Story Dynamics - Stories http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories Stories, Newsletters, and Story-Contests Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:39:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 The Seven Differences Between Stories and Concepts http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2010/01/29/the-seven-differences-between-stories-and-concepts/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2010/01/29/the-seven-differences-between-stories-and-concepts/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:39:40 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=267 Stories are powerful. They have been used since prehistoric times and have an important role in the modern organization.
But most business leaders have been trained not to talk in stories. Instead, they have been trained to talk in bullet points, to “cut to the chase,” to get to the core concept.
As a result, stories can appear to leaders in organizations as, at best, needlessly verbose and time-consuming and, at worst, artsy and utterly unbusinesslike. So how can we interest business leaders in expanding their communication options?
I have found that one way to bridge the gulf between their familiar conceptual communication and storytelling is to explain in conceptual terms what stories are and how they work. In other words, I try to translate the workings of story into the “native language” of the business world: the linear, analytic language of the conceptual.
To do so, I describe seven differences between story communication, on the one hand, and conceptual talk, on the other. What follows is a version of a talk I give to business and non-profit groups.
I begin with my version of a true story:
France. The 1950’s. A poet, Jacques Prevért, was walking down the street. On the pavement, he saw a man sitting on a blanket. In front of the man was a hat with a few coins in it. Propped up next to him was a cardboard sign: “Blind. No pension. Please give.”
The poet said, “How is it going for you?”
“Not well. People are stingy. They rush by without stopping.”
“Maybe I can help,” the poet said. “May I change your sign?”
“Change it?” The beggar hesitated. “Well, write on the back. I can always turn it over again.”
The beggar heard the scratching of the poet’s pen on the cardboard sign.
A few days later, the poet returned. He said, “How is it going now?”
“Fantastic! People have become so much more generous. I have to empty my hat three times every day!”
“I am so glad. Well, good luck to you.’ The poet turned to leave.
“Wait,” said the beggar. “What did you write on my sign?”
The poet paused. “I wrote something very simple,” he said. “I wrote, ‘Spring is coming, but I will not see it.’”∗
One value of a story is that it can transform the purely informative into an experience that can change a listener’s point of view. The beggar’s original sign had all the necessary information and even a “call to action.” But the poet’s version caused the passersby to participate in the beggar’s point of view. Only then were they motivated to act.
THE CENTRAL FACT OF STORYTELLING
In this article, I will explain seven characteristics of story communication that distinguish it from your customary, conceptual communication and contribute to its particular form of effectiveness. These characteristics will also help you understand when not to tell a story.
But before I can begin, I ask you, the reader of this article, to close your eyes for a moment and answer a question about your experience of the above story: In your mind, what color were the clothes the beggar was wearing?
It’s okay if you don’t have an answer. But please notice whether you do. And if you didn’t imagine the color of the beggar’s clothes, how was he sitting? Or what was the color of the blanket he was sitting on? Or were there buildings on the street around him? (If so, how tall? If not, what was there?)
Almost everyone fills in one or more such details, spontaneously and effortlessly, in the course of listening to the story. That means that they actively create images in their minds.
By the way, your images may not have been visual. Did you hear sounds of the streets? Did you imagine the sound of the beggar’s voice? Or the poet’s? Did you imagine the sound of the pen scratching? These are auditory images. But you may have also have created tactile images (the cardboard sign in the poet’s hand) or smells, or kinesthetic feelings (the poet bending over to talk, or the beggar’s gut wrenched with anger or hopelessness). In other words, you may have created images in various sensory modes.
All seven of the following differences between story talk and conceptual talk stem from this central fact that, in response to story talk, listeners create images based on their own experiences and predilections. The unique powers of storytelling do not stem directly from what the story-teller does, but rather from what the story-listener does: create mental images.
DIFFERENCE #1: MODE OF LISTENING
When you listen to a story, you actively create images. You are in creation mode.
When you listen to conceptual talk, on the other hand, you are in evaluation mode. You are comparing and contrasting what someone else says to what you already know.
These two modes, it turns out, put people in different frames of mind. In one psychological experiment, for example, three groups of people were given five one-dollar bills and a choice of how many of them to contribute to a worthy cause. Before being asked to give some of their money, one group was given a conceptual task, another was given no task, and the third was given a task that involved calling up images.
Which group gave the fewest dollars? Those who had been put in conceptual mode. Which gave the most? Those in image mode.
So putting people in creation mode can be useful, not just for getting them to participate imaginatively but also for changing their attitude toward you and what you are describing.
DIFFERENCE #2: ESSENCE
The essence of a story is a concrete, unique event: in one place, at one moment, one character makes one action. For example, in a French street, one day a poet speaks to a beggar.
The essence of concepts, on the other hand, is abstraction. The power of concepts comes from things that apply to many situations, not just one.
Stories are closer to experience. After all, we only live one moment at a time. But concepts express what applies to many experiences.
The concrete is not better than the abstract (and vice versa). Stories and concepts are two different ways of thinking and communicating. Each one of them is like a leg. It can support you. You can move around on either one. But you move much more effortlessly and efficiently when you alternate gracefully between them.
DIFFERENCE #3: CAUSES AND EFFECTS
When I said at the start of this article, “Stories are powerful,” I was speaking conceptually. This abstract concept, though, may possibly have invoked in your mind a particular time when you experienced the power of stories. In other words, concepts are abstract in nature but may sometimes cause you to think of a specific experience.
Conversely, stories are specific but may cause you to form an abstract conclusion. You may hear the beggar-poet interaction and then say, “Yes, there are times when it makes sense to make a situation personal for the public so they can relate to it more.” That’s a concept that you may have created from the example of the beggar.
Therefore, if you want people to reach a conclusion (such as “This is an excellent product and will be a good value for my company”) the best way may not be to simply state it. Why? Because the statement tends to put them in evaluation mode. They may immediately jump to “Well, maybe it’s not. Prove it!” If this happens, they will have put their minds in opposition to the very conclusion you want them to reach.
But if you tell a concrete story, your listeners will often create their own abstract conclusion from it. If you tell the story of your product (or of someone who has used it), for example, they may conclude, “This sounds excellent. I can see our company getting good value from it.”
We tend to assume that the most effective way to get people to accept a concept is to simply state it. But it is often more efficient to tell a story that will cause them to formulate the concept themselves. After all, the conclusion that they create is the one they will act on most readily.
DIFFERENCE #4: OWNER OF THE MEANING
Since story-listeners create images and then endow them with meanings, they feel a form of ownership of the meanings that they create in response to a story. Therefore we can say that, in story communication, the listener is the owner of the meaning.
But when you hear a concept, it belongs to the one saying it. Initially, you evaluate the speaker’s meaning. Later, you may accept it as your own, but at the moment of communication it still belongs to the person expressing it. In other words, in conceptual communication, the speaker owns the meaning.
This has enormous impact when it comes to the question of buy-in and of commitment to a course of action. People tend to remember and act on their own ideas, not on yours. Therefore, if you want people to act on your idea, help them make it their own. One way is by telling them a story and then trusting them to interpret it.
DIFFERENCE #5: PRECISION OF MEANING
When a concept is communicated well, the meaning is well shared. No short sentence can transmit a complex meaning exactly, but if you know what I mean by “stories” and by “powerful,” then the sentence “stories are powerful” is likely to be understood with a relatively high precision—that is, with a fairly narrow range of interpretations of meaning, among the people listening.
But with stories, the precision is small. That is, the range of meanings received is relatively wide. In other words, the meanings are diverse rather than shared.
This means that if you need instantaneous, shared meaning, you should not tell a story! For example, if your message is, “The bus is on fire. Get off now!” then you should not begin, “One day, long ago….”
But later, when the bus fire is out, when everyone has safely reached the destination, and when you are helping people figure out how, in the future, they could each help prevent a future fire, then you can create individual buy-in by telling the story of how the fire happened.
The trade-off for increased commitment (or participation or creativity) from people is almost always decreased control of exactly what people do. Conversely, increased control usually reduces things like commitment. In every encounter, use a mix of the two forms of communication to create the best balance between shared meaning and listener buy-in.
DIFFERENCE #6: SCOPE OF THE MEANING
Conceptual communication gives the listener the literal meaning of the concepts. The conceptual statement, “Our highest value is customer service,” tells you the relationship the speaker is positing between our company and customer service. But it doesn’t give you an experiential context in which to interpret that relationship. That’s why I say that concepts convey a literal (as opposed to contextual) scope for a meaning.
Stories, though, are not removed from experience. By describing actual or imagined experience, they include a context in which concepts are turned into actions. So, when new Nieman Marcus employees hear as part of their training the story of the clerk who gave a complete refund—without a receipt—for a set of tires, the employees get a more specific idea of what is meant by valuing customer service above all. And when they are told further that Nieman Marcus never sold tires, they have an example that suggests an even broader interpretation of what they might be expected to do in order to act on the high value attached to customer service.
Both forms of communication give benefits here: the pure concept gives maximum portability of an idea, but at the cost of understanding how to apply it. The story, on the other hand, makes it easier to know how to apply a concept in a real-life situation, but may limit the concept to what is directly implied in the example. To be most effective, flexibly combine the two forms of communication!
DIFFERENCE #7: EMOTIONAL RESPONSES
We can respond emotionally to concepts. If you work for me and I say, “Our profits are down 50% and we have to do layoffs,” you are likely to care about that! Nonetheless, any emotional response to concepts is primarily “reactive”: listeners have feelings in reaction to a fact or idea.
In stories, though, you follow the point of view of a character through one or more actions. In the beggar-poet story, you perceive the world alternately from the poet’s point of view and from the beggar’s. And so your emotional reaction is empathic: You see, hear, and feel the world as that character does.
In your business or other organization, when you need people to change how they view and do things, you need them to have a new perspective, an altered way of viewing the world. The only way to get someone to accept a new perspective is to give them a new experience—either a real experience or, in the case of stories, a virtual, imaginative experience that nonetheless expands their repertory of points of view.
We have learned from brain studies that emotion not only motivates action but actually enables reasoning. As a result, trying to motivate and explain without also creating empathy is a losing battle. And stories are a key tool for creating empathic emotional reactions.
NOW YOU CAN CHOOSE
Each of these seven differences between stories and concepts (summarized in Table 1) suggests times when each form of communication is more appropriate. When you understand what each mode of communication offers, you can choose, at each moment, which to employ. Skillful business leaders have a command of both modes. They are also adept at flexibly alternating between the two to achieve their business goals.
How about you? Is your beggar’s sign factually accurate but unmotivating? Are you content to walk on only one leg?

