I believe in storytelling. No two ways about it. I’ve tried it before and continue to derive inspiration from the concept. I’ve written stories (long and short ones) to influence and provoke people, told stories albeit not so well, coaxed people to tell stories, listened to stories – and almost chewed up a few adventurous and exploratory insects because of a sagging jaw in certain situations. So forth. You get the idea. It works wonders (not from the perspective of certain insects, of course). But I want to understand something better. Help me. There’s one possible downside to storytelling. Certain people may get carried away and exaggerate a bit. So, you are looking at a situation where distorted stories are floating around. Over time, the story can get so distorted that it becomes an almost untrue story that evokes unwanted skepticism from the listeners. What can be done to prevent this from happening? Written stories, of course, may prevent continuous distortion that may accompany verbal stories. What else? Any thoughts?
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Storytelling...
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2 comments:
Ya I love the oral traditional stories by camp fires. It's a bit cliché but it brings up lots of memories. The best stories were bed time stories or the ones our girl friends tell in slumber parties.
So you can't stop people from exaggerating & twisting stories. In fact you don't want to because that means that people are making your story their own. And this is a good thing.
I suspect this tends to be self-correcting as an over-the-top story will get laughed at and people will rein it in at the next telling.
What is useful is monitoring how stories change or get exaggerated in an organisation. This can give you valuable insights into what is going on.
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