THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING.

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Storytelling! Storytelling!
What is a Story?
What is Storytelling?
Story! Story! Story! Story!
What does your imagination conjure when you hear about storytelling?
Have you ever considered storytelling as an art of great influence?
Stories animate our reasoning process.
Stories create emotional responses.
Stories are pictures of who we aspire to be.
Stories give us permission to act.
Stories connect.
Stories stick.
Stories captivate us.
Stories are us.
We spend a phenomenal amount of our lives following stories; telling them; listening to them; reading them; watching them being acted out on the television screen or in films or on a stage. They are far and away one of the most important features of our everyday existence…. These structured sequences of imagery are in fact the most natural way we know to describe almost anything which happens in our lives. _Christopher Booker.
Poet and novelist Margaret Atwood said, “You’re never going to kill storytelling because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.”
Stories are at least as old as human beings. The first-day people talked, I guarantee you they were telling stories.
People are twenty-two times more likely to remember a fact when it has been wrapped in a story. Why? Because stories are memorable, they help us grab the gist of an idea quickly, and they trigger emotions.
We can all name them. Who in your organization holds your attention when they speak up? Who can you count on to be the most engaging dinner conversationalist? What speaker do you see on a program who pulls you in?
The names that come to mind are those who tell stories so well that time seems to stand still. And it’s true whether they’re speaking to an audience of one or one thousand; on a sales call or a stage; a podcast or around a meal. Those who most deeply connect with their listeners do so through great storytelling.
Decades of research and centuries of wisdom make clear that our brains are wired to remember well-told stories long after the facts grow old. Those who are able to share meaningful and impactful narratives become success stories themselves.
Great storytellers become the best salespeople, the most memorable leaders, the most engaging speakers, the best mentors, and the teachers we will remember for a lifetime.
Storytelling is part of the marrow of what makes us human. We see it in cave paintings, hear it in ancient songs, read it etched into stone and transcribed onto scrolls. But the truth is that storytelling matters even more today than ever. Think about all of the websites, webinars, podcasts, streaming video, and good, old-fashioned, in-person conversations we engage with every day. The way we use these platforms to tell the stories of ourselves, our experiences, our companies, our brands, and our ideas has the ability to reach and influence people to a degree unmatched in human history.
The good news on the storytelling front is that great storytelling can be learned. In fact, it has to be learned.… Storytelling isn’t a form of magic but of technique—although the effect you can have on others can seem like magic at times. And becoming a far better storyteller than you believed possible is certainly within your grasp! You just have to approach it as you would other leadership development and effective communication skills worth mastering.
The bottom line is getting your audience to care about what happens in the story, preferably in a deep way. The Law of Storytelling is about winning the hearts of your audience.If you put the focus on the listeners, your storytelling skills will improve overnight.
There’s a statement by [the Roman dramatist] Terence: “I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.” If you know that, accept that, then you can tell a story. You can make people believe characters are just like they are. Jack and Jill went up the hill, one fell down and the other came tumbling after. The listener thinks, “Oh, I’ve fallen down, so I can understand,” even if it happened in Holland or Kowloon. Human beings should understand how other humans feel no matter where they are, no matter what their language or culture is, no matter their age, and no matter the age in which they live.
If you develop the art of seeing us as more alike than we are unalike, then all stories are understandable.Every story has a hero, a goal, conflict, and resolution.
The hero, or the main character in the story, can be anyone or anything, and your goal is to help your audience identify with them. That hero has a goal but faces conflict as he tries to achieve it. That is the core of the story. And in the end, the hero either succeeds or fails.
You can use stories for any purpose: to prove a point, illustrate an idea, teach a process, break the tension, or move your audience emotionally.
The ability to tell a personal story effectively is really a matter of attitude. If you tell success stories for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, of course it will come off as egotism. But if you tell stories of your own struggles and mistakes, it humbles you and helps others. And if you tell a funny story, it makes everyone laugh. That’s why your favorite humor should be self-deprecating. When you good-naturedly poke fun and laugh at yourself, everyone else does too. It closes the gap between you and your audience.
What is the essence of the story you want to tell? Is there anything in it that doesn’t need to be there, any detail that doesn’t contribute? Playwright Anton Chekhov advised, “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
Don Yaeger emphasizes the importance of including dialogue. “Memorable storytelling is a combination of what you say and how you say it.” “Using somebody’s actual phrasing can add color to a story that will pull your listener or reader in and make them care about the characters. And that’s one of your storytelling goals: to have your audience care, preferably in a deep way, what happens.” You want people to see themselves in your stories.
You need to make sure the story you want to tell is tailored to your audience. “There’s nothing that makes someone more interested in you than when they find out you’ve taken time to show interest in them.” If the story you’re considering doesn’t fit your audience, look for a different story.
Stories have the potential to help people dream, explore, and expand their lives. That requires creativity from the presenter. One of the best ways to enter a creative space as you work on a story is to maintain a beginner’s mindset. As teacher and author Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.”
Your imagination can fuel your audience’s imagination. It’s been said that imagination is given to us to compensate for what we are not, and a sense of humor to console us for what we are.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

