Stories are everything.

Tod Kelly

Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the 7 Deadly Sins Show at Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is  a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

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4 Responses

  1. Burt Likko says:

    This is congruent with the training lawyers litigators receive. It is both easier and more effective to explain complex concepts and intricate fact patterns with stories than with abstractions. It’s also more enjoyable to hear a story than a lecture.

    That’s why you should tell stories for the benefit of your audience. I like the quote more because it points out that the act of telling stories benefits the teller, too. Using stories to communicate makes you wiser. It makes you more honest. It makes you moral.Report

  2. Michael Cain says:

    Hear, hear! I used to be assigned the task of giving young tech types feedback on the first draft of their presentation for an SVP. “You’ve got 20 minutes and you want them to remember it. You have to tell them a story. Keep that table of numbers in your hip pocket in case they ask for it, but it’s not the story you want to tell.”

    I don’t do enough story-telling in the things I write here. I have told the little voices that live in the back of my head that are in charge of various things that they need to remind me about that more often.Report

  3. Morat20 says:

    The Doctor: It’s funny, I thought, if you could hear me, I could hang on, somehow. Silly me. Silly old Doctor. When you wake up, you’ll have a mum and dad, and you won’t even remember me. Well, you’ll remember me a little. I’ll be a story in your head. But that’s OK: we’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know, it was the best: a daft old man, who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you I stole it? Well, I borrowed it; I was always going to take it back. Oh, that box, Amy, you’ll dream about that box. It’ll never leave you. Big and little at the same time, brand-new and ancient, and the bluest blue, ever. And the times we had, eh? Would’ve had. Never had. In your dreams, they’ll still be there. The Doctor and Amy Pond… and the days that never came.

    Report

  4. Kazzy says:

    Some people are natural story tellers. I am one of them. It just seems both natural and right. What strikes me is the folks who aren’t story tellers… who don’t seem to have that gene. Ask me what I had for dinner… I’ll still be going 20 minutes later and you’ll know everything from the shopping trip a week ago when I procured the ingredients to the first time I had the dish ten years past to the foibles of this current attempt at preparing it. Ask one of these other sorts of folks and they’ll say, “Pasta.” I… don’t get that.Report