I still remember the phrase my teacher Toby Hecht used often:
Birds fly, fish swim and human beings tell stories.
Whether you realize or not,whether you agree or not, your life is filled with stories:
* stories you tell yourself
* stories you tell others
* stories you tell yourself about stories others told you
and so on..
Let me take a page from storytelling through a song.
It’s a 4-minute song.
It’s a telugu song.
I picked a Telugu song for a reason apart from the fact that it’s one of my favorite songs – I wanted to follow the song without worrying about the lyrics ( which is fantastic if you understand Telugu )
Here is the top comment about the song
So,I know you will be just fine even if you don’t understand the language.
The exercise is simple.
Think about the two characters – hero ( Mahesh Babu ) and heroine ( Shruti Haasan ). Remember that you know nothing much about the two characters before you click the play button.
Now, watch the song.
At the end of the song, if I ask you to describe:
* a few characteristics of the hero
* a few characteristics of the heroine
* how much they like each other – at the end of the song compared to the beginning of the song
I can ask a dozen other questions and you probably have solid answers.
Hats off to the director ( and the editor ) for making a 4-minute song carry so much richness when it comes to the story aspect.
Think about it.
Assuming the lyrics didn’t mean much to you, the only thing you had to draw conclusions was a series of situations where the hero and heroine interacted – between themselves and others.
So, they took actions in a certain way in certain situations.
That’s it.
And, you made the conclusions.
In other words, actions played a BIG role in your assessments, judgements, conclusions and the stories you told about the hero and heroine.
That’s an important page from the world of storytelling.
Your actions in certain situations will create assessments, judgements, conclusions and stories others will tell themselves about yourself.
Note – it’s actions.
Not talk about actions.
But, real actions.
Bonus point: The weightage for the actions goes up when the stakes setup by the situation go up.
Now, think about your career with the above in your background.
What will you do differently?
Featured Image Art: My Rockstar friend Ming.