Table 1: Summary of the Seven Differences

Stories Concepts
1. Mode of Listening Creation Evaluation
2. Essence Unique event:
• one moment,
• one character,
• one place,
• one action Abstract commonalities:
what many events (etc.) have in common
3. Causes & Effects The specific
which may lead to the general The general
which may evoke the particular
4. Owner of Meaning The Listener The Speaker
5. Precision of Meaning Diverse
(wider range) Shared
(narrower range)
6. Scope of Meaning Contextual Literal (“Textual”)
7. Emotional Responses Empathic Reactive

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2010/01/29/the-seven-differences-between-stories-and-concepts/feed/ 0 Storytelling, Earthquakes, and Getting Through http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2010/01/19/storytelling-earthquakes-and-getting-through/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2010/01/19/storytelling-earthquakes-and-getting-through/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:25:33 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=251

Contents

1) STORYTELLING, EARTHQUAKES, AND GETTING THROUGH
2) I WANT TO DO MORE TO HELP HAITI

1) STORYTELLING, EARTHQUAKES, AND GETTING THROUGH

I was making myself lunch the other day, listening to a radio interview.

The guest was the director of Partners in Health, a local Boston non-profit that has worked for years in Haiti.

The talk turned, naturally, to the recent earthquake. I listened numbly as the host and guest outlined the disaster and predicted that weakened buildings would continue to collapse for days and weeks.

Then the host summarized a staffer’s urgent email:

S.O.S. – S.O.S. – Please help us – Pain meds, bandages needed.

The guest said she had heard more from that staffer’s field hospital:

There are reports of a lot of casualties that are coming
there with only one doctor and no medical supplies still.

