As attention spans decline, media talent must recapture the art of storytelling
Opinion: Career Leaders
Anna Sampson shares her best practice for storytelling as it seems to have become ‘a lost art’ amongst younger talent in media.
It’s come up a few times recently in conversations with agency partners that younger talent are less able to pull together the thread of an argument into a concise and compelling story.
This is not good news when there is an uptick in clients asking for written submissions in new-business pitches. It’s something I’m increasingly being asked to help out with.
Given our byte-sized digital lives, perhaps it’s unsurprising that we don’t have the attention span and patience for story writing.
It’s concerning that this skill is becoming somewhat of a lost art.
Stories are incredibly powerful ways to persuade
Our brains love stories. There is plenty of scientific evidence to back this up and is an argument I’ve often seen presented by Neuro-insight practitioners.
According to the Content Marketing Institute: “when we hear stories our brains light up. … neurons that fire together, wire together….which triggers us to remember more of the information we’re getting”.
With that in mind I thought it would be helpful to share some of my experience of writing narratives.
It’s not something I’ve always been good at, which just goes to show it can be learnt.
PowerPoint: the killer of stories
I did some brilliant storytelling training whilst working at an agency and the advice that stuck with me was never start with PowerPoint. It’s the killer of all good stories.
PowerPoint means you default to dumping content on a slide and labelling it rather than thinking about the story you want to tell.
Start with a blank piece of paper. Or if this isn’t your natural medium and you struggle with writing choose voice notes instead.
Holly Willoughby, who is dyslexic, wrote her book ‘Reflections’ with the aid of voice notes. The important thing is to start by getting away from slides even if that is where your story finally needs to end up.
Distil distil distil
Start by collecting all the things that you want to say. This initial brain dump will help you to construct your argument.
Go back over it and reflect. What is at the centre of the case you are trying to make. Can you get to a few sentences that distil your pitch?
Ultimately you want to get down to one sentence that is at the heart of your story. Crystallising your narrative is the essence of great storytelling.
Build a story arc
Now you know what is at the centre of your argument, it’s time to build it back out again.
Stories have a narrative arc. Typically they build towards a climax of some kind and they end in a resolution.
Writing or talking through your pitch as a story encourages you to start with the client’s problem rather than selling your solution which is much more compelling to the listener.
Can you use metaphors or personal stories?
If you can use a metaphor or a personal story you will add impact and really capture your audience’s attention.
Whilst working at Magnetic, I told a story about a meaningful connection in my life as a device to show the power of magazines to achieve meaningful connections with their audiences.
These narrative parallels take your story into the real world and make them relatable. It doesn’t have to be your story, why not borrow one, or it could even be a means to demonstrate an insight you have about your client.
The ultimate tests
There are two tests you need to do to assess if you have a brilliant story.
The first is the ‘so what’ test. Ask yourself the question: why should my audience care what I have to say? Am I telling them anything interesting or new?
The second is the mum test. This one helps to weed out jargon and ensure that people can relate to and understand your story.
It doesn’t have to be your mum, just find someone outside your profession and ask them to read your first draft. Do they understand it? Use their questions to clarify and simplify your story.
Editing takes time
You need a bit of a perfectionist streak for this one. Stories get better if you take the time to read through them and hone.
I usually read through my stories dozens of times before I am happy with them. It’s useful to write something and leave it for a period of time, and then go back to it with a fresh pair of eyes.
When I do this, I’ll reorder the flow to create more interest or improve the logic.
Shortening sentences is key — this is something that was drilled into me by a comms director I worked with. I’ll also hunt out words that I have repeatedly used and replace them with alternatives to add variety and colour.
If it’s true that storytelling is becoming a lost art, I hope this is useful to anyone out there that’s struggling.
Anna Sampson is the founder of Anna Sampson Consulting and was previously insight and strategy director at magazine marketing body Magnetic.
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