Storytelling has been an essential component since humans began to communicate. Stories serve various purposes and provide diverse outcomes. For the most part we use stories to convince or support our position. Stories allow us to illustrate our point more completely.
Stories can persuade you to make decision, build resentment, or inspire a change. The question is how do you know the story you tell will have the desired outcome?
According to Squirrel, Inc. the best way to determine this is through practice. You test your story on a variety of audiences and determine if the story you are telling evokes the desired effect. When I read this I thought about Jerry Seinfeld. Each of his performances are well rehearsed stories with the intention to persuade the audience of something. Although, Seinfeld claims to be a show about nothing, each of the episodes tells a story with a purpose in mind. Perhaps these stories are cynical and do not inspire the audience into action, but they do comment on the society we live in. True to the bartender’s words, people do not mind hearing the story over and over because each time you hear (or watch) the story you discover something new you had not observed before. The key to Seinfeld’s story as well as Diana’s story is the need to believe in the person delivering the story. Can you identify with that character? Or are they just going through the motions? Had Diana not believed in her story she would not have been able to inspire change (or at least the discussion of change) nor would Seinfeld have inspired viewers to return to watch an episode for the hundredth time at 6:00, 6:30 or 7:00.
When I taught literature I relied on stories from my teen years to help students identify with the literature they read. Each day I would begin class with a seemingly unimportant story. (The added benefit to this practice is my students would arrive early in an effort to avoid missing a part of the story, because there is nothing worse that missing a detail). I would tell them stories about crushes I had, trying to decide between playing tennis and being in the band, or stories about my sister and brother (they always illustrated the people who made bad choices). The purpose of my stories were to illustrate the literature we read for that class. But my students did not know. I would build lessons on these stories and then I would begin to apply the stories to the text. My students always thought they had me off task and thought it was amazing I could actually make that story somehow connect to the literature we were reading. They would be very disappointed to learn I had shared the same story with the previous class and the class after them. (One student actually saw my lesson plans where I had written “party story” and was angered to learn I had intentionally told them a story).
As a writing instructor I rely heavily on stories to help students find their voice as well as to help students develop their writing style. I always ask my students to invite the reader in with a story. They however, like our reading suggests have a misconception of the power of stories. They do not think using stories reflects academic writing. This semester one of the assignments my students have is to write the story being told on their favorite website or their favorite commercial. It seems like an easy assignment at first. But when they begin to dissect the commercial or website they being to realize the story is much more complex than they anticipated. The purpose is to teach students the importance of narration and description and the power and clarity a story provides. Which begins the question of how many ways can we tell as story with technology? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8 tells a story without speaking. Children hold up signs for the viewer to read while the music plays in the background. It is powerful video because the story is compelling. Which accordingly allows for this video to be sticky for me. Technology enables us to have more versatility in our storytelling. We are no longer limited to words and a captive audience enabling us to reach a broader audience than any of us ever anticipated.
