My friend is a storyteller. He has a respectable face and a rich, deep voice. When he speaks, he weaves these captivating tales that you simply can’t ignore. I’ve known him for a few years, and the other day he asked me for my opinion on his newest web site, Story Care.
Now I’m a newb at telling stories. Which was a problem, because the point of StoryCare is to use stories to improve health care. So, before I could help my friend, I first had to answer a really basic question.
What is a story? It’s one of those things we think we understand but have a hard time defining. So I looked to another story teller, Peter Gruber. Peter is one of the most successful story tellers in the world. He’s been the CEO of both Sony Pictures and Mandalay Entertainment. And he wrote this wonderful book, ‘Tell To Win’. Inside, he draws upon a wealth of stories to teach the rest of us how to tell stories. My favorite was the tale of ‘Mr Muscles and the Mouse’ (aka – Mr python and his lunch).
Even Peter had to ask, ‘What is a Story?’ Which is odd, because he’s a master story teller. While writing the book, he realized he couldn’t answer this basic question. So he visited a few professor friends, and here’s what he found. A story has 3 parts:
- A question or challenge
- The struggle and emotional connection
- A galvanizing conclusion (plus a little surprise).
And do you know what that is? That’s a recipe! A story recipe – add each ingredient, one by one, sprinkle in some passion for flavor, and voila! A story is born. And once I knew what a story was, I was ready to review my friends site. So I did.
I’m not going to share my review. You can listen to the stories on StoryCare and judge for yourself. What I want to share is that I had an epiphany during all of this. I realized that that there’s no story on my own website!
Holy cow! There’s not a single story on my About Page! In the beginning, I was just trying to help my friend, but I think he’s the one who’s going to be helping me. So, now I have to go. I have a story to tell! My story.