If you want to tell a connecting story, put your emotions into it. Don’t be afraid to show people that you care about what you’re talking about. Storytelling is built on humanity. It connects with others when it contains emotion.

By paying attention to how you communicate, you can take a good story and make it a great one. laughter is like a windshield wiper. It doesn’t stop the rain, but it helps us to keep going. If you’re naturally funny, use that skill when you tell stories. If you’re not, then find ways to have fun, because that will make your presentation fun for your audience.

Storytelling can help you in every aspect of communication. Chuck Swindoll, a brilliant communicator, said, “Stories transport us into another world. They hold our attention. They become remarkable vehicles for the communication of truth and meaningful lessons that cannot be easily forgotten.”

Nothing makes a story go flat more quickly than a timid delivery. If you’re going to tell a story, be engaging and energetic. Become a great storyteller, because people see their own lives in stories.

Stories are so great that they connect us to the core of who we really are. Stories are what connects us to one another.
Stories are an intricate part of our existence that are interwoven and intertwined in all of us. It is what connects all of us into the piece of a whole.

Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. They have characters, heroes, and villains, and the speaker is either a character in or a narrator of the story. They have a journey, problem, tension, or struggle, and sometimes they have a resolution or an outcome and sometimes not.

By the art of storytelling, we become vessels that all and sundry can relate to. Everybody likes,enjoys, savors, relishes, and desires to connect to a deep story. Like it's often said, “the secret of men is in their stories.”

Stories sell Because everyone with a heart understands the weight of tears and pain that accompanies it. This is what makes storytellers one of the greatest people that have ever lived.
Now people write stories in books and refer to them as Self Help but nevertheless, all they do is tell stories.

However, before the advent of books(Stories in written form), storytelling has been reinvented over the course of centuries past, as the tales told under the warmth of the moonlight while outside the village square as a community or whilst outside the biggest oak tree in the front of our houses in the village during our growing up years. It has been reinvented into what we now call forecasts, people now tell stories in image through the aid of technology and other related devices.

Storytelling is an art that will obviously never die or become outdated because it is one powerful channel via which our influence is spread across our environment, nation and the globe in varying spheres of influence.

Sometimes in the distant past, our stories only circulate within our villages. But since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the spring of contemporary times, Native African tales and the tales of other indigenous people spread across the globe are transferred, spread, and picked up among different cultures and diverse ethnic nationalities through the medium of technology.

Basically, anyone can relate to and assume to be part of a story that is properly narrated from the perspective of the hearer.

What differentiates storytelling from other forms of communication is the element of genuine connection. This is the process by which the storyteller becomes intertwined with his audience by the synergy that has been formed from the perspective of the hearer.

A good story well told,expressed, described and dramatized on stage with the aid of body language has the capacity to change a person's life. A story well told is a story well received. Only those who communicate good stories end up as stories themselves.

Stories are channels through which lawyers and other professionals strewn and scattered across the globe impact and alter the course of people's lives.
When we hear a good story, we feel it is being told from the glimpse of our individual experiences. It is a most powerful means of connecting deeply with the people around us. It is what each and every one of us is entitled to as everyone loves an inspiring story.
Storytelling has metamorphosed over the years through the advent of many technical advances in various aspects of our lives in modern times without buying airtime on T.V channels or even on radio.

By youtubing; which involves telling stories through the use of videos.
The use of stories or status; which involves posting pictures or short clips on our IG handle as well as on WhatsApp.
Through the posting of videos on our Facebook handle.

