Archive for the ‘Storytelling’ Category
All Writing Tells a Story
I believe that every kind of writing tells a story—whether it is a blog, a personal statement for a graduate school application, a business letter, a scientific article, or the Great American Novel. Stories from our families, our communities, and the media form our worldview and shape our lives.
Our storytelling faculty appears to be innate; this means that we unconsciously seek a well-told story in everything that we read. When a piece of writing meets our expectations, it can have a powerful effect on us; when it doesn’t, it can leave us confused, irritated, even angry.
Stories Help Us Learn
Scientists have discovered that our natural ability to create stories is intricately connected to our ability to learn. This is because our brains seek to create meaning through relationship, and stories do this superbly.
Because stories form such an important part of who we are, it is important to understand their underlying architecture.
Stories Have an Underlying Structure
At the most basic level, every story has a beginning, a middle and an ending. The beginning draws the audience into the story and makes them want to hear it. The middle tells the basic events in some kind of logical order so that listeners can follow the story easily. Finally, the ending ties up loose ends and brings the story to a satisfying conclusion.
Stories Are Targeted at a Particular Audience
Successful stories are always targeted at a particular audience and use language and terminology the audience understands. This means storytellers never tell just one version; instead, they constantly revise their stories in a creative process that keeps them new and fresh. For example, they may add an extra dollop of humor in order to relax their audience and create a feeling of community; they may change their vocabulary and details when they tell the story to children; or they may change the order of events to add emphasis.
Stories Use Concrete Details
At all times, however, storytellers use concrete details and strong, active verbs to create forward movement and energy. Their language creates pictures in the minds of their listeners, and each word is important in moving the story along. Storytellers are also masters at creating rhythm. This means that their pace is sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes it stops altogether. This gives the audience the opportunity to absorb what has just been said.
Stories Help Us Feel
Above all, storytellers use emotion to connect deeply to their audience. Skillful storytellers can make us laugh or cry. Their use of emotion helps us identify strongly with the topic, engages us in the message, and unlocks our ability to create and problem solve. Emotions help us remember, they inspire us, and they move us to take action.
What does this mean to you if you just want to write a business article?
It means that you carefully write an introduction that captures your readers’ interest and tantalizes them with the essence of the message to come. It means that your ideas flow logically from one major point to another and that you avoid inserting ideas that are random or out of place. It means that you use concrete details, active verbs and strong nouns and avoid useless fillers and fluff.
And it means that you become adept at listening for rhythm, that you play with your writing until it “sings.” How do you do this? By always being willing to revise what you have written. By changing your vocabulary and the length of your sentences and paragraphs. By playing with different kinds of punctuation, using parallelism, and adding headings and subheadings when appropriate. Finally, you do this by being conscious of white space and giving your readers plenty of chances to stop, breathe, and absorb what you have written.
Most importantly, it means that you find ways to engage your readers’ emotions so that they care about your message.