Telling stories was not part of my upbringing. In my family we stated facts, either true facts or perceived facts (if you know what i mean ). Now, long after finishing my formal education, storytelling is at the heart of my work for clients, so I need to get up to speed.
To me, stories resided in books, in fairy tales, but they were certainly not about real life. Only since I’m aware of storytelling for business purposes and help clients to explain organisational changes to their employees in video’s, I discover the true nature of stories and their power.
I’ve read books about storytelling and excercise my ‘storytelling’ on a regular basis by writing observations down in (one of my many) notebooks. Now that I know more about the topic I’m not sure why storytelling was never part of my upbringing, not at home and not at school.
I remember many school projects to write reports on topics such as WW II and Van Gogh, but I can’t remember a single case where we were asked to try to write a compelling story. I feel like this is a huge gap in my knowledge skills today, even though it is a skill you can learn later on, as I’m doing now.
It makes me wonder: did you learn to tell stories early on? At home or at school? Was I just unfortunate to have a family AND a school where this was not part of my curriculum? Or is it generally speaking not part of Dutch culture (compared to the English debate culture e.g.)?
I’d love to hear your story on storytelling!
Mentions