Templates for Storytelling It is part of the storyteller’s art to tinker with details. Story templates are a wonderful shortcut to framing a message (moral) as a story. We must heed a few words of warning, though. The risk of relying on a favorite format is that every story cooked according to the same recipe
Defining Story as a Significant Emotional Experience My current teaching definition of story is: “the narration of a significant emotional experience that feels meaningful to both teller and listener.” Teaching non-professional storytellers helped me realize that it is much easier for them to find a great story if I ask them to think about a
Story Is Still the Foundation of Culture and Context If formulas and machine learning could solve all of our problems, we wouldn’t need stories. Like every religion, technology delivers dogma and formulas that promise more clarity than they can deliver. Religions recruit metaphor and storytelling to make sense of ambiguities that dogma can’t condense. Technological
Storytelling Morals and Ethics for the Digital Age Obviously, the combined power of story and technology begs for a new code of ethics. The good news is that enduring myths “crowd sourced” moral lessons long before we coined the term, by incorporating centuries of listeners’ tales about what works, what doesn’t work, and how to
The Social Impact of Storytelling Over the twenty years since The Story Factor was first published technology has accelerated communication, and with it the speed of storytelling, beyond our wildest imagination. Amid the revolutionary growth of all this digital media, video, database mining, and social media, Apple founder Steve Jobs commented that the “most powerful person
“That’s me getting screwed, but really …we take turns because when I feel screwed I end up passing it on.” Circle of Moral Concern: Whose Lives Matter? For want of a better term, let’s refer to those you feel obligated to protect as being inside your circle of moral concern. No one can tell you
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx Troublemakers erode trust faster than we can build it back right now. Yet, many of these “troubles” are invented conflicts that distort predictably contrasting values. It helps to know what to look for. And once
I’ve been trying to infiltrate the halls of power for decades. My secret mission is to increase the diversity of thought by teaching those without a voice how to tell their stories and by teaching leaders how to find and retell stories that broaden everyone’s understanding.
We need a Magic School for Storytellers Thirty years before J. K. Rowling created Harry Potter, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series imagined a magic school that taught apprentice sorcerers how to avoid abusing the power of magic. Le Guin points out early in the series that “even to light a candle is to cast a
Truth in Storytelling When I wrote the first edition of The Story Factor twenty years ago, I began with the idea that people don’t want more information. They want faith in you and your positive intentions. I never suspected that two decades later we’d be discussing an explosion of stories that intentionally undermine this faith. Without
The Moral Dilemmas of a Lion, a Scarecrow, and a Tin Man Frank Baum’s original introduction to The Wizard of Oz, written in 1900, made it clear that he felt children no longer needed the stereotypical “old-time fairy tale” that “may now be classed as ‘historical’ in the children’s library.” Baum claimed the time had
