Back to Basics

Before we go much further, let's revisit why we are worried about storytelling in the first place. Stories reach us on several levels simultaneously. We can thrill to an adventure or emotionally identify with a character and still use reason and logic to derive a fairly concrete message that we can then apply to other contexts. Understanding what stories resonate with a target audience also begins to tell us a great deal about that audience. Storytelling is also an amazingly effective method of knowledge transfer and a powerful tool for message retention. Since the beginning of human society, people have used stories to explain away, or cultivate, mystery. Great stories, as noted earlier, allow an audience member to become personally invol....