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7thWave AI Assistant

Too many stories lack context.  Even the most dramatic story happens somewhere, so why not tell us where?  You may say the somewhere doesn’t matter, it’s irrelevant.  This is not true.  The context brings life and colour to the story. 

Detail

This leads me to the vexed question of detail.  How much?  If the story happens in a covered market, do you need to say which city it's in?  This is not an easy question to answer.  If the city is relevant to the story, it will inevitably be mentioned.  If it isn’t relevant to the story it may be to the audience.  If they know this particular market, mentioning it by name may help them visualise it.  Most people will use a covered market they know to visualise the action.

Too much detail will make the story overlong and tedious.  Too little and the story will lack colour.  How much is enough?

People populate images using their imagination.  Let’s say your story takes place in a kitchen.  Everyone will imagine a kitchen based on their experience.  If it’s your grandmother’s kitchen in the 1970s, they will remove the microwaves from their vision and try to visualise kitchen equipment of that era.  If you say there was a piano in her kitchen it’ll appear!

You don’t need to describe the piano.  Most people visualise an upright piano because it’s unlikely to be a grand.  If it is a grand piano, then it should be mentioned.  Similarly, whether the cooker is gas or electric does not need to be mentioned unless or until it becomes relevant.

Should it be mentioned if the piano is present but plays no part in the story?  If it is not featured in the story, there’s no need to mention it.  However, if your grandmother is a concert pianist and likes to practice while she waits for her cakes to bake …  It depends how important your grandmother is to the story.

Place

It's easy to overlook the importance of place.  Here’s a story that takes place on a street of terraced houses.  Do you need to mention what city it’s in?  Do you need to name the street?  Does the audience know the city?  Are they likely to know the street?  If the answer to these questions is yes, it may help the audience visualise the story if you give them this detail. 

What if they don’t know the city or the street?  The street might be very familiar to you, the place where you grew up.  To others, it may seem exotic.  To describe a terraced street in Sheffield I might say to an audience who doesn’t know the city: “Sheffield is said to be built on seven hills and certainly it seems we’re always looking up a hill, down a hill or across a valley to another hill.  Streets usually run from top to bottom of the hill and so the terraced houses joined together to form a sight line, channelling our vision up down or across.”  Locals reading that will know what I mean and so will many others who know only boring flat places. 

For some stories, knowing where it takes place is not very important.  In other stories, the place is a character.  Maybe we need to know how this place works and why it works this way.

History

And that’s because every place has a history.  Why was this terrace built?  I live in a terrace house.  These houses were built as railway workers’ cottages early in the twentieth century.  The end houses are bigger and were for the foreman's family.  When we look we see hints about the history of this place.  So while most houses look across the street, some look across the valley.  Why?  These are usually older houses, built by the well-to-do in what was the countryside.  Some houses from the same period as mine are bigger and semi-detached.  These were for the professional – doctors and solicitors. 

You may not need this detail in every story but hinting at this deeper context may add something.  But there is more.  Who built the house or street where your action takes place?  Most likely, there is no record of the builder.  They have left an anonymous legacy.  Their work benefits me today and indeed the work of previous occupants of this house.  Research might uncover more information but not everything. 

Colour

Let’s return to the covered market.  Here we might see, hear, touch, smell and taste a variety of things.  By colour I mean the variety of possibilities revealed through our senses. 

This type of detail is essential if your story captures and holds attention.  You take your readers or listeners to a speciality coffee shop in the covered market and describe your favourite drink.  This will capture and hold most people’s attention despite not tasting the coffee! 

Many stories focus on inner life and one issue is that inner life stories can lose context.  And yet context helps you get your message across.  Someone who helps people who experience depression may have a story about their experience of depression.  One problem is the many similar stories, so how do you make yours stand out?   

One approach is to describe the world as you perceive it when depressed.  Someone told a first draft story that included lying in bed all day.  I suggested describing the bed.  We found the bed could stand in for her.  This led to a memorable story about a fairly common experience. 

This could be done by describing the world as perceived in shades of grey.  Or it could be told in vivid colours, sounds or smells – describing the world around the depressed person.  In the cold light of marketing, colour brings warmth to the coldest story. 

You aim to show you understand the experience and perhaps help those who don’t appreciate what it's like.  To do that you need to find common ground with your audience.  They can’t experience what you experienced.  What you share is second hand but the use of colour can help them appreciate something of the reality of your message.

This is the nineteenth in a sequence of posts about business storytelling.  The first post was Marketing: Art or Science?  The last post was Analysis Strategy Action and the twentieth post will be Dynamics.

To try out one of your business-related stories and receive feedback from me with a few other business owners, please comment below to arrange an informal conversation.  I run these sessions free of charge on the second and fourth Thursdays.  Visit my website to find out about the Telling Stories Autumn meetings.

Minerva tells me she has always had a piano in the kitchen. The cakes look OK, but I'm not convinced by her hygiene standards.  I hope those are not mushrooms growing in one of the cakes.  It seems like one of the owls is celebrating a birthday!