If you ask Professor Google about the elements of storytelling, you will find “The 5 elements of storytelling”, “The 4 elements of storytelling” and yes, “The 6 elements of storytelling” and even “The 7 elements of storytelling”.
I’m sure they’re not all guff, and there’s usually something interesting in each article.
Sometimes it’s navel-gazing stuff, written by writers for other writers. And sometimes it’s cool geeky stuff that will tell you about The Hero, The Quest, Rags to Riches…
But, if you’re short on time and just want to get on and get a result, what do you do?
Well, if your bathroom leaks, do you trawl YouTube for ‘how to do plumbing’ videos, or do you phone the best and closest plumber you can find?
Think of me as your plumber.
You have an important speech coming up soon, and you need help.
That’s my job! Call me!
Stories have a Dramatic Arc
But if you are interested in storytelling, almost all you need to know is in this short video about the dramatic arc. I bow to this video and have used it in my corporate speaker coaching ever since I found it because it says it way better than I could.
Equilibrium.
Disequilibrium.
Equilibrium restored.
Stories are Dynamic
Stories are dynamic – they have moving bits in them. They are a film and not a photo.
Consider these 4 words. Man – horse – cottage – city.
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What turns this from a simple collection of words into a Story?
Verbs.
The man rode … horse from … cottage to the city.
But a story demands more.
Colour. And texture.
Stories are visual
Stories are dynamic …. and visual.
How do you take facts and give them colour? You give them adjectives.
What about…
A tall man. A wounded man. A crafty man.
A dark horse. A stolen horse. A faithful old horse.
A thatched cottage. A farmhouse. A burnt-out cottage.
See how different pictures pop up in your head?
So what happens if we add a verb and some colour to these four words:
A desperate and hungry poor man put all that he owned into a dirty canvas rucksack and saddled up his tired old horse and rode away from his rundown worker’s cottage in the wood toward the smoke and noise and danger of the city hoping to make his fortune…
And as in all good films – something then happens. And we see what happens to the person and how they reacted. That’s where the dramatic arc comes in.
Put all these things together and you have a memorable story.
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