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Minto's Rules for Storytelling 📜

2 mins

“Most people have a pretty good idea of what they intend to write about but no specific plan for what to say or how to phrase it.”
- Barbara Minto

Barbara Minto is best known for the Minto Pyramid Principle, which I’ll outline here. It’s a tool to help you find out what you think. A technique that forces you to pull out of your head information that helps you develop and shape your thoughts and thinking until it is crystal clear.

Minto’s Three Rules #

Two pyramid examples are found further below but keep these three rules and guiding principles in mind before looking through them.

  1. Ideas at any level in the pyramid must summarize the ideas grouped below them. (Statement)
  2. On any one level in a particular grouping, ideas must be logically consistent. (Facts)
  3. Ideas in each grouping must be arranged in a logical order (e.g. arrange facts chronologically or by order of magnitude)

Guiding Principles #

To test the thoroughness and soundless of ideas,you should question whether each section of the pyramid is mutually exclusive (each point is used once) and collectively exhaustive (each grouping highlights all the points needed to support the higher level). This ensures your points are comprehensive.

Pyramid Examples #

1. Structure of Minto’s Pyramid: For Storytelling #

Here’s how the pyramid would look when used to tell a story.

graph TD; A[Statement]-->B[Fact]; A-->C[Fact]; A-->D[Fact];

2. Structure of Minto’s Pyramid: For Data Fact Finding #

You can also apply Minto’s pyramid for data fact finding (trying to answer a data question). The pyramid is arrange in the same manner as above, but tweaked to focus around a key objective.

graph TD; A[Objective - Phrased as a statement]-->B[Key Question]-->E[ Data];B-->G[Data] A-->C[Key Question]-->H[Data];C-->I[Data] A-->D[Key Question]-->J[Data];D-->K[Data]

Final Notes #

Good data stories are built around statements supported by facts. And it is your job to obtain a collection of mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive facts to communicate your story, and findings in a clear, robust manner.