thoughts on storytelling

For the previous parts in the story rules series: Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel Story Rules Part 3: Story Is Character & Character Is Story Story Rules Part 4: Lacuna - Create Space the Audience People often confuse lack of clarity and being hard to understand with being deep and intellectual. Nothing is further from the truth. If you have a message that you want to communicate, you need to make yourself understood. To make yourself understood you first need to make your audience want to listen. To make your audience want to listen you need to make it clear for them what they have to gain by listening to you. Remember that your audience never owes you anything. They have already invested either time or money or both to listen to you. If you don't repay their investment it is your own fault if they get bored and don't want to listen.

For the previous parts in the story rules series: Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel Story Rules Part 3: Story Is Character & Character Is Story Every storyteller loves subtext. Subtext is what takes a story to a new level, and does so by creating a synergy that lets 1+1=3. I believe it does so by adding a hidden number to the equation 1+1(+1)=3. This hidden number is the audience. Or with other words: Subtext is the part of the story told in the audiences imagination. To let the audience participate in the story they need to have room to do so. A gap needs to be created. I like to call this gap " Lacuna ".

For the previous parts in the story rules series: Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel The story, and its message, is revealed through character choices. The characters choices reveal who she is, her strengths and weaknesses and her weaknesses is what creates the struggle, what reveals the solution, the message.