Without realizing it, I began to imagine myself as that lone doctor, trying to attend to hundreds of injured people without supplies.

photo of Partners in Health field hospital in Haiti
I imagined myself looking over rows of makeshift beds, thinking, “Where is the rest of the world? Why aren’t they helping me?”

In the process of imagining, I had stopped being so numb.

I had begun to weep.

Before eating my sandwich, I went to the computer and made a donation to Partners in Health.

Why Was I Weeping Now?

What was so different about those two sentences? How did they break through my haze? How did they motivate me to interrupt my lunch to make a donation?

As far as I can tell, those two sentences had three important qualities.

The first quality: narrative

First, those two sentences told a little story. Therefore I had something to imagine.

But the director had told other stories already. She had told about her group’s history in Haiti and had narrated what groups were sending aid.

So what other qualities were important?

The Second Quality: A Single Point of View

The director’s other stories were about organizations, hospitals and agencies. They weren’t about individual people. Most of them weren’t even about individual locations.

But the two moving sentences evoked a single doctor in a single location.

As soon as the director described one person’s point of view in one place and time, I begin imagining empathetically.

The Third Quality: Innocence

Looking back, I realize that the immediate context of the director’s story played nearly as big a role as the story itself.

In particular, the director’s story wasn’t a “pitch.” It wasn’t (it seemed to me) pre-calculated to have an effect on me. It came up in response to a question by the interviewer.

I can imagine that the following sentences would have had a much smaller effect on me:

We need the help of those listening to this program. We have a hospital near the airport that urgently needs doctors and supplies. Please donate!

Why? Before she could even describe the need – as soon as I felt that she was trying to persuade me to take an action – I would have unconsciously closed the door to my heart.

Implications for Your Storytelling?

If you use storytelling to persuade in any way, you may want to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What stories (however brief) can I tell about my organization?
2. Which of those stories concern (or could concern) a single person in an easily imagined situation?
3. What opportunities do I have, that would allow me to present narrative apart from a plea? In other words, can I trust the story to do the work of persuasion by affecting my listeners’ hearts? Can I trust my listeners to make their own best decisions based on my straightforward narratives?

If you make any experiments along these lines, please let me know the results by adding a comment, below.

2) I WANT TO DO MORE TO HELP HAITI

As the previous article says, I gave a modest donation to help the Haitian relief efforts of Partners in Health. But that doesn’t feel like enough to me. I would like to donate more than I personally can afford.

Let’s Help Together?

logo for Partners in Health "Stand with Haiti" projectHere’s what I came up with. For the next four days (while the need is greatest) I will donate 50% of each purchase of goods or services from my store to Partners in Health.

With your help, I hope to donate a total of at least $1000, and perhaps $2000.

You Can Save Money While You Help Out

I’m going to add a further incentive for you to become partners with me in these donations.

I’m offering a 20% discount on any purchase over $100. (This applies to all products and coaching services, but not to workshops or upcoming courses.)

Here’s the 20%-off coupon code:

0f1047

(If you like, you can read full instructions at http://www.storydynamics.com/coupon )

An Example…

Here’s how this will work. Suppose you purchase the complete, online version of the Storytelling Workshop in a Box.

The normal price is $395. With the 20%-off coupon, you will pay just $316.

I will donate half that amount, $158, to Partners in Health. Together, we will have taken action to help the earthquake victims.

Let’s Make This Happen Quickly

I will make these large donations for any qualifying purchases made through this Friday, January 22. Please be sure to make your qualifying purchases before then. That way, we can both be part of helping those in need.

Yours in storytelling,
Doug Lipman

P.S.#1, I know there are lots of fraudulent pleas for donations. To reassure you that I’ve kept my pledge, I will post the receipt for my donation to Partners in Health by the end of the month at http://www.storydynamics.com/pih

P.S.#2, To qualify for my donation pledge and the 20% discount, please make your purchases by FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010.

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2010/01/19/storytelling-earthquakes-and-getting-through/feed/ 0 In the Darkest Times, Stories Remind Us… http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/22/in-the-darkest-times-stories-remind-us/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/22/in-the-darkest-times-stories-remind-us/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:06:39 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=246 Given how dark and cold it feels, it's easy to ignore the solstice, which occurred without fanfare yesterday at 5:45 pm. Nothing flashy happened. It was dark before 5:45; it was dark afterward. And, after all, the solstice happens every year.

But the solstice can be a reminder that events go in cycles, undulating like waves. And story can be a powerful reminder...]]> Snowy day on Damons Point, Marshfield, MA - Doug's house
Here at my home near Boston, we just had our first major snowstorm. The nights are long now and the days are cold.

Given how dark and cold it feels, it’s easy to ignore the solstice, which occurred without fanfare yesterday at 5:45 pm. Nothing flashy happened. It was dark before 5:45; it was dark afterward. And, after all, the solstice happens every year.

But the solstice can be a reminder that events go in cycles, undulating like waves.

A Reminder Against Discouragement

When we’re in the trough of a wave, the next crest can seem impossibly far away. But the celebrations of the solstice remind us: after the trough, we begin climbing again.

We have powerful ways to remind ourselves of this, to NOT be so beaten down by discouragement that we miss the opportunity to build on what’s coming. Ritual and celebrations are potent reminders.

But story itself can remind us how things change over time, how defeat can be followed by victory.

Story As a Reminder of Light to Come

All genres of stories can remind us that a reversal is possible, that we can go from “Her mother died…” to “And so they lived happily….”

But the story in my mind, on this shortest day of the year, is the true story of the Abolitionist movement in the U.S., which is often dated to the 1831 founding of William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, the Liberator.

The movement culminated 37 years later in the passage of the 14th amendment to the U.S. constitution in 1868, which extended full citizenship to all persons born in the U.S.

But we tend to forget that, in between, in the 1850s, the outlook got darker and darker for the anti-slavery movement. The Fugitive Slave law of 1850 meant that no free black was safe from being arrested on the say-so of any white slave-owner – and, protected only by very flimsy legal protections, could be carried to the South and involuntary servitude.

During the 1850s, the Abolitionists faced one defeat after another, culminating in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that, according to the Constitution, no black person – just by virtue of being black – could EVER be a citizen of the United States.

