Storytelling: The Most Important Skill

Highly effective marketing campaigns. Alluring reads, enticing novels, and captivating poetry. Comic books, newspapers, and mobile apps. Social, news, print, broadcast, and advertising media. The Twilight Saga. Shrek. What do these things have in common? Hint: it’s a shared quality, but could not be more different in each case.

Priority Numero Uno

Of course, the answer can only be one thing: a story. The most important aspect of media. Print, audio, or video. There is always a narrative. A plotline. A set of circumstances which take place over a specific timeline. The trajectory the reader, viewer, listener; the consumer is taken through and their satisfaction defines the creator’s success or failure. Highest stakes fall on the story.

Copywriters, newsdealers, graphic designers, speechmakers, sales agents, software engineers, editorialists, advertisers, content creators, dramaturgs, biographers, propagandists, songwriters, memoirists, scribblers, painters, musicians, sculptors, novelists, builders, cartoonists, dancers… What do they share? Right. In the backdrop of their profession lies a story. Writing, design, persuasion, programming, or instrument playing are coverups. Their actual job: storytelling.

Priceless Skill To Have

One of the best—fun, high paying, insane carryover—skills you can practice, learn, and improve in is storytelling. Everything you and I engage with has a story. Movies, TV shows, and video games have plots and scripts. Grocery store layouts have structures to sell less vegetables and more ultra-processed garbage. Billboards tell us where to go or what supplement to buy or what number to call to immediately melt those pounds on our waists. Clothes have prints we associate with something nostalgic, relatable, or meaningful to us in the past or present.

Our ancient brain lives by stories. You don’t have to see or hear to recognize this. How? Carve a minute out of your busy schedule and sit down somewhere safe. Slap on imaginary lab goggles, coat, and heavy-duty rubber gloves. Science mode. Experiment time. Warning: you won’t pass out, fall to the ground, and die. In this exact sequence and length, initiate three steps: (phase 1, first 15 seconds) - close your eyes and sit; (phase 2, subsequent 30 seconds) - keep your eyes shut and ensure your body does not move; (phase 3, last 15 seconds) - open your eyes and stare at what is in front of you. Done.

Minute Neurology Class

What have we learned? May not seem insightful, but we unveiled a handful of brain and body secrets. Doing precisely nothing. What did you notice right when you settled your butt and closed your eyes? To the guy in the back screaming “nothing!”, you’re missing out. As for the rest, you heard things. Lots of things. Thoughts and insights. In fact, you heard them long before sitting down. You still do.

Those thoughts are called your internal narrative for a reason. The brain loves stories so much, it tells them to itself. All day. Negative and positive. Haunted forests and paradise gardens. Plans you can’t wait for and events you wish you could eliminate. Formally called mind wandering, this state is where ideas are born and futures are “tested”. The brainiac scrupulously analyzes what you are doing, calculates what you intend to do, and remolds it into a story. Danger math.

Undervalued Skill

A rare few realize the power of great storytelling and gather the low-hanging fruits available to them. Okay, maybe not low-hanging—storytelling isn’t easy to master—but accessible. Storytelling, narrative development, and the ability to transmit a journey in an understandable and interesting way should be emphasized from kindergarten to university.

Every culture has its narratives. They form part of the culture’s entertainment, education, and moral values. Storytelling predates formal forms of art, it’s ancestor being that of speech, gestures, and expressions. Screams, growls, religious rituals, and campfire dances. Stuff you and I used to do back in the cave days, y’know? Hieroglyphs on walls, dances, tattoos, and carved tree trunks contained various motifs—social status, affiliation, fairy tales, mythologies.

Even Better With Today’s Technology

Modern storytelling encompasses much, much more than its traditional forms—fairytales, folktales, mythology, legends. It extends itself to politics, cultural norms, psychology, and education. Various forms of new-age media are used to record, express, and consume stories in ways unimaginable decades prior. Interactive storytelling allows the user to become a character within a world, making for immersion and intrigue.