People now tell stories on LinkedIn with regards to serving us professionally by posting videos and contents in relation to their profession with the intent of capturing and wooing a strong customer base for services they offer.

A storyteller is a powerful influencer of civilization all across history. Throughout history, storytellers through the invention, reorganization and reinvention of modern stories appeals to refining the paradigm of certain people with great and enormous levels of influence who peruse those works and experience an obvious paradigm shift which enables them to enforce positive and glaring impact in the civilization during which time they existed. Which has continued to affect the history of the human race even though they are long gone.

As a storyteller, you can alter the course of civilization with just the ink of the blood of your imagination ably strewn and drawn across books or even pamphlets.

You have been handed an instrument of great and indescribable level of influence as a storyteller. Because stories carry within them the inbuilt potential to alter the course of the lives of the people they come across. They are never forgotten even after they have made a graceful exit from the annals of time. That's why writers like Charles Dickens forever influenced the growth of the English Language by the creation of certain key words and phrases that were never known to have existed prior to their era.

Storytellers are writers who write on the parchment of people's heart through the pen of their fluid voices that change both in cadence and rhythm depending solely on the occasion they are called to give people their unique perspective on life’s issues.
They use their voices as the pen to draw people into their imagination and get them entangled with the very fabric of their existence. They have been known to trigger the outbreak of the industrial revolution with just a work or two. For example, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO which was authored by Karl Marx that inspired the kindred spirit in the Lowest rung down in the societal ladder, the Proletariat to take up a stand and weather the perils of these afflictions on their darkened souls through the lenses of the mind sharpened from illumination glimpsed from the pages those stories.

Writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, and Leo Tolstoy(author of WAR AND PEACE.) tumbled down the various invisible walls of partitioning erected by the various ideological blocks of Communist and Capitalist factions. Storytellers like Nikolai Gorbachev (author of PERESTROIKA AND THE GLASSNUT) introduced the POTUS(The U.S President) during the world war years which shut the door to the Leviathan called the IRON CURTAIN. This caused a sporadic growth across the globe. This is achieved by shedding the invisible veil covering the hearts of the people of the East and the West.

As storytellers, we tell stories to a point that we no longer need to tell them but rather the stories we have previously told and have accumulated across the past begins to tell others about us. It transcends decades and centuries and that's why myths and legends even though more than a thousand years old still hold the same level of awe in the hearts and ears of those who hear them.
It seems that storytelling has been smeared with invisible elements that conjures within the imagination of the hearers truths they believe to be real which have been obviously complimented by facts from what they just heard or read.

People love it when you approach them, with the obvious intent of talking about them to themselves. This creates an invisible bond of connection between the speaker and those hearing. For storytelling as a powerful form of communication to be effective it must possess a deep connection to the heart of your audience. To build an unforgettable connection with your audience as a speaker, you must be able to touch the rims of their hearts by giving them the vibe that your story wouldn't have flown without them being there to listen.

Our stories are simply tales others tell us about ourselves which we are always so eager and desperate to hear very much with a bursting level of enthusiasm.

We are simply an embodiment of whatever we tell others and this includes the lies we whisper to ourselves in the dark. Because telling yourself a lie over a long period of time won't make it metamorphose into the truth with time. The lies we concoct in our tales either consciously or from a sense of extravagant self flagrancy will eventually come dancing in the masquerade of consequences to torture us for the perjury we committed while simply trying to dazzle our audience.
Most of the time, we are deceived by the relish and seduction to move from lines of sanity to ambience created by narcissism in the quest to influence societal apparatuses into creating a delusional demi-god and deity like aura around us.

Successful salespeople use realistic examples to show the listener that another individual has made the choice he or she is being urged to make.
Great persuaders have always been good storytellers, for they have known that we are more easily influenced by individualized examples and experiences than by general principles.
Stories of other people convince us because they appeal to our hearts rather than our heads. They can stir our feelings powerfully and to change our attitude. And when all is said and done, the art of storytelling is the heightening of emotion. It is appealing to the unconscious more than the conscious, to the right side of the brain more than the left.

The best part of storytelling is understanding the emotions of others.” And the best way to appeal to the emotions is by talking about people, their struggles, conflicts, and eventual triumphs. To know about the lives of other people.

In the long run, we are our stories and our stories eventually end up as us and we are wrapped up in one indivisibly intertwined whole.