Apathy About the Union

The situation was so discouraging to Abolitionists that, when slave states began to secede after Lincoln’s 1860 election, many Abolitionists were in favor of letting them secede. If the South were a separate nation, they reasoned, it would no longer be necessary to get a slave all the way to Canada in order to free the slave; it would be enough to bring a fugitive slave to Tennessee.

For this reason and others, including Lincoln’s conciliatory statements to the South, most abolitionists were apathetic about the Civil War in its early years.

A Few Years Later…

Yet, after decades of struggle, it was only five years from the nadir in 1857 to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, which committed the North to ending slavery – and just 6 more years to the constitutional triumph of 1868.

In other words, it was only 11 years from the lowest point, in terms of constitutional law, to a complete reversal. Just 11 years!

Forgetting the Shape of the Wave

Just focussing on the fact of the 14th amendment, we forget the shape of events before that. Looking back, it seems inevitable that slavery was abolished.

But, to those who pledged their lives and fortunes to the anti-slavery cause, there was no such assurance.

We forget there was a long decline in Abolitionist fortunes, a bleak, nearly hopeless season of despair – followed by a widely unexpected reversal.

Only the story – not the bare facts – reminds us of how it felt in the darkness. And that the light prevailed even so.

My Solstice Wish for You

Whatever you hope for in this time of darkness, whatever you have striven for and are in danger of despairing about – whatever seems, in this season of cold, to be beyond your energies, which are sapped by discouragement – I ask you to see it as the low point of a wave. A wave which, even now, is beginning to build again toward a crest.

To help you imagine a turning toward the light, I suggest you celebrate the solstice somehow. Light the candles of Hanukah or Kwanzaa. Emblazon a Christmas tree. Ignite the fires of the Slavic Korochun holiday. Or burn your old clothes for the Tamil (Indian) celebration of Pongal.

In any case, think back on the stories of reversal: of darkness turning into light. Of cold turning into warmth. Of despair turning, not just to hope, but actually into victory.

On these cold winter nights, my wish for you is that these stories dwell inside you, comfort you, buoy you – as we move through this ever-repeating, yet ever new cycle of life.

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/22/in-the-darkest-times-stories-remind-us/feed/ 2 Three Paradoxes of Story Meaning http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/11/three-paradoxes-of-story-meaning/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/11/three-paradoxes-of-story-meaning/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:35:23 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=220 In every case of paradox, we need to notice not just the effect we intend to create, but also the potentially opposite effect.

Continuously noticing the effects of our storytelling like this is demanding and sometimes unsettling. But it can also help our telling.

This article looks at three paradoxes that concern meaning - and how they might affect our storytelling.]]>

Contents

1) THREE PARADOXES OF STORY MEANING
2) SAVE $500 ON MESSAGE TELLING COURSE

1) THREE PARADOXES OF STORY MEANING

In storytelling, paradoxes abound.

In every case of paradox, we need to notice not just the effect we intend to create, but also the potentially opposite effect.

Continuously noticing the effects of our storytelling like this is demanding and sometimes unsettling. But it can also help our telling.

Let’s look at three paradoxes that concern meaning.

Story vs. Plot

Do you know E.M.Forster’s famous distinction between story (what happened) and plot (why it happened)? He said,

“The king died and then the queen died” is a
story. “The king died and then the queen died of
grief” is a plot.

Forster goes on to say (in his book, Aspects of the Novel, page 86) that a plot with mystery in it is higher still, because it gets us further from the bare facts of what he calls “story”:

The queen died, no one knew why, until it was
discovered that it was through grief at the death
of the king.

As a plot grows further from a purely sequential recitation of events, Forster claims, it demands more than curiosity from its listeners; it demands intelligence and memory.

Adding a Third Level

Now enter Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl does not discuss plot or story, but what humans need:

What man actually needs is … the striving and
struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he
needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost,
but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be
fulfilled by him.

From this point of view, neither the sequence of events (what you seek) nor the causality (why you seek it) is as important as the meaning of seeking it. The most important aspect of a human’s “striving and struggling for some goal…”, we could say, is a potential meaning, waiting to be embodied by a person’s actions.

Forster’s examples don’t take on the question of meaning, but perhaps Frankl’s level of story would be met by something like this:

The queen saw that, once her husband’s inspiring
personality was no longer among them, her subjects
needed an example of selfless bravery; and so, on
what turned out to be the last night of her life,
she carried bread through the snowstorm to the
stranded and starving peasants; that was how she
caught pneumonia and soon died.

Combining Forster and Frankl, therefore, we can view a story on three levels:

  1. The events: what happens;
  2. The causality connecting the events;
  3. The meaning that the causally connected events have.

The Paradox of Importance

Paradoxically, the third, most important aspect of a story – its meaning – is not intrinsic to the story. Rather, it is born in the minds of the listeners.

For example, the queen’s sacrifice of herself may be seen by one listener as noble. Or, by another listener, as a tragic waste of her own life. Or, by a third, as ineffective, self-delusional folly. A fourth may conceivably find it a slightly comic reminder of our tendency to over-estimate our own importance.

So we have this paradox: as humans, we need meaning above all. Yet the meaning of a life’s story is determined, not by the person living it but by those who hear it told.

From the storyteller’s point of view – especially in applied storytelling – we care most about the meaning that our listener’s receive. Yet our stories never fully “contain” that meaning. Rather, we must induce our listeners to create it anew each time.

Are You Helpless to Determine the Meaning?

The teller of a story can certainly slant our understanding of its meaning in own direction or another.

If the teller thinks the self-sacrificing queen is unrealistic, for example, the teller may give the queen a breathy tone of voice, or insert a scene early on in which she is primping herself in front of a mirror, imagining herself being lauded for selfless bravery.

Another teller, who thinks the queen is a true hero, may instead say the queen’s words with a sincere voice and solid posture, or may insert scenes that show how close to death the peasants are and how few options are available for saving them.

The teller’s artistry can make it more likely that listeners will attribute a particular meaning to a story. But, in the end, meaning is always the listener’s creation.

The Paradox of Ownership

What about just telling your listeners what your story is supposed to mean?

When the meaning is not that important, that strategy works well. But here’s another paradox:

When listeners create their own meanings for a
story, they feel ownership of them and therefore
hold them close to their hearts. But when they are
told what the teller thinks a story means, they
are less attached to that meaning.