Immersive experiences mean deeper learning and entertainment outcomes, hence gamification. Gamification means the strategic attempt to enhance an activity by making it akin to a game. Game design in non-game contexts. Shown to improve user engagement, flow, knowledge retention, and much more. Inclusive of an alluring story, gamification leverages our natural desires for socializing, mastery, competition, achievement, self-expression, and altruism. Elements like points, badges, leaderboards, performance graphs, storylines, and avatars are used to provide fun and productive feedback.

Inside Their World

Traditionally, storytelling is the interaction between the narrator and the listener. The words on the page speak to the reader’s scanning eyeballs. The brushstrokes on a canvas depict an action or object which the observer absorbs. A world is imagined and built by one, and discovered and explored by another. Contemporary storytelling takes it up a notch and empowers both the creator and consumer to cultivate a deeper connection.

Role-playing games were the first of this kind. The person controls the environment and the characters, moving the story along as they manipulate the fictional universe. The game advances and so does the user, traversing their fantasy lands or alternate-reality worlds. What I outlined is pure masturbation for your neuron cluster. Cool shit that’s “missing” from our world—werewolves, aliens, demons, hidden societies, dungeons with monsters you can battle—are something else. Ask the video game, social media, book, or news addicts.

Why Do They Work?

Having the wit to tell a good story spans beyond just being entertaining. One wouldn’t be wrong to say human life is rooted around narratives. Makes sense, as stories bridge cultural, linguistic, and age-related divides—can’t explain depression to a child, but a melancholy violin or piano instrumental plays chords in their tiny hearts. Words or complex musical or artistic knowledge isn’t necessary. Consider stories the most adaptive form of teaching and learning, transcending age, lingo, and capability.

Boiled down, stories are a tool to pass on understanding. Each has three parts. The Hero before the journey (the setup). The Hero turned one-hundred and eighty degrees (the confrontation). The Hero’s conquering of the villain by transforming themselves (the resolution). Exactly the way your cognitive machinery grew up and functions to this day. Why you think in narrative structures and remember facts in story form. Also why memorizing sheets of facts, such as dates or formulae, is tenfold harder than recalling the plotline of a movie or book.

Teaching: Learning Twice

Moreover, stories are beneficial for both the teller and listener. A win-win. The teller becomes aware of his or her own unique experiences as they mold the hodgepodge in their memory into digestible information. Simultaneously, the listener is able to imagine new perspectives for a transformative and empathetic experience. Together, they create lasting personal connections, think innovatively, facilitate a shared perception, and activate previously inaccessible realms of know-how. Parents read tales. Children catch z’s. Both draw lessons out of it.

In orthodox environments, storytelling is a line for passing on values. Olden generations shape the foundation of the community, and they gathered a lot of wisdom to spread. In this way, the youngsters learn to appreciate their place in the world. For instance, in a nahuatl community near Mexico City, stories about ahuaques or hostile water spirits that guard bodies of water contain morals about respecting the environment.

“Everywhere” Is Not A Lie

Business is no exception. Answering questions about the customer’s journey or how the story unfolds for them is indelible. What is it that my audience is most interested in? What would intrigue them the most? What part of the screen does my user see first versus last? Beginnings, middles, and endings construct every marketing scheme, advertising campaign, mobile application, unboxing experience, client onboarding, and sales interaction.

Final Comments—Head Scratching Wisdom

In the end, storytelling sits at the basis of human cognition. Brains tell, listen, and remember stories and have since ancient times. A meta skill to be learned. A worthwhile endeavor for anyone. “Think about the word destroy. Do you know what it is? De-story. Destroy. You see. And restore. That’s re-story. Do you know that only two things have been proven to help survivors of the Holocaust? Massage is one. Telling their story is another. Being touched and touching. Telling your story is touching. It sets you free.” said Francesca Lia Block.