I Love Stories. I really do. In fact, all humans are preconditioned to do so. In middle and high school I was always engaged in history class. The dates and the names of certain historical figures or events might slip my mind, but the general stories would always stick with me. Thinking more deeply about it, what makes stories so compelling is that they connect to human emotion. For example, a lot of the history taught in school has to do with triumph. Conquering new lands or defeating an enemy’s army are interesting stories because we are able to put ourselves in the place of those events. A good story is one that we can live in our own mind.
Being a good story teller is therefore a powerful tool. A story is the interpretation of an event that is then told to others. What makes the story good is the degree to which it connects with the emotions of the listener. Therefore, a compelling story can become a part of the listener’s reality, especially if you frame it as being based on or being ‘entirely true.’ But even a true story expresses occurrences through the perspective of the story teller. In addition, the content that is mentioned and omitted has a massive impact on the meaning of the story. A good story teller is convincing others of their perspective of the world, not telling others what happened.
In addition, stories are easy to remember and thus easy to tell others. Like I mentioned previously, you may not get all of the details, but the message and main occurrences should be easily remembered if the story was compelling. Therefore, good story tellers have a built in distribution platform. If they are able to tell a good story, their audience will be able to spread the story to others. If we learn to tell stories, we can learn to better share our ideas.
My favorite part about this is your quote that reads, “If we learn to tell stories, we can learn to better share our ideas.” I believe that the sharing of ideas is what drives innovation, relationships, and everyday life. It is so important to not only be able to accurately absorb and consume one’s story, but to be able to share one of your own. Historically, we have often been presented stories from the perspectives of many of the same storytellers. To ensure that everyone’s story gets shared, it is imperative that we democratize the pen. We cannot change the story unless we change the storytellers. Really great post!
I was excited when reading this blog because I believe there is power ion story telling. Everyone comes from different backgrounds and different stories to tell so it is interesting to hear and learn people stories. No matter if its a fiction or non-fiction story it can have an everlasting impact on your life. I think story telling is something people should do more because of the growth it can have.
Hi, Luis! As a Narrative Studies major, I love you emphasis on narrative here. I wrote a similar post about stories, dance, and the law and wrestled with some of the same questions you wrestle with here about the effectiveness of stories to advance oneself and one's ideas. If you wanted to expand this idea further, I would ask other questions about why humans find stories so compelling. You hint at it here a bit with you discussion of how humans like to imagine themselves in a different reality via the story. But what do you think motivates that? Dissatisfaction? Creativity?
This was a great bite to read. At times, scrolling through a blog post before reading and seeing how long it is can be daunting. However, I was excited to see what you could have wrote and how much you got across in such a short amount of space. I absolutely loved your point about stories intertwining with reality, it was such a beautiful way of pushing the point forward on the impact and significance of story telling. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your post, however, I would have loved to read more about what exactly it is about storytelling that intrigues you. Not just your relationship with it, but the features that compel you to continue to share…
I totally agree with you and I think we can clearly see this when watching informational videos on youtube like Ted Talks. You often see with Ted Talks that they start with a story - whether thats a personal anecdote or a thematical one that pertains to their topic - the story is meant to draw the listener/viewer in and almost in a way personalize the topic to invoke empathy and a want to know more.