The beats of a story

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco

I love this post at 99u on “The five beats of successful storytelling.” I plan to use this to explore the story I want to tell at an upcoming talk.

As I have mentioned before, storytelling is so crucial in today’s world. There is so much information floating around, the only thing that tends to get our attention is a well crafted story.

My take on the importance of storytelling overtime

• pre-3000 BC – I would love to write some of this stuff down, but I don’t know how to yet. It’s easier for my cro-magnon brain to process a story, so tell me about the story about that enormous woolly mammoth you killed with your bare hands and I will draw pictures of it on this cave wall.
• 3000 BC – 2013 – This industrialist work/life balance has really got me down. Can you just send me the excel spreadsheet with last quarters’ sales figures?
• 2013 and beyond – I have a million tweets a minute coming at me. Lot’s of information, but nothing is sticking. My modern hipster mind would love a story so I can make sense of all of this.

So as you can see from my exhaustive chronicle of time, storytelling is back in. There’s no doubt that good storytelling has always been valued, but I believe stories help us separate the signal from the noise.

So check out the framework and 99u’s article. Try and craft your story doing this…I am working on mine and hope to blog about it in a few days.