Speaking Technically: Why Stories?
There are as many ways to organize information for communication as there are pieces of information to communicate. This Speaking Technically series has, thus far, spent a lot of time discussing the techniques. We’ve learned how to tell stories effectively.
There’s still the question: why use storytelling? Why not just tell people what we want them to know?
The Evil Default
You’ve been tasked to give a presentation at work. By expectation, by habit, and by industry standard, you turn to your worst enemy, the tool that seeks to undercut you and ruin every talk you ever give.
PowerPoint is a problem for presenters. Visual aids are powerful tools, but PowerPoint has a very specific assumption about how you’re going to organize your presentation: it expects that you’re using an outline.
Outlines and mind-maps help organize your thoughts. You can visualize how points relate to each other. An outline is a tree-structure, which is a fantastic way to organize information. They’re a terrible way to communicate information.
PowerPoint’s default behavior is to break your content down into a tree structure- slides contain bullets which contain sub-bullets, all the way down. It encourages you to cram text onto the slides. It’s quick and easy to use the tool that way. It’s also boring.
Lists are boring. The instant you starts reading PowerPoint slides aloud, your audience checks out. You may as well be reading the dictionary. Even if you don’t make the awful mistake of reading your slides, you’re still reciting a list. It’s an instant attention killer.
Storytelling in History
Humans are, at their core, a communicating species. More than any other species on Earth, we’ve mastered the art of passing information from one human to another. Stories are the root of all human communication.
We’ve used myths to explain why the world is the way it is. We’ve used fables and parables to explain how humans should behave and treat each other. Folklore is stuffed with tales of the careless or the greedy getting eaten by witches in the woods.
Stories have a way of getting in our brains. You only need to hear the story of “The Tortise and the Hare” once, and you can instantly recall the key points, and even the controlling idea: slow and steady wins the race.
Stories make things memorable.
Stories as Structure
Organizing complex information is a challenge. There’s a pattern to stories, and this pattern has been refined and tweaked over the entire course of human history. From the ancient Greeks, through Shakespeare, and to Joseph Campbell, writers have built a template that is a “best practice” for sharing information.
You can take your facts, tie them to the 5-act structure, organize them with a through-line, have them interact as characters, breathe life into them with scenic details, and create an experience that will resonate with your audience. It’s something that reveals the connections between facts. It allows you to “show, don’t tell”. It makes your job, as a communicator, easier, because you’ve already got the groundwork done for you.
Stories are a template or scaffold.
It’s All Science Fiction
Science-fiction depends heavily on science and technology to drive stories forward. In IT, we live in a science-fictional reality. Our day-to-day lives are almost entirely driven by technology. To an outside observer, “bouncing the gateway router” means as much as “reversing the polarity of the neutron flow”.
Science-fiction authors have struggled with this challenge, and they’ve found an eminently workable solution: use dramatic structure; build characters; provide colorful, scenic details; and maintain a clear through-line that drives the story. You can take those lessons and adapt them to your own tech talks.
Stories can humanize the inhuman.
Entertainment
Hundreds of films are produced every year, and the film industry rakes in about $10 billion each year. The book publishing industry sold 2.59 billion books, in 2013. The video game industry is worth, in total, about $65 billion.
People love stories because stories can entertain. Communication is about more than simply relating dry facts and waiting for your audience to absorb them. If you want to hold someone’s attention, you need to entertain them. Memorable characters, suspensful situations, and a clear controlling idea can hold an audience’s attention better than even the most interesting raw fact.
Stories entertain us.
Tell Your Story
You have stories to tell. Share your passion for your work and make sure you’re understood and remembered.
Storytelling enhances every aspect of your job: debugging, requirements gathering, interviewing, learning new tools and platforms, knowledge transfer, and more! If you’d like to transform the way you communicate, sign up for my upcoming workshop with master storyteller Kevin Allison.
October 19th
1–4PM
Rehearsal Studios at CUBE PGH, 5877 Commerce St, Pittsburgh PA 15206
With less than a week left, seats are filling up fast. Get yours now!
Sign up today.
Other “Speaking Technically” articles: Characters and Personification, Failing Upwards, Driving Change, Detail Oriented
