Excellent storytelling goes beyond the simple telling of stories.
It challenges your audience lateral thinking abilities. Every turn of event, every red herring, every surprise… They all come with the help of your lateral thinking skills.
Here are a few ideas you should focus on to improve your stories.
1: Challenge Assumptions.
Don’t accept the obvious.
Here’s a little example (solution at the end): “Romeo and Juliet are found dead on the floor with some water around. The windows are open and a strong wind draft is blowing the curtains around. How did they die?“
2: Find Analogies.
Connect unrelated ideas.
Maybe your love story is like a chess game. Or your sci-fi plot is like a Greek tragedy.
Simple analogies can create amazing stories (“Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell is an interesting example).
3: Reverse the Problem.
Instead of “how do I save the world?”, ask “how do I destroy it?” Then flip it.
This sparks unexpected solutions and keeps the audience glued to the story.
4: Random Word Technique.
Pick a random word or idea.
Fin a way to put it into your story. And if you really want to risk it, go and by some Rory’s Story Cubes.
They are an amazing tool for storytellers.
5: Look for Patterns.
Life is full of visible and invisible patterns.
Find connections in seemingly unrelated things. When you start to look for patterns and fractals, you’ll never stop seeing them.
And they will spawn so many ideas…
6: Embrace Failure.
Not every idea will work.
That’s part of the process! Even failures often lead to breakthroughs. Keep experimenting.
The more you do it, the more you’ll find your own unique style.
7: Train your lateral thinking.
This is a bit unrelated to storytelling, but amazing to train your Lateral Thinking skills.
Get a copy of the game “Baba is you”. Don’t be fooled by the simple graphics.
After the first few levels, you will have to start and really put your thinking skills to the test.
Solution to 1: Romeo and Juliet were goldfishes. The wind tipped their bowl over, hence killing them.
No one ever said they were human, but we assume that based on their names.