News and views

Telling the story

Even when there seems to be no pattern or reason, there’s always a story to be found (or made). Finding that story and putting down in words with the same immediacy and persuasiveness you’d experience with speech or thought, however, is a totally different matter. Different storytellers do it in different ways.

The academic seeks order in a chaos of material. Trawling through a lifetime of letters, notes, reviews and publications, the academic – like the detective – looks for clues. Clues lead to further clues and the mystery becomes more complex before it becomes clearer. With further research, abstractions slowly become salient points on a map – which itself becomes the key to the subject. That’s the story. The skill of telling it is in reducing the breadth of research into a natural linear structure.

The journalist unearths and then sifts through all the information. By reading around the subject and asking the right questions to the right people, the journalist begins to discern threads and repetitions, queries and conclusions. That’s the story. The skill of telling it is in the clear, concise and unbiased ordering of the facts, contextualising the story’s different parts in an unbroken thread.

The copywriter is a persuader who channels information into pathways through which it will be best understood and absorbed. By understanding diverse audiences and media, the copywriter tailors each message to have a structure and meaning that will be most effectively received. That’s the story. Telling it is a form of illusion, showing the magic without revealing the mechanisms behind it.

The novelist starts with nothing but an idea. It might be a picture or a theme or a feeling. Then begins the work of creating an entire world of characters and locations, emotions and images that will be translated from mere marks on a page into the reader’s fear, expectation and joy. That’s the story. The skill of telling it is in transforming pages of dialogue and description into pure experience by understanding pace, perception and perspective.

There’s always a story. Whether it’s a profit warning, a management shake-up, a new environmental policy or a speech, the story is the connectivity and context animating it, giving it structure and making it more readily heard by its unique audience.  The story is the communication – without it, there are only words.

Matt