What’s Your Story About?
The way we tell a story (see The Storyteller In Us) will capture the audience’s attention. Beyond that, however, you need to also have a good and substantive story to tell.
More and more, people resort to visual aids such as the series of pictures above. If you start with just those pictures, the story can be almost anything:
- Interesting images captured
- Architecture – Buildings and structures
- Colours
- Creativity
- Dubai Expo 2020
Most people will start with the story instead of the pictures. The pictures are used to only emphasise your points and enhance your story. That is the traditional way of doing things.
A good storyteller weaves his story around the picture, not the picture to suit the story. Because a storyteller has all the tools at his disposal (flair for language, creative idea, ability to craft a story), the process becomes easier. If you have ever sat in front of the computer searching for thousands upon thousands of pictures to fit your story, then you know how this feels. Established authors often talk of how their characters take on lives of their own: this is exactly what they mean.
I know you’re thinking, “How does this help me?”. So let me simplify it for those of us who need to figure out a good story to tell. A good story should have one central idea – perhaps it is to promote a particular product. If you start from there, then the story will revolve around your goal of promoting the product. Why is it good, what makes it different, how does it enrich one’s life. In essence, all roads MUST lead back to that central idea. Roads that meander and never get there should be discarded – those are the ‘white noise’ of the storytelling world. They only distract, they don’t add on to the storyline.
Coming back to diplomatic life. A diplomat only has a limited time by which to fulfil his or her objective. This is why the story they tell should be as interesting, and as succinct as possible. They need to know what their end goal is. Even in a posting abroad, valuable time is wasted when they meander and search for a purpose, instead of knowing where they need to be and then looking for ways by which to get there.
The story can change to fit the audience, the timing, the setting. But the goal remains the same. So, what is your story about?
*By the way, the pictures above are of Dubai Expo 2020, but using one or all of them can lead to multiple stories and multiple goals.
