Let’s Talk About Story
You have a brand, but now you need to be able to tell its story
Christopher Booker spent 34 years of his life developing the theory that new stories don’t exist, that we live trapped in a world where seven plot archetypes are perpetually recycled in the media we consume. The film about the woman who loses her husband in a tragic car accident and holds her sadness close, guards it, and makes a place for it inside her? It’s been done. The book about the boy who once woke to the sound of gunfire and bombs and then grew into an influential leader who brokered peace? Rinse, lather, and repeat. While much of Booker’s argument borrows from a canon of established writers and, at its best, is reductive and tedious, there is some truth to the commonality of our experience.
But this is life. We love. We lose. We overcome. We break in ways we never thought possible. We climb, ravage, and wreck. While it’s possible that every story has been told, that knowledge doesn’t stop us from reading, watching, listening, and feeling. It doesn’t disconnect us from someone’s unique experience. Instead, we live for the retelling: how individuals bear that which is familiar or common, and how their singular experience feels fresh and new. And the data supports this narrative. According to a Headstream study, 80 percent of people crave authentic stories but wish…
