socks” or “The Airbnb of Meal Kits”? While these are comparisons between two concepts, they are not true metaphors. They do not invoke an image. They do not illustrate something new. They are just confusing.
The same is now happening with AI. Every second product is described as “AI-powered” or “AI-driven” without any story to explain what that actually means for the person using it. Clever use of metaphor is the antidote.
Here is an example using our AI onboarding program:
Metaphor: A translator at a first meeting between two cultures.
“Translator” invites the audience to think of bridging, patience, and mutual understanding rather than replacement or disruption. “First meeting between two cultures” draws a connection with the very human experience of navigating something unfamiliar with care.
This metaphor reframes AI adoption entirely. It is no longer about technology as an additional step in a workflow. It is about two ways of working, learning to communicate.
The Power Of Extended Metaphor
An extended metaphor is a version of a metaphor that stretches across an entire story, a campaign, or a project lifecycle.
Stephen King is no surprise a master of this. The Shawshank Redemption plays with the extended metaphor of hope within a prison. Andy’s Rita Hayworth poster stands for all of the beauty and freedom of the outside world, representing hope and providing escape, mentally and later physically.
For organisations, an extended metaphor can thread through every communication touchpoint of a project or campaign. Using our translator metaphor for an AI onboarding program, project updates might reference “finding a common language” or “the conversation deepening.” Launch milestones could be framed as “fluency levels.” Resistance could be reframed as a gamified approach to “learning new words.”
Weaving an extended metaphor throughout the ongoing story of a business or project creates tension, connection, and momentum. It turns the life of a project into a story people will follow.
Create Mystery and Tension With Foreshadowing
The final ingredient is foreshadowing: a hint or indication of what is coming next.
In films and novels, foreshadowing must eventually pay off because stories end. Organisations and campaigns evolve. The opportunity for business storytelling is to keep the audience leaning forward without ever fully resolving the tension. Not creating an ending, but finding a hook, and then another, and then another.
The organisations doing this well right now are not the ones with the biggest content budgets. They are the ones with the clearest narrative strategy. They know what story they are telling, who they are telling it to, and how to keep that story alive across every touchpoint.
Generative Story Thinking and AI: A New Creative Partnership
Here is something worth sitting with. The reason some people get extraordinary results from AI writing tools and others get generic, flat, forgettable content is not the tool. It is the thinking they bring to it.
AI is a content-generating machine. But content without meaning is just noise. Generative story thinking is what turns a prompt into a story worth telling. It is the human layer that asks what if, finds the unexpected connection, chooses the metaphor that actually lands, and knows when to follow the tension rather than resolve it too quickly.
When you work with AI in a generative way, you are not outsourcing your thinking. You are amplifying it. You bring the lived experience, the emotional truth, the strategic intent. The AI brings speed and scale. But the story has to start with you.
The people who will thrive in this new creative landscape are not the ones who hand everything to the AI. They are the ones who know how to think in stories first and use the tools to go further, faster.
Generative story thinking is not a pre-AI skill; it is a vital skill that is needed today. It is an important skill to develop right now. Because without it, using AI with proper guidance for storytelling will just give you more of the same, faster.
This is why I teach storytelling workshops. If you want to bring generative story thinking into your team, organisation, or next project, I would love to hear from you.
Or if you want to practise these techniques in a fun, low-pressure way (that is free) join the 30 Day Storytelling Challenge. I am running it with the Future Skills Academy, and it is starting May 1 2026. I would love to see you there!
Narrative Strategy and Storytelling for Organisations 