Storytelling for Writers: What Is Storytelling and What Is It For

Storytelling … That great unknown, right? You see it everywhere. Everyone tells you about it, but no one has a concrete explanation … It’s like a kind of mystery phenomenon … Like the ones in Eleusis. Surely more than once you have wished to be initiated in this secret cult…

Well look, you’re in luck, today it’s time to review the storytelling.

If you’re still not sure what I’m talking about, don’t worry. The storytelling is just a way of telling things. A simple way – much more than it seems – to communicate with your reader, your client or your audience.

The storytelling is a literary concept that has become part of the marketing jargon is used, where more gracefully, incidentally, something that would make us look at the writers-. In marketing, storytelling is nothing more than engaging your customer through emotions and getting them through the entire sales funnel , until they click the buy button —and pay, of course.

Stop Telling Stories, What Is Storytelling And What Is It For?

The storytelling is as the balm of Gilead and served for all.

Although some argue that marketing does not work —at least in the literature—, the truth is that humans have been using it since we jumped from the tree and realised that if we rub an ember against a stone we leave black marks. You do not believe me? Next I leave you with one of the first pieces of storytelling that exist.

How does your body fit? There you have one of the first announcements of humanity. What he comes to say is: this is us, this is what we do? This was their way of telling what they did, they hunted. The first humans told their stories in this way, they painted on the walls of their caves which animals to hunt and which animals to flee from.

As you can see, storytelling is much simpler than it seems. It’s about telling a story, nothing more — nothing more complicated, right?

Our brain loves stories. As you have seen, we have been doing it for a long time. Surely before someone painted that, stories were already being told. Our brain has evolved over the years by listening to stories. And he loves them, for him they are like Lacasitos.

A story is easy to remember, it has a protagonist, it has a conflict and it has an ending. If it’s good, it’ll stay with you forever, you’ll remember — as you remember ET, Marty McFly, or Íñigo Montoya. If the story is well told it will resonate with your audience and they will remember it.

The Storytelling And Emotions

How does this apply to marketing? Well in the same way. Copywriters and communication agencies have learned to tell the story of the company and the people who are part of it to seduce the end customer. If you look at it, the big companies no longer speak in numbers – which are complex and hard to remember – they now tell stories.

Stories appeal to the emotions of your audience. They no longer tell us how well they do things, now they tell us why they do what they do. At this point you are no longer fooling anyone by saying that you have written the Amazon Best Seller – I have seen books on freakish dinosaurs that are Best Sellers on Amazon, so that concept tells me little to nothing.

Instead of telling me milongas about best-sellers, translations, and sold copies… Tell me why you write… What led you to write that particular book? Did you have gas one day and it occurred to you to open your novel with a Sarin gas attack in an airport terminal? Stop numbers, translations and film productions – which I know is all a lie – and tell me why you write. Buy me a coffee before you put it in, buddy.

Do you want another example? If you are old enough you will remember Tienanmen Square. If I tell you that, in the repression of the protests, there were between 800 and 2,600 deaths – the figures remain a mystery – you will surely nod your head very affected, but before closing this window you will have already forgotten that. Maybe you don’t even hear about the square.

What does that sound like to you? You know why? Because it is a very powerful image, a single man, standing in the middle of the street, challenging a row of tanks. That is storytelling. That image tells us more than the numbers or the facts about the riots.

If you want your message or your story to reach your readers, you have to be different. You have to know how to tell it, how to make it stop and stay there. He thinks that readers and customers have already seen it all, so many advertisements, so many promotions, so many novels and stories that go down the street wearing a raincoat have rained down on them.

The real job of storytelling is to get that audience to fall in love with the rain again, to remember its smell and to take off their hood while walking and lift their faces to cool off.

That is the magic of storytelling.

The Golden Circle

Everything has its systems and its tricks, even the way of telling stories. Those of us who write know it, however, we rarely manage to use the narrative in a way that it manages to penetrate the reader. There are very good works that leave you indifferent, however, there are sugar envelope phrases that flutter in your head when you go to sleep.

The golden circle is a narrative technique that consists of telling the story from the inside out. It’s a term coined by a marketer named Simon Sinek. Sinek friend realised that companies are very clear about what they do, some even know how they do it, but none of them knew why the hell they were doing it.

These companies when it came to advertising or telling a story they did it from the outside in, which, as you can imagine from the context, does not hook the client in any way.

To tell stories in a way that captures the reader’s attention, you have to start from the inside, from the why. That is the best way to create branding, tell your reader why you do what you do, why did you write that book? Why have you decided to offer those literary consulting services? What has led you to blog?

Some companies do this naturally, such as Apple or Google, they are companies that are attractive and close to us. Some writers have also taken advantage of this, Stephen King, without going any further, embroiders it with his book As I Write.

Suppose you just started a workshop on characters. You have written a guide, you have recorded some videos and now you have to sell it to your readers… How would you do it? Would you start by saying that you have created the best character course in the history of the Internet? You could do it, but you wouldn’t sell a single one.

Instead, start by explaining to your readers why you did it… Were you having trouble with the characters and decided to seek information to improve yourself? Have you seen too many flat characters and decided to help the staff with what you know? That’s fine, it works. Give that why a little excitement though, and you’ll slip them into your pocket.

It turns out that a few months ago I published my first novel, everything was great, but when the first reviews arrived, everyone agreed that my characters were flat. At that moment, I understood that without attractive characters, the reader does not get involved and I embarked on a trip around the world to learn the best characterisation techniques. I was in the most remote places on the planet, studying with the best teachers and learned the ancient techniques of mythological narration. Now, after my pilgrimage, I have unified all that knowledge in a characterization guide that will help you understand your mistakes and overcome them, learning to create great characters, protagonists of great stories.

It’s the end, tacky but effective. I want to know why, don’t ship the product to me soon, tell me why you did it, and tell me what led you to create it and why it is so important.

As you can see in my story, after the why comes the how — I traveled…. That’s the second station, explain how you did it; Have you spent whole nights without sleep? Are you a genius and have you finished a novel in a week? Whatever, tell me about your process. But above all, tell me how you are going to help me.

If you want to know more about the Golden Circle and how it works, I leave you this TED talk with its creator in which he exposes the subject in depth.

The Elements Of Storytelling

As in any narrative, there are three elements that are easy to differentiate: characters, conflict and resolution.

The character can be anyone. It can be me, if I tell you how I wrote my last novel, it can be you if I explain how to use storytelling or it can be a third party, if it explains what the Golden Circle is and what it is for. Choose the character carefully because he will be the only connection between your readers and your story.

Although in this article I am using all three, his thing is that you choose one and stick with it. Like in a novel.

The conflict, as in literature is the way in which the protagonist of the story is transformed. I had problems with characterisation and I travelled the world, on a literary pilgrimage, to improve in the creation of characters. I studied with the great mystics and I managed to acquire ancient ghost writing techniques.

Talk about your process. Did you get blocked at some point? Did you slacken at any point? Did you have to resort to ladders? How will your book / guide help your reader? Talk about all that. Connect with your reader through conflict; you write a blog because you also had trouble creating the habit of writing. That’s fine, because it’s a problem your readers will identify with.

The resolution, as its name suggests, is the end of the story. It doesn’t have to be pretty or prosaic. You may have failed miserably. That works too, because your readers will surely have failed at some point and will feel identified.

The end is the ideal time to insert a call to action. It is the moment when you tell them what to do; can’t write characters? Well, with your guide they will. Your dragon doesn’t know how to burn fire? Well, with my guide on how to inflame your dragon, problem solved. Monsters under your bed? Buy my ritual and you’ll chase them away.

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