Where do stories come from? Have you ever wondered why did our ancestors at a certain point in time decided they were going with incorporate communication with a beginning, a middle and an end when they talk to each other? For spiritual people, the purpose of telling the best of stories is promoting positive vibes, morals, and positive impact. I recently attended a workshop on pitching and storytelling by Georg Kutner that served as a great reminder of how to link your storytelling to making an impact.
SHARE THE RESULT: Sharing with your audience the result, and not only the process of the product, guarantees engaging your audience of the “why” you are telling the story and the big picture. We often get lost in the details about things and even about people in our stories that we miss the ideas, morals and the good intentions behind our story. This is especially significant when educating our younger generation because they are sponges that stimulate and absorb all experiences around them. Surrounding youngsters with stories that plant the seed of focusing on positive impact ensures resilient generations with balanced characters.
RELEARN THE BASICS: Playing with the rules of telling stories can be beautiful, yet the building blocks for foundation are essential in getting our messages across in the right way. For example, starting with your most meaningful and memorable point, or as the later Stephen R Covey called it beginning with the end in mind, is always the most non-negotiable first step in the art of storytelling. The second step in a good story is the logical development of characters and events in a way the engages the audience. I am a big believer in the say 'Brevity is the soul of wit,' and keeping the development of our stories simple is becoming more important in this day and age because our attention span is becoming ever shorter due to the growing so called attention economy and our constant connection to smart, digital tools and social media.
INCEPTION: No story is complete with a call for action. Every real storyteller has an agenda, where she or he hopes to incept and nudge audience towards a desirable action in favour of the storyteller. This is why it pays to invest time, efforts and money into improving our collective storytelling skills, not only so that we can connect more clearly and effectively with the world, but also to remind ourselves that good stories lead to good impact, and vice versa.
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