We live in a story culture. Movies, books, even personal relationships are based on stories.
For example, a friend is relating a recent trip. The part you remember is the funny, unique, or exciting story they tell about the experience. In fact, the better the story the more inspired you are to want to share in a similar experience.
But like a book or movie, a story needs to involve a few critical elements:
* Connection: You need to care about the characters! If you don’t like ‘em, you won’t care what happens!
* Crisis: There needs to be a crisis or a tension to be resolved.
* Conclusion: The story needs conclude in a way that encourages or challenges the listener and resolves the crisis.
* Commonality: The story needs to remind us of a larger truth, principle, or shared value. It has to plug into a cultural or social expectation. We need to identify with it on a personal level.
Good communicators and speakers know we need to see those elements in a story to care about the message being communicated. The question we need to answer is “What is our story?” It doesn’t matter if you are selling tires or teaching children, if you don’t have a story, you won’t have an audience.
What story can you tell?