In other words, there is a trade-off between participation and control. If you want high listener participation in meaning-making, you lose some control over what meaning they make. If you reassert control, you lose their sense of commitment to the story’s meaning.

The Paradox of Character Speech

That said, there are certain techniques that increase the probability that the meanings your listeners create for your story will be closer to the meanings you have in mind.

One example is having a character make a meaning statement in the course of the story. Suppose the queen said this as she began her fatal journey into the snow:

I think I can more helpful to the peasants as a martyr than as a living queen.

In this case, a meaning has been suggested, but not by you. Because the queen is attributed with saying this, your listeners won’t likely be resentful of your saying it. But, because they will identify to some extent with the queen, they will entertain that meaning – and perhaps even adopt it as their own.

Paradoxically, by speaking as the queen, your words aren’t attributed to “you.” Your words do their suggestive work, but you aren’t blamed for it.

Living in Paradox

Keeping all these tricky paradoxes in mind as you tell can be daunting. It may even be daunting enough to keep you humble – and light on your feet.

Paradoxically, those are good qualities to adopt, if you want to stay effective as a storyteller!

(For more techniques for combining participation with control, see the Message Telling course, described below.)

2) SAVE $500 ON MESSAGE TELLING COURSE

Leading Your Listeners to Meaning, Through Storytelling

Are you interested in learning techniques for guiding your listeners to meaning? If so, this upcoming course may be right for you:

Message Telling:
Leading Your Listeners to Meaning, Through Storytelling

This telephone-plus-web course speaks to a little-discussed but key problem in applying storytelling to your work. It turns out that it is NOT easy to combine the engagement of your listeners through story with the communication of a clear meaning. Many storytelling efforts fall flat because they fail to solve this problem.

In response, I have created the Storytelling Meaning Matrix, which guides you to flexible, powerful strategies for increasing the likelihood that your listeners will come away from a story with the meaning you had in mind.

If the solution to this problem sounds at all interesting to you, please read the course description at:

http://www.messagetelling.com

Since this course is limited to eight people and is fully guaranteed, registration is by application only. I ask for no money now. Rather, after you read the description, contact me at:

www.storydynamics.com/contact

for an application. (Mention that you want an application for the Message Telling course.) Once you have been accepted, you’ll have the option of registering.

Early Bird Special: Save $500

This course will begin in late January. It will consist of eight recorded lessons, eight live coaching calls, and more.

The cost will be $1097 (less than half my coaching rate for each hour of contact time) and, to insure individual attention, will be limited to just eight (8) participants.

But, as a member of my Insiders Group, you have a chance for the Super Early Bird discount price of $597. In other words, you save $500!

Even better, you can opt for the payment plan. Pay just $97 now!

To be eligible for this enormous savings, you must request your application by Saturday, December 19.

Please read the details at

http://www.messagetelling.com

this could be your chance to take your applied storytelling skills to a new level!

Yours in storytelling,

Doug

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/11/three-paradoxes-of-story-meaning/feed/ 0 The Spark of Your Story Fire http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/03/the-spark-of-your-story-fire/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/03/the-spark-of-your-story-fire/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:56:42 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=195 The words of a story are much less important: they are just a medium through which you stimulate others to imagine. In this sense, words are like a fireplace: the container that shapes the fire and makes it efficient, not the fuel that burns.

But, in another sense, imagining is the act that puts you in contact with the unknown...]]>
This is a reprint of eTips from the Storytelling Coach #63, first published in May, 2006.

Contents

1) THE SPARK OF YOUR STORY FIRE
3) EXERCISE: IMAGINE – AND TRANSFORM WHAT YOU IMAGINED


1) THE SPARK OF YOUR STORY FIRE

campfire with sparks at nightImagining is the most important storytelling skill. If you cannot imagine a story, then you have nothing to communicate.

The words of a story are much less important: they are just a medium through which you stimulate others to imagine. You choose words (and gestures, facial expressions, posture, pacing, and all the rest) based on what you have imagined. Words repeated without active imagination behind them are lifeless.

Great words and nonverbal language can add to the impact of a well-imagined story, of course. In this sense, words are like a fireplace: the container that shapes the fire and makes it efficient, not the fuel that burns.

Seen in one way, then, imagining is the fundamental spark in telling any story, which you must create in order to ignite a response in your listeners.

But imagining continues to accompany all the further steps of your story-development process: telling, retelling, and working with your story’s shape and meaning. In this way, imagining is also like tending the fire: the daily act that makes the ordinary alchemy of cooking – and therefore life itself – possible.

Gathering Firewood

But, in another sense, imagining is the act that puts you in contact with the unknown – like wandering in the forest to gather your daily firewood.

Like a flame that can burn steady or else surprise you with dangerous leaps or else sputter and die out, imagination also takes you into the unpredictable, the unknown. If you want to imagine a story that you haven’t yet fully imagined, for instance, you are going to have to discover something you don’t yet know!

Or consider a story you have told often and that has taken a set form in your mind. One day you may be telling it to a group, however, and suddenly you find yourself imagining something that you never imagined before: a new detail, a new scene, or maybe just a different sensory impression of something that has always been in the story: “I never knew that the tree was so large before.”

Because this by-product of the imagination process is unknown, you don’t know where to look for it. And so you have to go out with your sled and dig through the snow. When the surprise happens and you find a golden key (see “The Golden Key” story), then you have to follow it.

The sense of going from the golden key, to the box it opens, to opening the box, is very much like the process of imagining a story. From the golden key there is a new opening, but now you have to follow it and see where it leads you.

And who knows? Maybe at the moment you’re about to open the box – which may seem like the purpose of your story – you look up and you see the raven in the tree overhead. And maybe that’s the new thing you have to follow, the new spark that will re-light your story.

TOP OF PAGE


2) EXERCISE: IMAGINE – AND TRANSFORM WHAT YOU IMAGINED

A. Imagine a story in different sensory modes.

Choose a story. Imagine a scene from it (or the whole story) in at least these seven sensory modes:
1. Sight
2. Sound
3. Touch
4. Taste
5. Smell
6. Balance (sense of gravity, knowing your orientation in space and when you are changing it.)
7. Kinesthesia (muscular and gut sensations).

