6 key elements of communication7/9/2023 ![]() ![]() When Mahatma Gandhi ignited the Quit India Movement in 1942, his speeches inspired the entire country to join in. Now you just have to write the stuff.Swami Vivekanand’s address to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 is considered groundbreaking. For me, the goal was to relieve you from spending the next few weekends reading books on storytelling. It doesn’t need to be any harder than that. What is it that you want them to do? What is the call to action, to use marketing and communications lingo? Is it to buy your product, vote for you, donate to your cause?Īnd there we have it. If the job of the lesson was to provide your audience with an insight then the job of the conclusion is to move the audience into action. The so what? What was the main learning for our character? By stating this we point out the takeaway we want our audience to leave with. In corporate storytelling or storytelling with a purpose beyond entertainment, you need to be forthcoming with the lesson. Up until now, the story structure is pretty similar to a normal drama structure. The trigger was all about building tension and this part is where we release that tension and allow the audience to land. But in short, this is the outcome of your character’s struggles. What happened? What did your character do? Is it a sad or happy story? Whatever you do, try and make it unexpected. Ensure your character is pushed against the wall and forced to make a decision that will either make them face a bad destiny or make a radical change. A few ways of doing this is by presenting a series of events that point toward the need to act. When you have established the problem the next step is to raise the stakes. Be vivid and paint pictures with your words. Talk about the old you or the old version of your main character and what his or her day looked like with the struggles he/she faced. You need to overcome a problem because, without this, there is no story. You can do this by talking about something the main character has struggled with. When you’ve grabbed the attention you need to start to relate to your reader, listener, and viewer. Making sure you quickly explain what they will gain is critical. What is it they want to get away from or what do they want to achieve? In corporate and organizational storytelling, you have to provide your audience with a reason to read beyond pure entertainment. In your hook, you should capture your audience’s struggles or desires. Think headline and the first few sentences or paragraphs. ![]() The job of the hook is simply to grab the attention of your audience. Structure and framework are the keys to writing a good organizational story within a decent timeframe (unless you’re Stephen King). What is it you want your audience to think, feel, and do? What action do you want them to take? If you first commit to these prerequisites, then you have a good foundation to stand on. ![]() There needs to be a clear reason for you to tell the story. If your story is longer than 1,000 words then cut it down. Instead, you need to simplify and keep your stories short. There is no room for complexity or for trying to cram several angles into the same story. What our ever-decreasing attention span means is that we have to create super simple stories. If you are still reading this, you are probably eager to find a simpler way to come up with stories. Studies show that humans have an average attention span of eight seconds. It’s amazing how quickly we jump to the next thing that grabs our attention. Making people feel something is an absolute necessity in a story. The reason is that authenticity is what makes us relate to a character and FEEL with him or her. ![]() Go bowling, swimming, or grab a drink with your friend instead. If you aren’t willing to be completely authentic and portray the main character (you, your boss, or someone you are writing about) then you might as well just skip the story. However, there are three prerequisites that need to be fulfilled before you even start to think about using storytelling in your organization-authenticity, simplicity, and a call to action. My Kindle is filled with books on how to create stories within the business world but for some reason, the examples given and the situations presented have seldom proved relevant. And with the day-to-day tasks that we all try to manage it is even harder to find the time to churn out stories like Netflix churns out reality series. In all honesty, I’ve been a bit skeptical. Storytelling has for years been the holy grail for getting people excited about your topic, whatever your topic may be. For years we have been bombarded with the message-whether we are in business, part of an NGO, or in public service-that we need to tell a story to better convey our message. ![]()
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