Storyworthy

Content is the new currency, they say. But for people to act, it needs to arouse a response. In his book Contagious, Jonah Berger emphasizes the importance of stories. Information on its own is unexciting and rarely stimulates action. Stories work like Trojan Horse. They carry within them a ton of information. You get sold on it much easier than data, facts, and figures. Therefore, storytelling is an essential skill. In my Design Thinking Sessions, people invariably get stuck at the storyboarding step.

I was looking for a book that could help me with it. I landed on the book Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks. Nuggets of knowledge are sprinkled throughout the book. Are the critical few that I have noted (not specifically in the order as they appear in the book):

• A story is all about a 5 sec moment in someone's life.

• A good story has an end that's 180 degrees from where the story begins.

• Narrating a sequence of events is not a story. It is about what we observed, learned, and how it helped us evolve.

• A story should have several detours. That keeps people engaged. One good way to ensure this is to avoid using "and" too often. Instead, words like but, hence, therefore break the monotony of thoughts and change directions.

• A good story gives a backpack on the shoulders of its readers. The audience becomes part of the story and predicts an outcome. The author then discards that direction and stuns the readers.

• Stories should crunch the time gap between start and end. If a story spreads over several days and years, each event inside it should happen in a short period.

• Don't preempt the story with an opening synopsis of what the story is all about.

Lastly, I picked up Matthew's insightful idea of taking out 5 minutes and making a note of story-worthy moments in our life daily.

• Subodh