B. Transform the Sensory Imagining

Choose one of the seven sensory modes in which you imagined a scene from your story, above. Now change the way you imagined it in that sensory mode.

For example, suppose you imagined the smells in that scene in Part A of this exercise. Now, in Part B, you might imagine a smell in your scene to be more pleasant than you first imagined it. Next, imagine it to be less pleasant. Then stronger; then less strong. Then coming from a specific direction. Then surrounding you. How do these changes in smell change your feelings about the story?


All the best,
Doug

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/03/the-spark-of-your-story-fire/feed/ 0 The Golden Key http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/03/the-golden-key/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/03/the-golden-key/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:45:42 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=193 (An “imagination teaser” from the Grimm brothers, referred to in one of my newsletter articles, “The Spark of Your Story Fire.”)

It was winter. The snow was on the ground, and the boy had to go out and haul in firewood on his sled. And when he gathered and loaded it up, he was so cold that he didn’t want to go right back home. He wanted to build a fire to warm himself first.

So, he scraped away some snow from the ground, and under the snow he discovered a golden key. He picked it up. He thought, “Where there is a key there must be a lock!” And so he went digging and digging. And he found an iron box.

He looked for a keyhole. He didn’t see one, but he kept looking. He found one so small he could barely notice it. Will the key fit?

He put the key in the key hole. It fit. He turned it.

And now we’ll have to wait for him to open it, to see what the treasures are, inside.

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/12/03/the-golden-key/feed/ 0 Your Thanksgiving Stories http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/11/26/your-thanksgiving-stories/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/11/26/your-thanksgiving-stories/#comments Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:17:55 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=183 photo of kernels of corn being served on a plateDo you have more than five kernels of corn to eat? If so, you have more than the Plymouth Pilgrims had during the “starving time” of 1623, two years after their first Thanksgiving feast.

Two centuries later, in 1820, Daniel Webster, the U.S. orator and stateman (a great storyteller!) spoke at a gathering where five grains of corn were placed on each plate, as a remembrance.

Gratitude is sweeter when we remember times of scarcity. And scarcity is sweeter when we season it with gratitude for what we do have.

Share Your Wealth of Stories

I trust that you have enough to eat today. But no matter how bare your larder, you have a feast of stories to share. If you are fortunate enough to have friends and family to share them with, then you are truly wealthy!

Please ask others for their experiences today, both of hardship and of gratitude; please listen well. And then take a turn to share your own.

If you wish, you could place five kernels of corn on each plate, and ask each person present at your meal today to remember five losses or worries, and five moments for which they are grateful. I promise this will draw you all closer.

A Scarcity of Stories?

What keeps people from telling their stories? Here are the top three items mentioned on my subscribers’ survey results:

  • Lack of confidence.
  • Fear of not holding listeners’ attention.
  • Don’t know how to learn a story (for the uninitiated, this often takes the form “I don’t know how to memorize a story.”)

Over the years, I have constructed audio lessons, supplemented by exercises and more, to help storytellers at all levels tell stories with a minimum of effort and a maximum of effectiveness.

These include:

  1. The Beginning Storytelling Toolkit (a beginner’s guide to learning to command attention through storytelling)
  2. The Storytelling Workshop in a Box (all the key information for intermediate and advanced tellers)
  3. The Image Riding Toolkit (how to create vivid stories by connecting with your mind’s ability to think in images)

My Thanksgiving Gift

For the first time this year, you can get all three of the in-depth collections listed above, in the most convenient possible form: pre-installed on a new iPod.

I call an iPod with story instruction installed on it a Story-Pod.

I sell the Story-Pod all year round. But for Thanksgiving, I offer a discount, and add $301 worth of gifts.

The gifts go only to the first 12 to order.

Please check them out:

http://www.story-pod.com

And let me know how your Thanksgiving stories go, by adding a comment on this article, below.

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/11/26/your-thanksgiving-stories/feed/ 0 The Third Age of Storytelling: a Thank You http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/11/23/the-third-age-of-storytelling-a-thank-you/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/11/23/the-third-age-of-storytelling-a-thank-you/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:47:28 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=151 In the ancient city of Alexandria stood the greatest library in the world, where scrolls and parchments of all the great works had been painstakingly assembled. In 48 B.C., though, Alexandria was conquered and the library was burned to the ground. The loss to humanity was inestimable.

Imagine now that a friend of yours has an office in an old barn. One day, you find out that his barn burned down. You say, “Oh my gosh, you had this huge library of knowledge about storytelling! Did it get burned up?”

And he says, “Nope, I had it in my pocket.” And he pulls out his smart-phone to show you where it was all safely stored.

His good fortune is possible because he lives firmly in the Second Age of Storytelling. And yet the Third Age of Storytelling is already dawning. This Age is so new, we can hardly recognize it, much less be fully grateful for it.

Let’s start by understanding the Ages that led up to it.

The First Age of Storytelling: In-Person Telling

Since the development of our species, stories have been the most easily remembered way to express complex information. In fact, they have been known to survive in oral transmission for millennia. As a result, storytelling was the first reliable method for communicating cultural knowledge across the generations.

Further, storytelling is a rich medium, capable of transmitting subtleties of emotional reactions as well as the facts of “who did what.”

In recent centuries, though, storytelling was largely supplanted by written language – not because written language was more expressive, but because, using the technologies of paper and ink, written language was more capable of preserving and transporting large amounts of knowledge.

The Second Age of Storytelling: Sounds That Last

This began to change with Edison’s 1877 tinfoil phonograph. The gramophone followed, leading to mass production of recordings by the early 1900s.

By the 1970s, it was possible to store audio recordings digitally. Within just 10 more years, the mp3 format was invented, allowing highly compressed recordings that still preserve most of what the human ear finds significant. Within another 10 years, the format was standardized and the first stand-alone mp3 player was invented.

Thanks to these and other recent bursts of technology, we can now have a library of recorded stories and speeches in our pockets. And we can have another copy of our libary back home at our desk. In fact, we can share that entire library electronically with someone on the other side of the world.

As a result, the expressiveness of storytelling is now coupled with the capacities and permanence formerly available only through writing.

The Third Age of Storytelling: Interaction Across Distance

The age that is dawning in our lifetimes will allow us to share our stories interactively and with the richness of oral language – with those who are not physically present. And it will let us preserve those interactions far into the future.

