How to Write a StoryBrand BrandScript
One page, one customer, eight blocks. Here is what goes in each one, the mistakes I see most often after coaching roughly 140 business owners through theirs, and a worksheet you can fill in today.
The short version
A BrandScript is one page that tells the story of one customer, with your business written in as the guide. Fill in eight blocks in order and you will know who you serve, what is in their way, and what you are asking them to do about it.
Write it for one customer at a time, do the blocks in order, and expect the plan block to be the hard one. It is for almost everybody.
What a BrandScript is
A BrandScript is a one-page document that fills in each element of the StoryBrand framework for a single customer — effectively the story of that customer, with your business written into it as the guide who helps them.
That is the whole thing. It is not a strategy deck and it is not brand guidelines. It is a page of plain sentences about one person’s situation, and every piece of marketing you make afterward gets built from it: your one-liner, your homepage, your emails, your sales conversations, the answer you give at a networking event when somebody asks what you do.
The reason it works is that it forces you to write from the customer’s side of the table. Left to ourselves, we describe our business the way we experience it — our process, our history, our equipment, our team. The customer does not experience any of that. They experience a problem and a decision about whether you can fix it.
Write it for one customer
This is the instruction people ignore most often, so I want it early.
A BrandScript describes one character. Not your market, not your buyer personas as a group — one specific kind of person with one specific problem. If you serve homeowners and property managers, that is two BrandScripts. If you are a lender with nine loan products, that is potentially nine.
The temptation is to write one document that covers everyone, because it feels efficient. What you get is a page of sentences vague enough to be true about all of them and compelling to none. Averaging three customers together does not give you a message that reaches three people. It gives you a message that reaches nobody.
Start with your best customer — the one you would take ten more of tomorrow. Write that one first. The others get easier once you have done one properly, and there is a good method for combining them afterward, which I will come back to.
The eight blocks, in order
Order matters here in a way that is easy to underestimate. Each block gives you the raw material for the next one, and people who jump ahead almost always end up rewriting. Work top to bottom.
A character
Who they are, and — more importantly — what they want. One clear want, stated the way they would state it, not the way your industry would.
The most common mistake is writing a demographic instead of a desire. “Homeowners aged 35 to 60 in the Des Moines metro” tells you nothing you can write copy from. “A homeowner who wants to stop worrying every time it storms” does.
Who has a problem
Three layers, and you need all three.
The external problem is the practical thing that is wrong. The roof leaks. The books are a mess. The website is not producing leads.
The internal problem is how that makes them feel. Overwhelmed, usually. Frustrated. Often a little embarrassed that they have not sorted it out already, because if it were easy they would have solved it themselves. This is the layer businesses skip and the layer that actually moves people.
The philosophical problem is why it is simply wrong that they should have to put up with this. It is the sentence that starts “nobody should have to…”
And meets a guide
Two things earn you this role, and only two. Empathy proves you understand the problem — one honest sentence, not a paragraph of caring noises. Authority proves you can actually solve it: results, credentials, years, numbers, a name your customer would recognize.
Notice that both are measured by the customer’s confidence, not by your resume. Authority is not a list of everything you have ever done. It is the two or three proof points that answer the specific doubt this specific customer has.
Who gives them a plan
Three steps. Sometimes four. This is the block that will take you longest, and if you find yourself stuck here you are in good company — I have coached roughly 140 business owners through their BrandScripts in StoryBrand livestream breakout rooms, and this is where the wheels come off the cart for nearly all of them.
The formula that gets people unstuck: step one is your call to action — the single place the customer puts skin in the game and decides. Step two is what happens after they take it, which is the part they are actually nervous about and the part you have never described out loud. Step three is the success picture, pulled straight from block seven.
Add a fourth step only when the process genuinely has one — usually a qualifying stage where you check the customer is a fit before going further. The three-step plan, in detail.
And calls them to action
One direct call to action, repeated everywhere without apology. Buy. Book. Schedule. Request. Then one transitional option for the people who are interested but not ready — a guide, a checklist, a calculator, something that gives value before the commitment.
If your website has eleven buttons that all say different things, you do not have a call to action. You have a menu, and menus make people leave.
That helps them avoid failure
What the status quo costs. Not scare tactics — an honest account of what continues to happen if nothing changes, because without any stakes there is no reason to act this month rather than next year.
Most businesses either skip this entirely or lay it on so thick it reads as manipulation. Two or three concrete consequences, stated plainly, is the right amount.
And ends in success
The picture of life after the problem is gone, specific enough that they can see themselves in it. “Peace of mind” is not a success picture. “You stop checking the ceiling every time it rains” is.
Aspirational identity
Not what your customer wants to have. Who they want to be once you have helped them. The owner who finally has the business under control. The homeowner whose place is the one everybody compliments. The operator other people in the industry call for advice.
This block is not formally one of the seven steps, and it is the one I lean on hardest. When you know the identity somebody is reaching for, you can write a sentence that makes them think yes, that is exactly what I am looking for before they have consciously decided anything. More on aspirational identity.
The BrandScript worksheet
StoryBrand publishes a one-page BrandScript template, and it is a good document — seven boxes, arrows between them, blank lines to fill in. Every certified guide has it.
