See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

Enter, once again, Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. There are no shortage of tools and diagrams available for you to peruse, just fire up the Google. I married a few concepts together to create a storyboard template. I used the boxes above each stage to map a story I was working on that I knew lacked something, but I couldn’t figure out what. Using this method made it painfully clear my story fell apart in the beginning of ACT III.

See on karlbimshas.blogspot.fr

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

What is data storytelling?

CS: In two parts, it’s (1) how we use data visualization to help us see and read the story social data tells, and (2) how we as social media experts package that story and make adjustments to campaigns.

We approach social media like a 24-hour-a-day stream of data that should have an impact on how we’re building and managing social communities, programs, promotions and campaigns.

It should, but unless we can find the answer to the question “so what?” all that data just seems time-consuming. That’s why we practice data storytelling. It’s the act of data visualization before, during and after mining/analyzing data.

See on prfirms.org

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

Telling ordinary, made-up stories isn’t what makes your content marketing engaging for your customers and would-be customers. What matters is telling interesting true stories that help your audience understand your product, service, or business. So, to help your company unearth real-life stories from within your organization, consider hiring a brand journalist.

See on www.marketingprofs.com

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

[Good read!]

When I started writing, once again, something clicked. I was writing my story, creating my characters, putting them into tough situations and pulling them out again, and a curious thing happened. They stopped being mere words on a page. They ceased to be simple constructs of my imagination. I began to think of them each as pieces of myself that I’d broken off and breathed into life, setting them into motion on the page, and because they each were tiny fragments of myself, I felt as they felt, hurt as they hurt, rejoiced and laughed as they did. The story I was creating became, for me at least, a living story. Now this was something different than all the writing I’d done before. I’d written stories before, but even at their best they were clinical, hollow, clear fabrications. This living story was something new to me and it was exhilarating. I couldn’t wait to get home from work to sit down and nudge my characters around to see what they might do.

I reached a point one night when Fin, my heroine, had come to the lowest point in her life. All her dreams had fallen apart; everything she’d hoped for was gone. She was in total despair and she was crying out to God: Why?

When I heard that cry, I cried. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I sat in my chair and shook. I felt her pain so clearly and so personally, because, of course, she was part of me, wasn’t she? She was my own creation. Created in my own image. To whom was she crying out if not to me?

Why, she cried. And then I realized that I had the answer. My answer was: Because I know the end of the story. “Just wait,” I wanted to tell her. “Just wait!” But of course she couldn’t hear that. She was lost in the cornfield with no idea of what lay over the immense horizon–and no way home.

Here then is the bond. Creator. Creature. Tied together. Bound up in the same mind. One, only a part. The other, the whole. The creation, an incarnate expression of the creator. I realized that I loved my characters, each of them, even the unlovable ones. And of course you’ve already made the leap that was dawning on me then, that in the love we have of our creation, we glimpse the love of our own Creator.

This brings me back to living as a story. I’d been asking for years: what story do I want to tell about my life? But that was small potatoes, wasn’t it? It was the wrong question. Here’s the right one:

What story is being told with my life? Whose story am I a part of? What part am I playing?

See on www.rabbitroom.com

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

Stories live forever.
Slogans live until the ad agency gets tired of them.

Stories are real.
Slogans are made up.

Stories pull you in.
Slogans push out a message.

Stories are deep.
Slogans are shallow.

See on www.brainsonfire.com

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

Harold Bloom, the literary critic, once expressed doubt about the audiobook. “Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear,” he told the Times. “You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which…

That’s an idea I ran past the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran (whom I profiled in 2009). Rama answered via e-mail, saying: “Language comprehension and production evolved in connection with HEARING probably 150,000 yrs ago and to some extent is ‘hard wired’; whereas writing is 5000 to 7000 years old—partially going piggyback on the same circuits, but partially involving new brain structures like the left angular gyrus (damage to which disrupts reading writing and arithmetic). So it’s possible LISTENING to speech (including such things as cadence, rhythm and intonation) is more spontaneously comprehensible and linked to emotional brain centers —hence more evocative and natural.” He did add a caveat: “On the other hand reading allows you to pause and reflect and go back to do a second take.” (Though I’d argue that that’s what the rewind button is for.)

[Image credit: The New Yorker]

See on www.newyorker.com

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest inventions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be heard and understood.

- CARLOS FUENTES

See on www.advicetowriters.com

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

“The hero’s journey” sounds a bit melodramatic, I admit. But hey, it’s real. If the phrase rings mythic, it’s because its origins (at least in expression) lie in myth.

What are myths? They’re the ancient, collective legends of the human race. The Odyssey, the epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf; the sagas of the Buddha or Prometheus or Quetzalcoatl.

The hero’s journey, as Joseph Campbell famously observed, appears again and again in these myths. The specifics vary, but the overall contours remain remarkably consistent.

See on www.stevenpressfield.com

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

We’ve all done it — we’re working in a spreadsheet, and we select “Insert Chart.” Our data storytelling is done, right?

According to Cole Nussbaumer, people analytics manager at Google, we’ve taken the first step in presenting our data, not the last.

Nussbaumer believes Excel and other number-crunching programs have made it very easy to create very bad graphs. She suggests we step back and answer some basic questions before we make a pie — like we do before we bake a pie.

Here’s a quick summary of the process she walked us through at a meeting of the Grants Managers Network last week. For much more, check her website at: www.storytellingwithdata.com.

See on blog.mcf.org

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative

Storytelling has long been used as a tool for recording people’s history and to pass down wisdom from one generation to the next. But for those who aren’t considered part of society’s in crowd, sharing personal stories takes on even greater meaning. Telling your story and listening to narratives from ‘others’ like you, can help you feel connected and grounded in the world. It helps to know that people, whose lives look like yours, have been here before and survived. Whether we’re aware of it or not, it’s instinctual for us to want the comfort of seeing our experiences reflected back. Reality TV and the web have given individuals’ voices a much wider reach. But the truth is it’s still a privileged few whose stories are chosen to be told. And unfortunately transgender folks rarely make the cut.

However, where there’s a will there’s a way. Transgender youth have plenty to say and plenty of creativity to say it with (TRANSGENERATION makes that pretty clear). Like the elders that came before them, trans* youth have carved out their own spaces to talk about their lives. Across online channels like YouTube and Tumblr, they share feelings, experiences and advice. Their storytelling says to the world, ‘I am here!’ and to each other, ‘You’re not alone.’ But most importantly, that connection is about supporting and giving others the strength to go on. If you have not stumbled on any of these spaces yet, check out Testimony, an exhibition of LGBTQ youth stories worldwide. Maybe you’ll be inspired to share your story too.

See on www.sundancechannel.com