The World Wide Web has already brought pictures and text to anyone connected to it. Video chat applications now make it possible to interact with and see one other person at a time, at least at low quality – and to record and share those interactions.

In the next years, we will become able to see and hear groups of listeners in real time, at good quality, anywhere in the world.

In other words, modern storytellers will soon have all the advantages enjoyed by the prehistoric tellers of tales and events and myths and dreams – and be freed of most of the old limitations.

We are already like spirits able to tell our stories to someone across the globe. We are like a wind whose stories can go on through the generations and touch people as it passes by – and yet be recalled whenever needed.

We have lightness. We have spirit. We have permanence.

The world is finally providing us with a platform that allows the power of the storyteller to be known and experienced everywhere and every-when.

Are You Ready?

I believe that the truest form of gratitude is to make the best use of what we have.

So how do you plan to live in this new age? How do you plan to make use of our blessings?

In other words, if you truly embraced what is becoming possible, how would that change how you carry yourself as a storyteller? How would that change what you choose to tell? How would that change the forms in which you make your stories available?

Are you ready to treat yourself and your art like the grand miracle of human technology that it has always been? Are you ready to fully accept the blessings of storytelling in its third and grandest age?

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/11/23/the-third-age-of-storytelling-a-thank-you/feed/ 1 Why Don’t More Storytellers Succeed? http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/10/23/why-dont-more-storytellers-succeed/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/10/23/why-dont-more-storytellers-succeed/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:03:51 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=144

Contents

1) WHY DON’T MORE STORYTELLERS SUCCEED?
2) TAKE THE “DOORWAY” WORKSHOP FOR JUST $97 DOWN


1) WHY DON’T MORE STORYTELLERS SUCCEED?

Five years ago, I coached a storyteller I’ll call Rita. She’s a terrific teller who deserves to be heard more widely.

When I told her that, she said, “Well, I have trouble doing marketing.”

I said, “You’re not alone! What kind of storytelling jobs would you most like to have more of?”

She thought for a minute, then said, “I want more school residencies focusing on diversity education.”

That was a well-formed and achievable goal. So, over a couple coaching sessions, I helped her come up with a five-part plan to achieve her goal:

1. Establish herself as a local expert in diversity education;
2. Develop an ongoing list of people in a position to hire her for residencies, who have an interest in diversity education;
3. Give the people on her list easy ways to get to know her and her work;
4. Build and maintain mutually-beneficial relationships with any people on her list who show an interest in her work;
5. Make an ongoing series of offers that will be catalysts for these people – offers that will make it convenient and attractive for them to hire her for residencies.

As it happened, I moved from Massachusetts to Oklahoma soon after coaching Rita. We fell out of touch about her progress.

Five Years Later…

Recently, having moved back to Massachusetts, I had a chance to check in with her. I said, “Hey, how is your marketing plan going?”

Rita admitted, “I haven’t really done any of it.” When I asked why, she said, “It was the part about becoming known as an expert. Do you remember, I thought I’d write a series of articles in a regional teacher newsletter about my ideas?”

As it happened, I did remember. It had been Rita’s idea in response to my questions, and it had seemed perfect.

“Well, I wrote one article, but I never sent it in. I had a lot of ideas, but getting them on paper was a struggle. I meant to revise the article and submit it, but I never did. After that, I guess I just lost interest in the plan.”

Rita’s plan was a sound one, but her story helps identify three reasons why many of us storytellers fail to get more work:

1. Not matching the method with her energies;
2. Not getting enough help – and the right kind of help;
3. Not changing the plan when needed.

We can all learn from those reasons, and prevent them from wasting years of our own progress.

An Energy Obstacle

I had approved of Rita’s article-writing plan, in part because of her excitement about it. What I didn’t know was that her excitement was more about coming up with ideas than about actually writing and publishing them.

Is this Rita’s fault? No! We all have tasks that energize us and others that drain us. The problem was that Rita and I didn’t notice that writing was a “drainer” for her.

After our coaching sessions, flushed with excitement about her new plan, she had created a rough draft of an article. But the coaching “boost” wasn’t able to propel her to actually complete this task, given how much energy it would have required from her.

The idea of becoming known as a diversity expert was sound. But the method (writing) turned out to be more difficult than expected.

Change the Method?

How could this method have been changed to match her energies better?

Perhaps instead of writing articles about her good ideas, she could have offered telephone seminars or free workshops in which she’d explain her ideas to a small group. Then she could record those sessions and make the recordings available; she might advertise them in that same teacher newsletter, or even get interviewed about them for it.

Or she might have created workshops containing her ideas to present at teacher conferences. In any case, to stay with the overall plan, Rita could have replaced the writing method with one that energized her.

Getting the Help You Need

What if Rita didn’t want to change the method? It’s possible to use a method that drains you, if you get others to do the draining tasks – or at least to help you with them.

For example, Rita could have found an editor for her articles who could take her first drafts and put them into printable form.

Or she might have asked someone to interview her about her ideas, record the interviews, and then transcribe them into first drafts – or even turn the interviews themselves into articles.

Her plan might also have succeeded if she had sought direct help with her writing difficulty. A good coach could have helped her solve the problem, one way or another.

Changing the Plan

Making a marketing plan is a daunting task. It involves thinking simultaneously about our goals, our abilities, our energies, and the needs and situations of those who might hire us.

As a result, once we have made a plan we often avoid rethinking it, even when unforeseen obstacles arise.

As it turns out, no complex plan ever works without a hitch. Do you remember Apollo 13 – how the method for getting oxygen to the astronauts had to be completely changed, on the fly and with improvised materials?

The “perfect” plan isn’t one that succeds 100% as envisioned. Rather, it is one that directs our energies toward a goal – and then lets us learn from our efforts and change course as needed.

Now that Rita and I are back in touch, I look forward to helping her use one or more strategies to make her plan succeed.

How About You?

Have you made plans for your storytelling – whether in marketing, or in learning new stories, or in sharing your ideas and stories with others – that haven’t worked out so far?

If so, ask yourself about each plan:

1. Does this plan really match my energies?
2. Could I get help with the parts that have turned out to be challenging?
3. Can I change the plan based on the information I’ve gotten so far in response to my efforts?

