Search Results

Blog

On Storytelling: Part 1, What is Story?

If you’re involved in communications from a professional sense, you are by default a storyteller. Whether you’re working in PR or marketing, a pastor, graphic artist or a web developer, your job is to help people connect through language or design. This job should not be taken lightly.

We all remember stories that connect with us. We all have memories of a movie or of a book that we became so involved in that we almost mourned the closing scene or final page. We also have distinct memories of books we abandoned after the first chapter or films that felt like two hours of our lives that we would never get back.

There are stories that are told well and stories that are told poorly. There are narratives that are forgotten almost as soon as they are told and there are tales kept within our hearts and minds for the span of our lives.

Good stories typically don’t happen by accident.

Story is more than a telling of a sequence of events. It’s much more than three points and a tidy ending. Story connects an audience with deeper meanings and truths and does so in a way that causes those it connects with to internalize those truths in a way that becomes part of their being.

Every story needs a beginning. But the beginning can be a precarious place. The starting point of the story serves a host of functions -- from establishing characters, location, conditions to convincing the reader or viewer that this is a journey worth pursuing.

The legendary screenwriter and teacher, Robert McKee, wrote the definitive textbook on story craft called, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting. In it, he sets out to not only explain exactly what story is, but also what it does. “Story is about archetypes, not stereotypes,” he explains. “The archetypal story unearths a universally human experience, then wraps itself inside a unique, culture-specific expression.”

A good story helps us unwrap a piece of what it means to be human. These are universal truths that we all must grapple with. But, here’s where it starts to get a little complicated. A good storyteller understands the audience and tells a story in such a way that connects specifically to them. McKee touches on this in the early pages of his book: “Great stories are developed by a desire to touch the audience on an emotional level, not an arrogance of wanting others to hear what you have to say.”

Which brings up the obvious question. Do you know your audience? How well?

When trying to decide what it takes to connect with your audience, the first thing you need to do is get to know them. We’ll pick that up next time.

Facebook Page Timeline Change

This week Facebook did what Facebook does best. It changed. Following in the footsteps of the move from personal profile pages to timelines, Facebook took the predictable step of moving the timeline layout to fan pages. Inevitably, there will be initial screamers on the subject. The move effectively eliminates tab features as we know them and, for all practical purposes, has eliminated the time-honored landing page.

Admittedly, when I first realized that the landing pages disappeared and heard the initial rumors that tab features had disappeared entirely, I like many others was a little freaked out. But after a little research I discovered that all is not lost. After a little experimentation, I found out that all the tab pages I had created to work with FB ads were still completely functional. Tabs have been replaced with much more visual icons and moved to the top of the page below the banner. However, the arrangement of the icons may not be working to your favor at present. The icons will need custom images and may require rearranging to get the most prominent tabs on better real estate.

The short answer is that whatever rumor you’ve heard, this is actually a good change. You have a month to figure out what you’re going to do with the new layout, so it would be a good idea to spend a little time working it out. If you developed your own page apps, then you need to spend a little time going through the FB developers’ page for specifics on the change and what you need to update. If you use a third-party app company like Pagemodo or North Social, then you need to check in with them and see what their plans are.

In the meantime, we'll keep an eye out for anything new and let you know when we find something.

On Storytelling: Part 2, Know Thy Audience

One semester I taught a class in business communication and a class in introduction to multimedia back to back. The business class was full of business and accounting majors who didn’t want to talk. I would then walk across campus to the multimedia class which was full of theatre majors who wouldn’t stop talking. All semester long, I worked to get the business class to open up and the theatre class to settle down. Though these were all college students, each class took a very different set of skills and strategies to create an optimum learning environment. The business and accounting students tended to be more focused, but introverted. It took time to gain their trust and help them to open up. The theatre students tended to be less focused, but more extraverted, and so my task was to create a classroom environment that held their attention.

