Do you know your “Story Ignorance Index”?
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 26 Jul 2007, 2:47 PM - 1 Comment
Everyday I tell stories. If this is a surprise, let me say that everyday you tell stories too. Take your customers, friends, family members or your colleagues – all of these people are hearing your stories day in and day out.
Everybody in the world is telling a story – all the time.
It is also true that you are hearing stories everyday. Told by your family members, friends, colleagues, advertisers, newspapers, politicians, government officials etc.
If you observe carefully, most of the stories don’t register in your mind even after you listen to them many times. The simplest reason may be that they are not “relevant” to you. If you never played golf or not interested in the game, chances are that a story about a golf resort may not catch your attention. Let us leave those stories aside.
Let us look at those stories that are talking about products, services and news about items that are “relevant” to you. Even amongst those stories, only VERY few catch your attention. Other stories are weak or have a high “Story Ignorance Index“. Story Ignorance Index is a measure of how easy it is for the other person to ignore your story. The higher the index, easier it is to ignore.
If you want to see how a good story is told, please watch the TV show 24. It is the work of a master story teller and it is hard to beat 24 in that department.
When people hear your stories, they are not comparing it to another story by someone similar to you (or your company) but to the best story that they have heard of. When your story is farther away from this “standard”, the Story Ignorance Index will start going up and your message will be lost in space.
If you have the best (be it a product or a service) with you but don’t know how to weave that into a compelling story, you suffer.
As an exercise, compare your current story to that of 24? Does it measure up? If not, what can you do or whose help can you get to tell a better story?
Related Articles:- CIO Magazine story – De-nerding Your Geeks
- How did Azim Premji (Wipro) choose the right books? – More validation for Suggestica :)
- Mini Saga – exercise for your brain
- “Making the most of your time” article published on PSVillage
Posted in the Main Page category.
RSS
Anonymous on July 31st, 2007
This is a GREAT post. As a veteran of many years in the entertainment business, it’s amazing how many times that even in our business of storytelling, people seem to forget how to make stories relevant; how to tie them into archetypes that drive how the point you’re trying to make in the telling of a story.
One of my favorite all-time books is “Story” by Robert McKee, and is mainly written as a book for screenwriters/aspiring screenwriters.
The real gem of the book is in the first three chapters where he encourages you to figure out WHY you’re telling a particular story and then helping put in context of one of the three basic archetypes (man vs. himself; man vs. man; man vs. nature).
If you know why you’re telling a particular story, it goes an awful long way towards defining the how and what of it. (e.g. are you telling the story to inspire, to scare, etc.)