When you tell stories, you use flexibility and creativity to match the story and your strengths with the audience’s needs.

To allow the world to benefit from your unique strengths, apply that same flexibility and creativity to your own plans for success!


2) TAKE THE “DOORWAY” WORKSHOP FOR JUST $97 DOWN

Have you been interested in my upcoming workshop, “Building a Doorway – for New Storytelling Customers”? Have you thought, “I’d like to come, but I just can’t afford it right now?

If so, you may be in luck. Through Friday, October 23, you can register for this workshop with an initial payment of just $97! And there is no additional charge for this payment plan option.

Since the workshop isn’t until November 13-16, you still have enough time to buy a 21-day air ticket, if you’ll be flying in to Boston.

For details of the workshop and the payment plan, please visit:

http://www.newcustomerdoorways.com

But don’t put off registering. The payment plan option disappears this Friday!

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/10/23/why-dont-more-storytellers-succeed/feed/ 0 Can Storytelling Customers Find Your Doorway? http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/09/30/can-storytelling-customers-find-your-doorway/ http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/09/30/can-storytelling-customers-find-your-doorway/#comments Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:15:03 +0000 Doug Lipman http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/?p=132

Contents

1) CAN YOUR STORYTELLING CUSTOMERS FIND YOUR “DOORWAY”?

1) CAN YOUR STORYTELLING CUSTOMERS FIND YOUR “DOORWAY”?

“Most storytellers run their businesses like the impractical man who built a lovely house on a busy street, then waited in vain for visitors to come in – because he forgot to build a front door!”

Okay. Your storytelling house is built. That is, you are telling stories excellently. When people hire you, some are pleased enough to hire you again. It’s a solid, pleasing house that serves well those who enter it.

If you’re like most storytellers, though, not enough people seem to enter your “house”!

We hate marketing, but…

To be sure, conventional marketing has little in common with what we love about storytelling. It all seems manipulative. It seems like puffery: exaggerated and unseemly.

Unwilling to be crass, many of us just don’t market at all.

Others try what “everyone else” around us seems to be doing: making a glossy brochure, designing a logo, choosing a catchy business name, etc. We get some results. But it’s seldom clear that such efforts are worth the time, energy, and money that goes into them.

What’s the result of all this? Too many of us either toil endlessly to make ends meet, or give up altogether. The world is then deprived of our storytelling gifts – both because we reach fewer people AND because we don’t get the years of experience required to develop our storytelling to its fullest.

The Big Question

Having created a fine storytelling “house,” how do you help enough people enter it, so that you can afford to remain in it?

And how do you do all that without making your house into something you wouldn’t want to live in?

Answer: To get the right people to enter, make an appealing doorway.

Let Me In!

I call a “doorway” anything that allows visitors to “come in” to your storytelling life. It’s a way for customers to enter into your world, to engage in the process of simultaneously supporting you and benefiting from your work.

You would certainly recognize these “doorways”:

- having a phone number so people can call you;
- having a postal address, fax number and/or email address so people can write you.

But the above doorways share some disadvantages, from the point of view of the customer:

- They can be hard to find unless a customer already knows you;
- Using them requires effort and initiative from the customer;
- There is little pressing reason for customers to “enter” through them.

Here are some other familiar doorways that partly (but not entirely) address those problems:

- Offering a CD for sale in a local store or at your performances;
- Attending meetings and conferences with your business card in hand;
- Having a sign-up list on hand at your performances so you can stay in touch with interested audience members.

The Four Requirements!

None of the conventional doorways mentioned above is capable of systematically energizing your storytelling business.

But it’s possible to create your own unique doorways. It’s possible to personalize them so that they suit you perfectly – and suit the people who are most hungry for your work.

What’s an ideal doorway for you? If you are seeking new customers (rather than getting closer to existing customers, which requires a different kind of doorway) an ideal doorway meets these requirements:

1. In itself, it fulfills a need felt by your particular customers [Meets a need];
2. It involves little risk and relatively little effort for customers [Low Effort and Risk];
3. It allows you to reach out to customers over time while also allowing them to reach in to you [Continued Two-Way Exposure];
4. It fits your energies, style, and budget [Personalized and Energizing].

Real-World Examples

For me, my email newsletter is one such ideal doorway:

1. It gives useful information that is hard to find elsewhere [Meets a need];
2. It’s free, and my privacy policy makes clear that I won’t sell email addresses or make it hard to unsubscribe [Low Effort and Risk];
3. When people sign up for it, they give me permission to contact them every month, so each issue shows them ever more of who I am; and through their comments and any surveys and offers they respond to over the months, I learn about them [Continued Two-Way Exposure];
4. It fits my enjoyment of writing, my love of technology, my limited budget, and my need for deadlines. [Personalized and Energizing]

What’s another example? I don’t think that Brother Blue thinks he’s doing marketing (and that’s a sign of how right for him it is), but his weekly story-swap in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts meets the requirements in a different way, more suited to Blue than to me:

1. It meets the needs of attendees to hear and tell stories that are powerful but not necessarily polished, and to experience a storytelling community [Meets a need];
2. It’s free, near public transportation, informal enough to allow coming in late or leaving early; and it offers a great variety of tellers (if you don’t like one teller, you won’t have to put up with her or him for very long) [Low Effort and Risk];
3. Many attend every week, giving Brother Blue a chance to hear their stories and otherwise get to know them over time; and they get to experience Blue’s style of hosting and responding to the stories he hears [Continued Two-Way Exposure];
4. It doesn’t require any planning for Blue (he can just show up, and his great resource of a wife, Ruth Hill, does all the organizational work), it allows Blue to extemporize about the stories he hears at the event, and it brings him into personal contact with lots of people. [Personalized and Energizing]

Create Your Own Doorway

So, what’s a doorway that suits YOU? How could you change something you already do, so that it meets all four of the above requirements?

What new activity could you start, that would attract those people you want more of?

Don’t stay inside your “house” lamenting how lonely it is. Instead, unleash your creativity. And make yourself easy to find, for those who are eager for the benefits of your work.

Build a new storytelling doorway, and invite people in!

]]> http://www.storydynamics.com/Stories/2009/09/30/can-storytelling-customers-find-your-doorway/feed/ 0