When communicating with others the most important objective is for your message to be received and understood the way you intended.

Implicit in this objective is getting the attention of the person or persons you are sharing with.  A critical aspect of attracting and maintaining attention is how you tell the story.

What’s the Story

Whether your tale is an account of imaginary or real people or and events the key aspect of a story is the fact it is told for entertainment.

By definition, entertainment is about enjoyment.   If you are enjoying yourself it’s far more likely for you pay attention, absorb the content and even participate in the stories discussion (e.g., via questions or your own anecdotes).

Turning your communications into stories means they are more likely to be enjoyed by the recipients, this should ultimately create a better chance that your narrative will lead to understanding or at least follow up to create understanding.

What makes it a story?

Stories are well organized.  They should always contain the following six elements, however, the one that really gets and retains attention is “conflict”

• Setting – provide the background and context.  This sets the tone of the entire communication helping to avoid confusion.
• Character/Subject – The key components of the story are who or what it is about, without this being clear, confusion reigns.
• Point of View – Determine from whose or what perspective you are going to tell the story and make that is embedded throughout consistently.
• Conflict – This is the suspense part of the story.  Some sort of conflict is needed so others wonder what is going to happen.  This will get their attention.
• Plot – The story needs to flow cleanly from beginning to end.  Map this out yourself before starting to tell others the story.
• Theme –  This is the purpose of the story, why you are telling it in the first place.  It is important to know before relating the story to others.