Storytelling is the future of messaging and video is the platform
The art of storytelling telling is likely world’s oldest form of communication. Before civilizations were populated with citizens who could read and write, all information was passed from one generation to another through storytelling. The Odyssey wasn’t written down for over 700 years after the civilization who believed the tales had faded away. So, the hot new storytelling trend is more of a renaissance than a modern innovation of communication genius.
Stories (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Of course, the fact that storytelling has been around as long as civilization isn’t going to keep every marketing, communication, public relations, and education conference from featuring speakers who will dissect the science of storytelling ad nauseum. I know, because I have given several of these lectures over the past two years.
If storytelling is such an ancient practice, why has it suddenly taken hold of the professional world? The answer is most likely three-fold. It’s entertaining, it’s scientific, and it’s effective.
I have taught a Multimedia Storytelling course at Colorado Mesa University for five years. For the final assignment, I require students to create a corporate story video using the concept of manipulation. Sounds pretty horrible, right? Nobody likes to be manipulative. Even worse, what kind of teacher asks his students to practice manipulation? I will explain.
The cold hard truth is that manipulation is the essence of storytelling. In fact, Americans have words that refer to stories that aren’t manipulative enough – we call them cheesy, hokey, corny, thin, or lame. These are words for movies, books, or other stories that aren’t capable of sucking the audience. A great story not only makes you forget time, space, and reality, it also transfers a predetermined emotion from the creator to the audience.
The word manipulation, when it relates to storytelling, is generally not about forcing an audience to feel or act against their will. It’s usually about pulling a willing audience out of their reality and placing them into a new dimension. In this instance, the word manipulation is similar to how an artist manipulates clay or paints. The big difference here is that a storyteller manipulates his/her audience and the tools he/she uses are found in the craft of storytelling.
An exhaustive analysis of each tool at a storyteller’s disposal is not possible or appropriate within a single blog post, but there a few basic concepts that all great stories have in common. These include, but are not limited to Freytag’s Pyramid (also called the narrative arch), characters, conflict, cause, context, plot, and point of view. Each of these deserves its own blog post, if not it’s own book. The following video will also demonstrate the importance of storytelling in the world of communication.
