Storytelling is the most powerful form of communication ever invented. Through stories we learn, entertain, communicate and socialize with each other.
You could argue that we’re machines made specifically to tell stories. When we’re telling a story in person everything about us is contributing to the power of that tale. Our very physicality helps deepen our and others’ responses to it. And, of course, everybody can tell a story. We all do it everyday. (Though some of us are, as with being creative, better at it than others.)
Why is storytelling so important to the creative process?
Well, it’s what we build our ideas around. It’s the very fabric of our thoughts. If the idea is the foundation of the creative process, then the story is the vehicle that delivers it, making it memorable and provocative.
Even an architect constructing a building is ultimately telling a story – a story of why and how. Think of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano’s Centre Pompidou in Paris. Its striking architecture encourages you to question and think creatively before you’ve even stepped over the threshold. By turning the building inside out, they challenged others’ perceptions of just what a building should look like.
A story always leaves you feeling something. And despite all our advances, all our supposed sophistication, listening to a great story, told brilliantly, still enthralls us the most.