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Published on:

5th Dec 2018

153: Elements of Storytelling

ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLING 

This episode reveals the 6 essential elements of storytelling.

There are many kinds of storytelling. There are novels, short stories, parable, screenplays, to name a few.

This podcast and episode focus specifically on persuasive storytelling for business and for personal influence. In this context, think of storytelling as sharply focused intentional communication that engages people, arouses their emotions, and inspires them to take actions that will improve their lives.

Listen to this to learn the WHAT of storytelling. In future episodes, you learn the HOW by exploring each of the elements of storytelling in greater detail. Here are the…

6 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLING

  • IMMEDIATE ENGAGEMENT – Your goal as a persuasive communicator is to grab your audience’s full attention immediately.
  • MYSTERY – You hold people’s attention by creating a mounting sense of mystery.
  • VIVID – Always communicate with sensory language. Paint three dimensional word pictures by using your senses – all 5 of them. Make people hear, see, smell, taste, and feel what you are talking about. By doing that, you touch and move their emotions.
  • CONFLICT – People identify with struggle. Learn to make your audience central characters in narratives that take them on a journey from a painful before state to a desirable after state. Along the way, they will face obstacles that you will help them overcome. This process involves tension and conflict. You are taking people on a hero’s journey in which they play the hero.
  • SHOW, DON’T TELL – Showing is like lecturing; it speaks to people’s heads. “Show” storytelling bombards your audience with data. It does not touch them emotionally. Telling is example based storytelling that uses vivid sensory language that depicts human beings in struggles and actions as they move toward a desired goal. “Tell” storytelling speaks to the heart and moves people emotionally.
  • UNIVERSAL – A universal story allows people to see themselves in the narrative. They identify with the character’s pain, struggle, and desired outcome. Universal stories create deep rapport, and they win trust.

Listen to this episode more than once. Burn the 6 essential elements of storytelling into your memory. Use them when you speak to people every day. You communication will gain great clarity, confidence, and power.

 

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About the Podcast

Change Your Story, Change Your Life
Influences: Tony Robbins, T. Harv Eker, Wayne Dyer, Jim Rohn, Napoleon Hill, Andrew Carnegie, Dale Carnegie, Oprah, Robert Kiyosaki, Robin Sharma, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, LinkedIn, Twitter, method acting, Marlon Brando, Marcus Aurelius
Humans are storytelling machines. You and I are constantly creating, destroying, elevating, and diminishing ourselves with our inner narratives that appear and disappear in our minds 24/7. Most people are not aware of this process. As a result, they believe that life is happening to them. This feels random, chaotic, and scary. Why do people tolerate it? Because they tell themselves, "That's the way it is. That is reality." Those seven words could not be farther from the truth.

This podcast will explore the storytelling process that is responsible for every facet of your life. It will discuss and encourage ways to take control of your personal narrative so that you can begin directing your destiny with an empowering story.

About your host

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Louis Di Bianco

Louis Di Bianco is a storyteller. He fell in love with storytelling as a child. In his teens, his ability to tell entertaining stories saved his life on the streets of the Bronx, where he grew up. He discovered quickly how to make the neighborhood tough guys like, trust, and respect him by engaging them with stories.

Louis became a professional stage and screen actor to get paid for his love of storytelling. He has appeared in numerous feature films, TV movies, and television series, as well as performing on stage internationally.

He has taught acting for both stage and camera for as long as he has been an actor. We're talking more than four decades. Eventually, he created courses in compelling communication for business people who want to present their ideas, products, and services to the world with clarity, confidence, and persuasive power.

Louis takes the words, Change Your Story, Change Your Life, very seriously. His life experience has taught him that every word we utter, every belief we embrace, is a made up story. Even your past is a made up story that seems so vivid that you swear it's real. Accept that, and you remove all the barriers between you and your dreams. You will be able to enjoy the adventure of changing your story to change your life.