Story and Narrative

Abrams has a great quote in the below video that I think is spot-on,

"...mystery is the catalyst for imagination."

"Exploring Your Life Story: A Workbook for Cultivating Joy and Growth Through Personal Storytelling."

It is no longer enough to tell audiences that your product is great and that they should buy it. One of the buzzwords that characterizes the shift away from pure selling is ‘storytelling.'

"The return to the visual was inevitable, really. Modern media demands it.

Communication as pictograms means we have come full circle — a return to a day when images provide the best way to satisfy the insatiable “need to know” while on the fly. We don’t catch our info while fleeing from woolly mammoths anymore. Instead, our big, hairy, audacious stressor is modern culture itself."

I've come to the conclusion that, as much as I love good comic art, it's good writing that keeps me coming back for more.

 

"It’s been said that when it comes to popular appeal of comics that “They come for the art, but stay for the stories.”

I love content creation tools that put wizard wands into the hands of Muggles. Instagram did this for photos, allowing mere mortals like me to create and share photos that were beautiful and expressive.

 

"...now Disney has created a branded tool called Story that allows any of us (well, anyone with an iPhone) to effortlessly tell and share annotated narratives."

"There’s a lot of buzz around the action of “storytelling.” It’s a trendy term.

 

Some marketers hijack storytelling as the art nouveau of their work. I suppose that’s fine, but it still rings generic.

 

Nurses, we live storytelling. Our work is storytelling. The intimacy in the care we provide is like a Bob Dylan song because storytelling doesn’t have to be the feel-good, inspire-the-world marketing scheme. It’s a lived life. Storytelling—good storytelling—encompasses the grit and the grime. It is the real, and yes, sometimes it is happy, but sometimes it’s about suffering and pain and a mixture of all those things."

 

[The Storyteller, photo by Steve Evans]

"Boyle certainly makes some interesting points (he and Steven Soderbergh would make a fantastic TED co-talk), especially when he claims cable television is “much more dangerous than what you see in cinema, and that's the wrong way around.” Do you think “Game of Thrones,” “Breaking Bad,” and “Mad Men” are where cutting-edge storytelling now lives? Or is cinema safely dangerous as long as Lars von Trier is around?"

"The opposite paradigm, which you call the Republic of Stories, is a world in which “our deepest debates, our obsessions, our consolations and our most purely discretionary choices about where to deploy our resources and attention are conveyed through sound, image, and movement in the vocabulary of art, in which every story matters to the common good, in which everyone—and everything—has its story. In The Republic of Stories, nuance, particularity, imagination, and empathy are given their rightful places as capacities that enable essential knowledge about ourselves, the world, and our choices within it."

"From this unlikely pairing came little programs that, when viewed together, make up an episodic web series, or webisode. Webisodes share some of the attributes of each of their media parents; yet they also bring a whole new generation of brand storytelling opportunities to life. It’s this pedigreed combination of the web and television that some big brands are experimenting with as a way to provide distinctive and uniquely engaging content to consumers."

"I attended a very interesting discussion group last week on Storytelling organized by the American Marketing Association. Expert panel included:

Doug Lipton of Story Dynamics – seriously experienced coach to multinationals on the subject.Steve Kolander of Small Army – award winning ad exec and songwriter (Dixie Chicks recorded one of his songs)Stona Fitch the award-winning author of original, powerful, and disturbing novels!

The subject, Storytelling: The Art of Moving People produced a sold out evening."

How has technology and changes in media changed the way we tell stories. SAP's Chief Storyteller explains the art of storytelling in this video.

"Once upon a time…."

 

"These words conjure images in our mind. We tell our children the story of the ‘boy who cried wolf’ to get over the message that if you lie, then eventually people won’t believe you when it is critical they do.

 

No matter what religion you follow, the holy books are filled with moral stories that attempt to shape your thinking and therefore your actions.

 

Never underestimate the power of a great story. However, in business we seem to underestimate its worth. Businesses tend to focus on processes and numbers, not stories and experiences. Over the years I have learnt the power of a story to get over messages to help organization's improve their Customer Experience. Many of my slides in a key note speech are just pictures to provide a visual element to the story I am telling. These stories provide a key message and challenge people’s status quo."

"For some time, marketers have been moving away from the traditional selling tactics of TV commercials. It is no longer enough to tell audiences that your product is great and that they should buy it. One of the buzzwords that characterises the shift away from pure selling is ‘storytelling’."

“Is the art of storytelling dead?” Garrison Keillor, the host for the 2013 Moth Ball in New York, said he was once asked this question by a fan.

"Storytelling takes many forms. In the past, stories were told orally, with people telling and retelling myths, fables and even histories. As writing technology became more prevalent, we began to record our stories, and we told them in the pages of books. Now, our society is awash in different devices and technologies, and those traditions of spoken stories and printed stories are blurring."

"Storytelling and theatre are different animals, though related both by virtue of being narrative arts, of being spoken performance arts, because they can sometimes take place in the same spaces, and because they draw on similar theoretical models."

This is a nice slideshare as a reminder to the power of storytelling for business Storytelling 101 from Sartaj Anand

Lisa Hsia, executive vice-president of Bravo Digital Media at NBCUniversal, gives us five predictions for the Social TV industry over the next few years.

"This story is the first of hundreds in Lead with a Story by Paul Smith. The book is a practical guide to leadership stories for professionals. He makes the point that stories–not charts and slides and official manuals—often help us communicate what we really need to say.

 

The first chapter answers the question, “Why tell stories?” with the “back to slides” story and some data and theory on the efficacy of story. The rest of the book is devoted to different scenarios and applications for stories in the business world."

Storypile is a collaborate storytelling website based an old concept called 'exquisite corpse' in which stories are collectively written by a number of participants.

Embracing the power of storytelling is “crucial to children’s enjoyment in books and in particular in reading for themselves in the future”, according to Allison Winship, head of childcare at Kids 1st Nurseries.