Daily Archives: October 7, 2014

Oct 7 2014

A Storytelling Secret

Storyteller

STORYTELLING TIP

Of course, there isn’t just one tip toward becoming a master storyteller.

You don’t necessarily need to be a storyteller to appreciate the art of storytelling. A master storyteller can pull it off, but any reader can appreciate the art—and can tell which kinds of storytelling please him or her.

This article will just focus on one of the many aspects of storytelling.

One thing that many great stories do well is this:

Make it cool to be different.

It may be a plus if this is something that much of your target audience can relate to.

Here are some examples:

  • Rudolph, with his bright red nose, is a favorite misfit reindeer. He fit in with misfit toys in a popular Christmas special.
  • Shrek is one cool ogre, and Donkey is pretty cool, too. Fiona’s fate is a cool twist to the usual ideals, too.
  • Cinderella and Harry Potter show that orphans can be really cool.
  • It can be cool to be nerdy or geeky. Look at Velma from Scooby Doo, the Nerds movies, or Mr. Peabody. Then there is the evil genius, like Lex Luthor battling the Man of Steel. This last one doesn’t relate to storytelling, but I love Best Buy for making it cool to be a geek with their Geek Squad. I love the Geek Squad as they’ve helped me solve numerous problems.
  • You can probably think of many romantic stories where the protagonist would be far from fairest of them all based on common perceptions of what’s outwardly handsome or beautiful. You don’t need tall dark and handsome to fall in love with a perfect ten, and many target audiences may prefer it otherwise. (I don’t want to give any specific examples here and possibly insult anyone by making it seem like someone with any particular trait isn’t beautiful. Christina Aguilera has a song about that.)

After all, everyone is different. It should be cool to be you. It is cool to be you. 🙂

I bet you can think of some other good examples of where being different is cool.

Copyright © 2014 Chris McMullen

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2014 Chris McMullen, Author of Self-Publishing with Amazon (Boxed Set: 4 Books in 1)

Now available for pre-order for Kindle: http://amzn.com/B00O6MT158.

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