The 4 Principles of Storytelling

Storytelling is a buzzword tossed around frequently these days, especially in marketing circles. It’s true that telling stories are one of the best ways to stand out among the constant onslaught of content and advertising.

But newsflash: not everything is a story.

So what is a story? It might seem like a silly question. Yet, do we really know what distinguishes a story from everything else? It’s one thing to talk about storytelling and quite another to do it.

Here are four fundamental principles that separate the true stories from the pretenders: character, context, conflict and creation.

Character

Go ahead. Name a story without any characters. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

A character adds a face to the story. They give the events of the story perspective. Characters allow the audience to see themselves in the narrative and empathize.

Without characters, stories would be unrelatable, uninteresting, not to mention, implausible. In other words, not much of a story.

A main character gives the story focus and personality. Character development describes changes that a character undergoes during the course of the narrative. The better the characters, the better the story.