Storytelling

 

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”

These words come from Robert McKee, one of the most sought after screenwriting teachers in the world. In fact, one time I had good fortune to hear him lecture for 3 full days when he was in Sydney!

I was just a little copywriting cub, back then. I got to listen to him free too because he was appearing at my family’s theatre, of all places. 

I loved it… and yep, I am a storytelling nerd lol. 

And I couldn’t agree more with his statement.

I find stories to be very useful whenever I’m speaking to an audience, or whenever I’m shooting a video, or whenever I’m writing an email. 

Bottom line: story is the most potent and hypnotic communication framework you can ever deploy!

I take the subject so seriously that almost every single communique I create is story based. When I’m not using a story it’s only because I couldn’t find a great story for a specific situation. 

But that almost never happens. 

Especially when I do speeches. 

When I’m speaking virtually or live, I try to get a story into my talk within the first minute, and even the first 20 seconds. 

There are some talks where I’m regaling story after story after story! Of course, my talk is coupled with a principle, tactic or a content chunk. 

But you get my point.

And depending on the length of the talk, I can use between 5 to 20 stories. 

Usually, I start by using personal stories to bring the content to life.

If there’s nothing relevant, I go over client stories.

Or if I don’t have either one of those two for a particular piece of content, I will tell a third party story.

And if you’re wondering if you can tell too many stories – not really. But you can tell a boring story!