What Is Narrative Control- Explain like I’m Six
“Narrative control is a process of controlling or diverting people’s thoughts and ideas to a certain narrative so that a controller gets the desired attention in his desired manner.”
Picture this scenario: your mother has arranged a playdate for you. You have some building play blocks in your play area and you plan to use those blocks to tell stories to your friends. Each block signifies a piece of information or a short story, offering various ways to convey your tales.
For example, recall the trip to the zoo where monkeys were playing cool tricks. When it’s your turn to tell stories. You arranged the blocks focusing on how amazing the monkeys were. And, how you enjoyed their cool tricks. All your friends now believe you had a very nice trip to the zoo and monkeys are very cool animals.
What if you arranged the blocks differently? Instead of focusing on cool monkey tricks, you put light on how much time you had to wait to see the monkeys and how crowded the zoo was. This time, your friends will not think of the zoo as an enjoyable experience.
Look how you changed their perspective of the zoo from a fun place to a not-so-fun place. This is how narrative control works. By arranging the blocks differently, you change, divert, or shift people’s perspectives into your desired ones.
Read the definition given at the start, again, you will have a much deeper understanding of what was being described there and how it works.
Narrative control can be a very powerful tool. Many influential personalities like politicians, actors, leaders, and business tycoons arrange their building blocks to make stories to get people to like them and support their ideas.
They arrange their blocks to tell stories on social media, TV screens, and speeches.
In the next part, we’ll be discussing how and where these influential personalities use narrative control in their favor.
Until then,
Sidra K.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
WHAT IS “EXPLAIN LIKE I’M SIX”?🤔
You must have encountered a trend, “Explain like I’m Six”. In this trend, the author explains complex things in an easy child-like manner so that everyone can understand them, despite hearing it for the very first time. I haven’t noticed this trend in writing so far. Here, I’m starting this in my stories.
“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, then you don’t understand it yourself”
⁓Albert Einstein.
