Today we often find people talking about Storytelling, it is a term that has appeared in the last years and it has been spread in different fields. Many people claim to do Storytelling but few know really what doing Storytelling means.
In this article, we are going to define this apparently new concept and to define its characteristics and principles in a simple and brief way.
WHAT IS THE STORYTELLING?
Defining the Storytelling is not simple. It doesn’t consist only in telling stories because a story is more than a simple chronological sequence of events and facts.
Indeed a story is a reality representation and a simulation build upon the chronological events and fact with emotional, perceptive, symbolic and fictional elements.
The concept of the representation and simulation belongs to Psychology and Neuroscience. Building a reality representation and simulation is a mental mechanism, through which every individual creates an image of the reality and make prediction, storing and elaborating the information obtained through the senses and filtrated by emotions. So, doing Storytelling doesn’t mean only telling a story but building these textual, visual or sonorous representation and simulation which includes emotions, perceptions, imagination and symbolism.
It’s clear that Storytelling is something deep and complicated. Due to its complexity and deepness we can define it as a communication technique that uses stories to broadcast a message or as a narrative approach with a scientific nature because it is based on determined rules and principles.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF STORYTELLING
Despite the term Storytelling is recent, it is based on in an instinct that has characterized every man since the beginning of the time: the instinct to tell stories.
Socrates claimed that the man was a social animal because he needed relations and confronts but the man is more than this. Indeed, he is and always has been a telling stories animal, a Homo Narrans. Since the beginning of the time, the man has always had the instinct to tell stories, since when he started to paint on the caves walls to when for the nobles delight told about heroic adventures. The voice was the first main instrument for telling stories then the writing. Before the words was handwritten then printed.
Today, we have multimedia and crossmedia stories that use the new technological instruments like social media to be told and spread everywhere. These new instruments have also change the relationship between who tells the story and who listen to, watch or read it.
Between the 80s and 90s there was a real transformation called Narrative Turn. We have become more aware of this instinct and the Storytelling has developed becoming a science, a scientific approach, as we have said before, with specific rules and principles.
APPLICATION FIELDS
Today, stories are everywhere. The Storytelling approachcan be used in different fields such as psychology, pedagogy, economy, marketing and politics. There would be a lot to talk about for each application field. What we can say now is that the Storytelling is a versatile approach.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF STORYTELLING
Rob Walker and Josha Glenn, two American journalists, in 2009 made an experiment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the stories. The two journalists bought some objects: fabric balls, cups, figurines and puppets, spending 130 dollars. They asked 100 writers to write a story for each object then they sold all the objects on Ebay accompanying every object with its story as a description. They earned 3500 dollars.
Walker and Glenn’s experiment shows not only that stories are effective but also that they can influence people and transform simple knick-knacks in something meaningful and special.
Moreover, the experiment shows how people buys not only the things but also what it is behind them, their stories. On the website https://significantobjects.com/ it is possible to find all the stories with the images of the objects. Walker and Glenn’s experiment is an example of how powerful a story can be, it answer to the question if a story can be effective but it doesn’t explain why it is so.
What makes a story effective? Which factors determine the effectiveness of a story? Many factors determine the effectivness of a story, among them there are:
- The story’s structure;
- The media through which the story is told and broadcasted;
- Mirror Neurons thatt are considered at the base of the story’s capacity to move emotionally and perceptively who listens to, reads of watches it;
- Storytelling Trance Experience that is the story’s capacity to “kidnap” who listens, read or watches it.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, we have said that the Storytelling is an approach that is rooted in the man’s history which is not other than a story made by different stories. We have said that it is a complicated approach with many applicative potentialities and a great effectiveness.
We are surrounded by stories, we continuously look for stories, we are made of present, past and future stories, we receive and give continuously stories. Stories are everywhere and they are able to change, transform and influence the reality.