Alone on the bed, the one shared by a family of three in a one bedroom apartment at the Peace River Marina, her five year old hands worked steadily, weaving the scissors in and out of construction paper patterns. Proceeding each step was another one; in this case, The Glue Step. Then came photos and, at last, she started her story: “Vivian loved her cats. One day she was sad. So friends came over. They had a party. She was happy.”

Storytelling: The tried and true communication tool for reaching an audience, capturing a reader, and creating a forget-me-not experience. It’s obvious that novels, biographies, memoirs, and often feature articles are rich in narrative. If you pay attention, however, you’ll find that stories tend to show up in all kinds of writing - if their interesting!

There’s Even Room for Narrative in Politics
This week’s voting news in Iowa was covered by the press like flies at a barbecue, and the news articles that kept my attention were littered with narrative. Today I read this article from NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan:

PORTSMOUTH, NH — It was a small and packed crowd that greeted the race’s new front-runner at an airport hanger in Portsmouth this morning. Obama, fresh off his Iowa win and his voice hoarse and raspy, entered to chants of “We want change! We want change! We want change!”

Check that out! A little anecdote goes a long way in setting the mood for this piece!

Wanting to be a Better Writer
It seems like every one, myself included, admits that they want to be a better writer. There were a handful of things I was taught while studying journalism and writing that stuck with me, and one of them is the importance of narrative. Sure, there are plenty of blogs and books out there packed with concise technical jargon like a training manual for the Queen, but as for me, I like stories! Even in the most professional arena’s, the use of techniques like organizational storytelling or narrative analysis provides an effective use of stories. There is certainly no contest to the fact that storytelling is amazingly persuasive, (just take a look at some of the great speeches to have made history, or the narrative accounts in all sacred books!)

I had a teacher who used an unusual word to describe what is really an anecdote or description: Vivids. She encouraged us to color our essays with “vivids”, giving the reader some context and characters in which to engage their own imagination. Next time you go to write a blog post or Christmas letter, don’t neglect the importance of a good ol’ fashioned, “Once upon a time…” Your reader’s will thank you!

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