Continuing on with our coverage of tips from Ira Glass, in this first video he gets into the building blocks of telling your story; whether on video or audio. I could see it applied to writing as well.
The first building block he talks about is an anecdote, which he describes as a sequence of events; a story in its purest form.
It's what happens, and then the next thing that happens, which leads to the next thing, etc. What this does is give the story you're trying to tell momentum. Glass says that even stories that may not be that interesting can be carried by the very form itself.
The form creates the experience of being on a continuous journey of discovery; a promise of finding things along the way. It raises questions in the viewers mind which are then answered along the way. This creates bait where the person wants to keep going on in the story to find more questions and answers.
The second building block, according to Glass, is what he calls a "moment of reflection." This is simply a way of saying you answer the question of the viewer of why they're listening to the story you're telling them. It's the point of what you're doing - why they should continue on.
It's not just a one-time moment, but is intertwined and interwoven into the anecdote. In other words you create an event, then offer a "moment of reflection," a reason to the event. They go back and forth as the story is being told.
Think of these things, not only in storytelling per se, but in marketing as well. Marketing is telling a story. These particular building blocks are great foundations to creating a story about our products or services.
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