People want to know where our work came from, how they are made and who made them. The stories we tell have huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work. And these in turn affects how they value it.
To be more effective when sharing ourselves and our work, we need to become a better storyteller. This is done by knowing a good story and how to tell one.
I like how Austin uses the John le Carre's quote to illustrate this: "'The cat sat on a mat' is not a story. 'The cat sat on the dog's mat' is a story."
Story can be constructed using many kinds of structures. Once we know how they work, we can use and fill them with characters, situations and setting from our own lives.
I love the example using Emma Coats story structure, a former storyboard artist at Pixar.
"Once upon a time, there was..
Every day, ..
One day, ..
Because of that, ..
Because of that, ..
Until finally, .."
Austin also shared about pitches. Presentations, fund-raising requests are stories with no endings (yet). A good pitch has three acts.
The first act-past
-This is where we have been, what we want, how we came to want it and we have done to get it.
The second act-present
-This is where we are and how we have worked hard and used up all our resources.
The third act-future
- This is where we are going and how the person we're pitching can help to get there.
The story shape effectively turns our audience into a hero who gets to decide how it ends.
Good storytelling is not easy. To be good, study great stories and find some of ours. We will get better the more we tell them.
Austin also talks about speaking about ourselves. Treat enquiry as opportunity to connect and tell truth with dignity and self-respect. Example, "By day I'm a science teacher trainer, and by night I write children's books." Or, "I'm a writer who draws."
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