This brings us to the golden rule of communication: Know Thy Audience. If we are to reach our audience on an emotional level, then we need to know who they are and what it takes to connect with them. This can be drilled down to multiple layers from age and life-stage demographics to cultural references, but you need to understand your audience well enough that your metaphors reach them where they are, not where you want them to be.

If you’re in a rural area and trying to bring to life Jesus’ parable of the sower, then you may want to actually use farming or gardening references. But, if you’re in an urban environment, details about farming equipment might not connect very well. You would be better served using an illustration about a plant growing in a crack in a sidewalk or vacant lot.

But even still, we’re just now connecting on a cultural level and not yet on an emotional level. Emotional levels can only be reached if you have a grasp of the issues your audience faces on a daily basis. Life stages can be huge -- from high school to retirement, with marriage and parenting (or not) in between. With the economy, jobs and finances can also be a massive area to tackle. The list goes on. You want to hit on some of the questions or curiosities that are quietly bouncing around in their heads. But eventually, we have to take this story to a place it connects the messiness of our lives to our faith and how God intersects into these stories.

But for now, go sit down with someone in your community that you really don’t know that well. Talk with them, but mainly listen. You’ll be surprised what you learn.

On Storytelling: Part 3, Knowing Where You Are Going

I used to teach speech classes to incoming freshmen. It’s a safe assumption that these kids didn’t always come as prepared as they should have on speech day. That point was driven home repeatedly with fumbled words, nervous mannerisms, disorganized structure and inconclusive arguments. The advice I gave them is completely applicable to your communication ministry, your overall ministry and your lives. I would always ask them what they wanted their audience to walk away with. What kernel of knowledge or idea did they want to resonate? I told them to figure out what they wanted to leave the audience with and then work backward to see what steps they needed to take in order to lead the audience to that place. This is storytelling at its purest form.

If you’re planning out your communication ministry, the overall ministry or (especially) your life, go through the same process. Define where you want your story to end. Whether your story is a five-minute video or a twelve-month promotional campaign, it doesn’t matter. The rules still apply. Once the ending is defined, work backward to see what steps all the characters involved need to take in order to make the destination.

It’s important that you go through these steps. First of all, it helps define your overall vision. Too many ministries (and people) are bouncing around from week to week with no definable goal. They don’t know where they’re going, and as a result they’re either disorganized or stuck in a hamster wheel of monotony. In storytelling, understanding the destination helps the author understand the choices that the characters need to make in order to reach their objectives. In simplest terms, if a character starts out in the middle of Kansas and the final scene is supposed to have her standing with her bare feet in the sand, watching the sun set off the California coast, then any decision that takes our character east instead of west is going to be counterproductive.

You may have a great idea. But that idea is taking you in the wrong direction. Do the hard thing. Draw a line through it and pull it out of the story. It may be a great element for another story, but it’s just going to damage this one. There’s nothing wrong with taking a few detours along the way that add to the experience and richness of the story, but we need to keep in mind that they are just that. Detours.

Over time you will see this as an invaluable asset. Though I can’t say it ever gets easy, it’s always worth the effort. This process simplifies decision making and ultimately helps you tell a better story. And good stories are the only kinds worth telling.

Write your stories well.

On Storytelling: Part 4, Character Development

Every story needs a protagonist -- a lead character to shape the audience’s experience around. Though in most cases there are various other supporting figures, the lead should be treated with the utmost care. Think for a moment to all of your favorite movies or books. Think about the lead character. Now think for a moment about all the time that was spent introducing the audience or readers to that character.

For example, take the Robin Williams classic Dead Poets Society. In the opening scenes, the movie reveals the ultra-strict environment of the private prep school and the ways in which the students feel oppressed by their parents and the faculty of the school. Yet, Williams’s character is introduced as a whimsical and brilliant figure who not only educates the boys, but also inspires them. Throughout the film, the audience is given glimpses into the mentor relationship he develops with his students and the levels in which they care for each other.

