The voice of a Storyteller

I love to hear the voice of a great storyteller. As a child, I have always love the stage and imagine what I could do if the stage is mine to tell a story. It is not about Shakespeare and his world of actors. Since then it got me focus on things around me that got me interested in people and what goes on inside their mind. It helped me with my first job and created leaps for me to stay in the advertising world.

Storytelling is an art and it is increasingly relevant to our everyday lives and at work if you are in the communication, entertainment or interactive industry. Stories are more real and believable when they come from personal experiences. You can dramatize it with conviction if it is a great story but also a disaster to dress up a bad story, no matter what you do, you are sure to be in the ruins.

Imagine the power and strength when stories are passed from individual to individual, community to community, they grow. Everyone wants to hear a great story; everyone wants to tell a great story and everyone wants to participate in a great story. A brand without a great story is simply generic. The web is a great place, a platform for you to share if you are game in telling your story. The social web let audiences filter their choices with one just one click.

The last 5 years, storytelling has been at the heart of everything I do even at work; create lust and seduction, then dramatize the art of telling a story. The stories I often share are based on the 4 pillars; Lust, Get To Know, Intimacy, and Grow To Love; to drive the emotional connection. Being a good storyteller helps with the art of seduction to attract your audience.

Sometimes when I practice regression in therapy sessions, I get people to recreate stories from their personal memoirs. It is like playing a movie of what goes on your mind and peeling the layers off from the skin. I use different techniques in putting a story together and see from different perspectives. I shift from being the producer to spectator or from the editing room and then take more of the director’s role. I feel their responses like temperamental artists, deeply and emotionally invested.

I have a favorite storyteller, whom I had the privilege to work with; whose work and play of words have won many advertising awards around the world, later years becoming a talented director whose films garnered many awards of international recognition all due to her gifted talent – Yasmin, The Storyteller. Yasmin has created ads and movies that evoked our feelings and views through her openness and boldness in analyzing social issues. I have always loved Yasmin Ahmad’s films and commercials because in many ways they actually tell the story of my life.

Although I do not have the slightest effin clue on the A to Z best practices of making a box office film but I will continue with my journey. I love anything that exists when knowledge can be shared and the broadening of human experience. Storytelling is about an immediate context and connection with people. Film makers are far more experienced in telling stories and I will be happy to stand aside and tell my stories in the hope that at least (a few) others will find something valuable in them.