The 3 most important tips for effective storytelling.

The art of storytelling is as old as the mankind itself. From the caves of Lascaux in France to the pyramids of the Pharaohs in Egypt we have always been fascinated by stories.

Without being verbose I will jump to the title. These are my top three things I like to keep in the back of my head whenever I write.

But before I start this is a minor spoiler warning for Game of thrones, Witcher, Star wars and a couple others. You have been warned.

1. Expansion vs Progress

Think of yourself as Sherlock Holmes. Put on the hat and cigar. You walk into the crime scene and see the body. Now with your mind palace technique at work you try and recreate what might have happened.

How the victim wore a ring? How there’s a smell of cooked meat? How the bourbon bottle is empty?

You get the point, the whole nine yards. This recreation of events can be called as story expansion, where you get to understand more about the story by delving into the nitty-gritty.

Now you have a mental map of the crime and you turn to Watson telling him to do something completely random. You get out of the building only to realize it is another ploy set up by Professor Moriarty to throw you off your game.

This very sequence of events can be termed as story progression, where the story moves forward by adding new characters, plot lines and elements without expanding on the already established ones.

It won’t take long for one to decipher that both these concepts have considerable overlap and cannot be looked in isolation without the other.

A storyteller needs to strike the perfect balance between these two concepts to actually make the audience get on the edge of their seats all the while making them connected to the characters or the story.

Also this is the exact reason why we hate the third movie in a trilogy (read Star-wars) or the last season of a long drawn TV soap (read GOT). The reason being the story has been expanded way too much for the arc to be wrapped up quick enough without hurting the audience member who already has a far deeper bond with the character.

Think of it this way you let a money plant engulf the whole villa for 10 years and now to complete the story you ram a wrecking ball into the structure instead of carefully plucking each branch. It is bound to be a grotesque scene for someone who has watched the plant grow into something more than a sapling.

But then should we abandon the idea of expansion and stuff as much storyline as you can in a 20-minute scene?

HELL NO.

This is actually going to lead to a phenomenon which I call information overload leading to diarrhoea. Your audience ends up rejecting the idea altogether, never to go back to the smelly reject.

So what’s the solution for this? How does one know they have struck the perfect balance?

The honest answer is you can’t but what you can go for is a slightly offbeat style of storytelling.

Something I refer to as the Tarantino style (Derived from the Quentin Tarantino’s direction and storytelling technique). Contrary to popular belief there is a method to his madness.

Take Pulp Fiction for example, the story starts with being cluttered already into different scenes from different timelines. So instead of seeing DaVinci paint you are left to see the protagonist solve the jigsaw puzzle. Compare this with rays of sun which diverge till they hit the surface to a magnifying glass that converges the rays into a mini-sun.

This particular concept of demystifying works all too well if done correctly and almost gives the illusion of a story coming full circle filling the audience with contentment and joy. You may call this story deflation.

Recently Witcher has been able to put this v concept into play. It is in the middle of the series that you realize that the storylines are separated by years and not everything is happening at the same time. So when Geralt finally gets to meet Ciri it’s a celebration for the viewer.

The only drawback of this technique being that it is not financially lucrative as you honestly END a storyline as compared to a Hindi soap opera which lasts for at least a millennia driving millions in eternal ad revenue xD.

2. The Magic Formula

Ahh, the times I hear the industry rejoice a scriptwriter, author, director for stumbling upon the magic formula, and alas they turn out to be yet another one-hit wonder, are a bit too astronomical now.

Now I will paraphrase one of my earlier Linkedin posts for this but for long we have made fun of the same industry for plagiarism. Ethics of that aside have you ever thought what’s the core reason for it?

Do we not have enough creative scriptwriters or do we not have enough stories to draw inspiration from or is it something else altogether?

Let’s delve a bit deeper into this utopian idea of finding the path to the fountain of neverending ideas.

According to Christopher Booker there are only 7 major archetypes that every story can follow, ignoring context, people and the setting.

There have been many other theories but these following types are widely accepted to be the basis of any storytelling artform.

• Overcoming the monster
• Rags to Riches
• The quest
• Voyage and return
• Rebirth
• Comedy
• Tragedy

To read more buy the book here.

Think about it, the stories that do really well these days are not those which have a central theme but are an amalgamation of a couple of types from above and defies to be put in a genre. This in no way means that unique context on top of brilliant narration goes unnoticed.

Good comedy on the other hand is timeless and never fails but it is as hard to it achieve as it was easy saying that.

So the next time you hate on a maker for being unoriginal consider that they don’t have many choices.

The magic formula actually lies in being UNIQUE ( I just discussed why that’s so hard).

As soon as you believe you have the magic formula, you don’t have it anymore by the very structure of it.

And why go far? Take my example for it. It’s been a couple of months since I started writing on LinkedIn. After one post going viral and touching almost 300k views I tried to capitalize on it.

This is how it has been till now. No post has actually gotten to even 10% of this reach. I average around 10-15k views on my posts but as soon as I think I have cracked the formula the platform humbles me.

I try to apply the same structure to a different context but struggle to even break the 2k barrier.

So now I’m constantly experimenting and writing whatever wild goose chase pops in my head without trying to structure the magic formula.

3. A picture is worth a thousand words

By now you are as tired of hearing this as I’m. Trust me if someone says this to me again I’m going to suggest them to Google something that rhymes with rue haffle (if you know you know).

They have even gone a step further to say that a video is worth a thousand pictures. This might as well be the most overused line in the marketing world. And actually it does work, go back to my first line about the caves and pyramids. Now, these were graphic ideas and not written ones.

But let me pose this one question to you. What do I do if I can’t print a graphic in a medium?

Do I completely abandon the idea of writing then?

I propose you compensate with the “thousand” words (quite literally).

It isn’t a coincidence why usually writing masterpieces are made into a theatrical experience and not the other way around.

First came the Harry Potter books and then the movies. First came the song of ice and fire and then we got introduced to the amazing Emilia Clarke and Kit Harrington. I can go on to quote The fault in our stars and a million others but on the other hand, the cases where the audio-visual came before the visual are so scarce that I probably would need some help.

Hell, even those are preceded by a script.

The fact remains that graphics can only act as a PED or performance-enhancing drug to the underlying text. You need to have the actual meat in your words and not in your funky canva visual.

Try to make the story as vivid as you can with your WORDS. Use thesaurus for god’s sake. Pause and describe how the wind ripples through Juliet’s skirt while she was waving at Romeo from the balcony.

Now don’t go all Shashi Tharoor on it and understand your audience. Make it lucid but don’t compromise on the quality of your scene. Don’t tell me your hero is wearing shoes if he is actually wearing oxfords handmade by the best artisan who took over 20 hours to get there.

So that were my three most important thumb rules to follow if you wish to conquer the world of storytelling. I’m not even close to being an expert but I have accumulated these tips from years of reading books, testing them out in social media and various gatherings.

I hope it helps.

Happy storytelling.

Cheers