Most of us had to deal with years of
grammar and composition lessons and never really understood why we had
to read books and write short stories, essays, and poems. And, today,
with school long-gone, some of us still don’t like to read, and we
rarely write anything other than business reports and emails.
Going even further, most of us have no
idea how to tell a story. We know we enjoy good stories (the movie
theaters are filled with viewers night after night all over the world).
But we have no idea how a good story happens.
According to Isaac Asimov,
one of the world’s great science fiction writers, there are no real
‘suggestions’ as to how to tell stories, but he does provide four key
tips to help a young writer:
1. Vocabulary:
For Asimov, it’s important to know and
use the right tools. And the writer’s most important tool is language.
If you want to be a writer, you have to develop a good vocabulary, learn
grammar, and learn how to spell.
2. Plotting:
But there will be no point to mastering
vocabulary if you don’t know how to weave the elements of your story.
Every character has to have a purpose. And at every moment, the
progression of the plot points is moving toward a specific conclusion.
To achieve this interweaving, there’s nothing better than to read the
great masters of prose, like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. And don’t
only see what they do, but try to analyze what they’re doing, and why.
3. Information:
To write a good story, it isn’t enough
to have a general idea of what we’re talking about. We have to have a
solid understanding of the context we’re creating: What is your context?
How can you write about a baseball game if all you only know are the
rules of baseball? Isn’t it just as important to know the pressure a
batter feels when facing a pitcher? How does it feel to be a spectator?
What’s the thrill of watching a game closely? How does it feel to enjoy a
sunny day and eat a hot dog? A good writer has to have first-hand
experience of the various contents of the story. At the very least,
detailed research has to happen if first-hand experience is impossible.
4. Merge plot into environment/context:
In the heat of writing, it’s not unusual
for a writer to forget the environment in which the characters are
living and functioning and to focus only on the action. If this is you,
don’t be distracted by dialogue and action. Pretty much the only way a
reader is going to be able to imagine your story is if you describe in
some detail the environment in which your characters are living and
functioning.
These tips are valuable to all writers.
Not just for people who write blogs, which are all the rage today.
They’re also for people who create business presentations. In fact,
storytelling is becoming increasingly more popular here, because it is
stories that engage audiences even when the subject matter is complex or
boring … or both.
So, to adapt Asimov’s writing tips to creating a presentation:
1)
The writer needs to have a good vocabulary, one that is shared by the
audience. There’s no point saying “if you please” to a group of
teenagers! Remember: This applies to presentations with and without
storytelling. Your language must conform to the experience of your
audience.
2)
Throughout your presentation, be sure to let the dialogue and actions
of each character predominate. All your characters and words must have a
purpose, bringing coherence to your story. It’s up to you, the writer,
to know what that purpose is.
3)
When creating a presentation, you have to know the content inside-out.
How can you talk about a technological system when the terms may as well
be a foreign language you don’t speak? So search, learn, and master the
subject of your presentation before you sit down to develop the
presentation.
4)
It’s common that a presentation writer gets excited about the story and
forgets totally about the presentation that story is supposed to be
delivering. Yes, you may be using a story in a presentation, but you’re
also supposed to be sharing or even selling something, right? So, yes,
you need to entertain your audience, but never forget your main goal.
Make sure your story is helping you to convey the message you need to
convey.
So now that you know the value of a good story, you can ask those
people up at the front of the room: “How come you didn’t use
storytelling in your presentation?”
No comments:
Post a Comment