BY: Anushka
Being able to communicate your ideas and stories in a clear and captivating way allows for better social interactions. Our brains still respond to content by looking for the story to make sense out of the experience. The success of storytelling rests on the resonance, authenticity, and richness created by the storyteller.
Transmedia storytelling describes the expansion of a story into a story world experience across multiple media platforms. Immersive storytelling uses virtual reality technology to enable the audience to step into a story and manipulate it visually.
There are several psychological reasons why stories are so powerful.
● Stories have always been a primal form of communication. They are timeless links to ancient traditions, legends, archetypes, myths, and symbols. They connect us to a larger self and universal truths.
● Stories are about collaboration and connection. They engage us through emotions, and they connect us to others by sharing passions, sadness, hardships, and joys. Stories are the common ground that allows people to communicate, overcoming our defenses and our differences.
● Stories are how we think and make meaning in life. Stories are how we explain how things work, how we make decisions, how we justify our decisions, how we persuade others, how we understand our place in the world, create our identities, and define and teach social values.
● stories provide order. Humans seek certainty and narrative structure is familiar, predictable, and comforting. Within the context of the story arc, we can withstand intense emotions because we know that resolution follows the conflict. We can experience a safety net.
● Stories are the pathway to engaging our right brain and triggering our imagination. By engaging our imagination, we become participants in the narrative. We can step out of our shoes, see differently, and increase our empathy for others.
The Traits of Captivating Stories
● Suspense in stories allows you to create an addictive narrative, as long as the suspense appears early enough to capture interest, and doesn’t keep people hanging on forever
● Creating detailed imagery helps craft the setting YOU want. Creating an imaginative scenario in other persons mind helps create better affinity.
● Literary techniques (like metaphors or irony) are essential pieces of memorable stories, making people think about weird out-of-context phrases i.e. metaphors leave an impact on the brain. ● Modeling works because change is easier with an example, if you want someone to change a behavior (or become more inclined to take a desired action), then you can “model” it with a story. The character in said story should go through the transformation that you would like the reader to go through. People place themselves in the situation being told, reimagining themselves as the main character.
● It seems that we can conclusively say that the human mind can relate to and absorb stories much better if there is a “human” element in the story that is easy for the audience to imagine, even when the actual tale may not be.
● If the teller of a story comes off as not being genuine, as incompetent, or as just an “unlikeable” person, it can hurt the story itself. Thus, context and genuineness matter for the story to be believable. Oftentimes, they are made to see why the choices made were the right choices.
CHANGED TIMES:
Social technologies have fundamentally changed what audiences want from a media experience. The ability to interact, share, and be heard has established new expectations about authenticity, participation, and engagement.
When organizations, causes, brands or individuals identify and develop their core story, they are communicating their purpose and core values and displaying authentic meaning and purpose that others can believe, participate with, and share. This is the basis for cultural and social change within the organization and across society.
REFERENCES
● Rutledge, Pamela, 2011, The Psychological Power of Storytelling, Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/positively-media/201101/the-psychological-power-s torytelling?msockid=2e14b440eeb26b3e37e8a01fefb46a31
● DR. Pam, Media Psychologist, Story Power: The Psychology of Story, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DIGITAL BEHAVIORS,https://www.pamelarutledge.com/story-power-the-psychology-of-story/
● Ciotti, Gregory, 2014, The Psychology of Storytelling, Psychology Today,
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/habits-not-hacks/201411/the-psychology-of-storytel ling?msockid=2e14b440eeb26b3e37e8a01fefb46a31
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