But why spend so much time getting the audience to fall in love with Williams’s character? Because if the audience isn’t empathetic toward him by the time the tragedy and conflict enter the film, then they aren’t interested in whether or not he overcomes that conflict. Put simply, if they don’t care about the character, they don’t care if the character overcomes his problem.

As you unveil your ministry’s story, are you setting up a good lead character? The “character” can have many faces, but at its core, it has to be someone or something your audience can relate to and empathize with. If not, they simply won’t invest time in the story. What makes a good lead character? We’ll get to that next week.

On Storytelling: Part 5, Character Development

We want our stories to have good lead characters. We know that we want our audience to emotionally attach to them. We know we want the audience to want our character to win on some level.

Great… how do you do that?

The good news is that you already know. Look around your world. You know who you like and who you don’t. And if you spent a little time thinking about it, you can probably nail down those specific qualities. Here are a few tips though. First of all, the lead doesn’t need to be perfect. We typically can’t relate to Prince Charming. As people we live within the confines of our imperfections or, at least, our differences. So a good lead character can have problems. In fact, they should have problems of some sort. Think of Bruce Willis in almost any movie he’s ever done. Tough guy, always trying to do the right thing and save somebody or the world, but inevitably his personal life is a wreck. We still want him to win.

But what about the villain? Villains are interesting characters too, but there isn’t as much difference between them and the hero as you might think. I think the writer Donald Miller summed it up best when he said the singular difference between a hero and a villain is that “a hero can’t think of themselves as better than anyone.” The moment that happens, the hero becomes the villain. This point was illustrated perfectly in the film “Juno” when, in a moment, Jason Bateman’s character goes from being a total cool guy to a total jerk based on a single decision.

Ultimately, the case for a good character comes down to the integrity and determination of the character. This applies to your lives and ministries as equally as it does to films. Again quoting Don Miller, “If it’s a bad quality for a character to have in a film, it’s most likely a bad quality to have in real life.”

Go create good characters. There are enough villains.

On Storytelling: Part 6, Purpose

There’s a great documentary called Darius Goes West that tells the story of a wheelchair-bound Darius Weems and a collection of his friends who set out on an epic road trip across America. Their goal is to spread the word about muscular dystrophy to a younger generation and attempt to get Darius’s wheelchair accessorized on MTV’s Pimp My Ride.

If you want a story that will show you the fundamentals of developing empathy for a character, this is it. You can’t help but to fall in love with Darius and his friends. But, empathy will only take an audience so far. They can adore a character, but if there is nothing the character is striving for, then the audience has no reason to cheer him on. Darius’s quest is three-fold: To get his wheelchair pimped (get a makeover, that is), to spread the word about muscular dystrophy and ultimately to live a full life despite his circumstances.

To have a good story, you need a character that the audience can relate to, but you must also establish a purpose for that character -- a quest of sorts.

But here’s the trick. It can’t be just anything. Lead characters need to be on a quest for something of significance, and it must be something that involves a certain amount of risk. In Darius’s case, he’d never been out of the county in Georgia where he was raised, and he was setting out across America in a rented RV headed to MTV to get on a show he hadn’t been accepted to appear on. Your characters can’t just want something. They need to want something big.

It’s amazing how many people were cheering him on. Yet he probably wouldn’t have had the same response if he was just heading across town to get a burger.

As you develop the stories for your ministries, take a cue from Darius. Want something big. Want something dangerous. Be willing to accept the risk and willing to work for what you want.

You’ll be amazed at how many people will cheer you on.

So let me ask you… what is your ministry’s purpose? What are you willing to risk to achieve it?

Telling Our Story

In February, the Pew Research Center released its findings on the mainstream media’s coverage of religion in 2011. Faith groups have historically had a tough time getting media attention, and 2011 was no exception. However, what is noteworthy is that the primary coverage focused on religious stories that were primarily inflammatory in nature. The top stories included coverage of Peter King’s “Radical Islam” congressional hearings, anti-Muslim sentiment in America, religion in politics with special emphasis on Mormonism and consistent coverage of the Westboro Baptist Church’s continuing protests.