This is a different worksheet. It has the eighth block on it, it has the three-step plan formula printed inside block four instead of three empty lines, and every box carries the “ask yourself” question from this page, because the boxes are not the hard part — knowing what to write in them is.
Two pages: a blank sheet to fill in, and a completed one so you can see what a finished answer looks like. Free, no strings.
If you get stuck on the plan block, that is normal — reply to the email it arrives in and tell me where, and I will help you through it.
When you have several customers
Most businesses have two or three characters. Very few have only one. So what do you do with three separate BrandScripts?
Lay them side by side and read across the rows instead of down the page. All three external problems together. All three internal problems. All three success pictures. Common language surfaces almost immediately, because these customers are different but related — they came to you for connected reasons.
That shared language becomes your homepage, so whoever lands there recognizes themselves in it. Then the page offers the specific paths, the visitor self-selects, and the page they land on next speaks only to them. Broad at the top of the site, specific as they go deeper. How this works when you serve multiple services.
What to do with it once it’s written
A BrandScript that lives in a folder has done nothing for you. Four places it should go immediately:
Your one-liner. Compress the problem, your solution and the better life into something you can say out loud without notes. This is the single highest-return thing on the list, because you will use it several times a week for the rest of your career. One-liner examples.
Your homepage. The problem block above the fold, the plan block visible without scrolling far, the direct call to action repeated down the page.
Your content. This is the underrated one. The problem blocks are a list of article topics, and the questions inside them are the questions your buyers are typing into Google and into AI assistants. A BrandScript is the fastest content brief you will ever write, because it tells you what the reader is worried about before you start.
Your sales conversations. Give the plan block to anyone who answers the phone. It is the answer to “so how does this work?” and having it consistent is worth more than most people expect.
Should you use a tool to write it?
StoryBrand AI will generate a BrandScript for you in about a minute, and if the alternative is a blank page, use it. It is genuinely useful and it is faster than anything a person can do.
What it cannot do is push back. It takes what you give it, and on the first pass most business owners give it the surface version of their own story — the tidy description they have been repeating for years, which is usually the exact thing that needed fixing. I have worked with clients who ran their BrandScript through a tool, felt that something true about their business had not made it in, and called a guide afterward.
The useful frame is that the tool is good at the format and you are the only source of the content. Whatever gets you to a filled-in page is fine. Just do not mistake a filled-in page for a finished one. More on sound bites and the tools.
Worth saying plainly: a great BrandScript will not, by itself, get you found. I run AI search readiness reviews for a living and I regularly see clearly messaged sites score in the bottom tier because none of the structural work is there. Clarity is the foundation — it is not the whole building. The 8 Signals covers the rest.
Common questions
What is a BrandScript?
A BrandScript is a one-page document that fills in each element of the StoryBrand framework for one specific customer — the story of that customer, with your business written in as the guide who helps them. Your one-liner, website copy and marketing all get built from it.
Is there a BrandScript template or PDF?
Two of them. StoryBrand publishes the official one-page BrandScript template — seven boxes, blank lines, the version every certified guide works from. And the worksheet above is the StoryWorks version, which adds the aspirational identity block, prints the three-step plan formula inside the plan box, and puts a prompt question in every block so you are not looking at an empty line wondering what counts as an answer.
How long does it take to write a BrandScript?
Filling in the boxes takes an hour. Getting the answers right takes longer, because the honest version of your customer’s internal problem is rarely the first thing you write down. In a client engagement I do it in a ninety-minute call, and the reason that works is not the framework — it is having someone ask follow-up questions until the real answer comes out.
How many BrandScripts do I need?
One for each distinct type of customer you serve. Most businesses land on two or three. If you have a genuinely wide product range — a lender with nine loan types, for instance — you may have more, and then the job becomes finding the language they share for your homepage.
Can I write a BrandScript myself?
Yes, and plenty of people do. The parts that most often need outside help are the internal problem, because it is uncomfortable to name, and the plan, because you are too close to your own process to see it as a stranger would. If you get through both of those on your own, you do not need me.
What does a messaging campaign cost?
Messaging campaigns at StoryWorks start at $1,500, which includes a ninety-minute strategy call, your BrandScript, your one-liner, a brand messaging guide, and a follow-up hour to talk through applying it. Website wireframe copy is $3,500 and additional pages are $500 each.
Ninety minutes and you’ll have your message
A messaging campaign starts with one call. You talk, I ask the questions, and you leave with a BrandScript, a one-liner you can actually say out loud, and a guide for using both. Starts at $1,500.
About the author
Tim Yates is the founder of StoryWorks Marketing in Waukee, Iowa. He has been a Certified StoryBrand Guide since 2020 and is a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Fractional CMO. He has served as a breakout coach on roughly twenty StoryBrand livestreams alongside Donald Miller, J.J. Peterson and April Sunshine Hawkins, working with six to eight business owners in the room each time. He manages more than thirty client websites across the country.
Both certifications can be verified independently: StoryBrand Guide directory · Duct Tape Marketing consultant directory. Find him on LinkedIn.
I update this page when something on it stops being true.
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