What makes a good story great?
Your story might include the key storytelling elements and yet still not be compelling. Why? It lacks storytelling umami!
The way your story is told can have enormous impact on its reception and retention. Your word choices and delivery can make all the difference.
When we taste food, we encounter salt, sweet, sour, and bitter. But the fifth taste sense, umami, provides us with a richer experience, often described as savory, complex, “yum” or “om nom nom…!”
In storytelling, the same principle applies and makes the difference between “adequate” and “exceptional.”
Storytelling umami include your word choices and delivery: such tasty items as pitch, tone, speed, dynamics, pauses and other timing factors, your facial expressions, your posture, gestures and other movements, and props and visual aids. Simply raising an eyebrow or offering a wry smile can have surprising impact, for example.
Add a dash of storytelling umami to make your stories truly delicious!
Learn more about storytelling and demos in Great Demo! Chapter 11 “Storytelling” starting on page 332.
No comments:
Post a Comment