We shouldn’t be OK with this.

It doesn’t do any good to point fingers at the media or politicians on “why” these stories dominate the headlines. As a journalist, I can tell you why. They have all the qualities that modern journalism asks for: conflict, charismatic characters, and more conflict. Politicians use religion for political leverage whether what they’re saying is true or not.

Anyone who has sat through a church committee meeting can verify that it can have its fair share of conflict. These headlines hardly give much insight to what actually is going on in the faith community. The problem is we’ve let other people tell our story, or perhaps closer to the truth, hijack our story. As long as we let others dominate the conversation, those outside the community don’t know the difference.

Ten years ago I would have believed that this is an obstacle that would have required the resources of high-end PR companies and truckloads of money. Today I don’t believe that at all. Today, it just needs you to tell your own story with the tools available at your fingertips.

The Westboro Baptist Church only gets attention because they’re loud and obnoxious, and people like to go on record as calling them loud and obnoxious (like I just did). It is the well-deserved challenge from other faith groups that makes the story newsworthy. But stop for a moment and think about the things going on in your own community that also deserve some righteous indignation. Whether it’s homelessness, drug addictions, abuse, hunger, or some other pressing issue, the fact remains that you have every tool in the world to take on those challenges and use the technology at your fingertips to tell that story.

Axletree Media hosts thousands of church websites across America, and that’s a bigger media infrastructure than any of the major news outlets. What would happen if all of those ministries got really vocal about the message of Jesus and used the resources of this age to tell it?

I’ll tell you what. There would be people in every one of those communities who suddenly got a new glimpse of Christianity. They would hear stories of Christians helping people out of hard times. They would hear stories of people loving each other. They would hear stories of people forgiving other people.

They would meet Jesus. And that’s a much better story than anything on cable.

Now go get indignant.

Telling the long story

We live in a world of stripped-down and get-to-the-point narratives.

We’re broken down into 140-character status updates and photo captions that slice our days into play-by-play freeze-frames. On the television, it’s not much better. News stories that are over almost before they’ve started give us the what, but very seldom the why. MTV set the tone 25 years ago when they shortened the average video edit down to three seconds. Billboard advertisers know that if their message takes more than two seconds to read then it’s too long.

This goes beyond media. Think about all the things in this world that we demand to have fixed immediately. Things that just aren’t possible to fix overnight. Or even in a year.

We live in a fast-paced world. I get that. But I also realize that we’re a people who get impatient with microwave ovens because two minutes is apparently too long to wait for our dinner.

The problem is that this need for the quick and immediate is causing us to lose the intricate beauty of the long narrative. Any gardener will tell you that a tomato tastes better that’s been hand picked from a plant that was a tiny seedling he planted two months before. It’s better because he got to be a first-person witness to its slow development from a bloom into a plump and juicy fruit. Biting into it was only part of the joy. The experience exists beyond its flavor.

Consider this in your ministry. We often want quick fixes and get-to-the-point teachings that reflect the culture we exist within. But as you tell your story, I ask that you consider the long narrative as option. Good stories need good characters and conflicts to overcome. They need the excitement generated over a quest to gain something truly important. Every one of those characteristics is found in that Bible on your shelf. Sometimes I think we need to be reminded that telling the world’s greatest story deserves the time it takes to tell it well. Don’t think for a moment that people won’t respond to a well crafted tale. Consider how many times you’ve witnessed even a young child curled up on a couch with a thick book encountering adventures with dragons and great battles.

The trick to being a good storyteller is remembering your job is to guide the reader through the wilderness and constantly giving them reasons to follow you along the path.

We’ll talk about some specifics in the days and weeks to come. But for now, you’re just going to have to wait.

9 records found.