THE ANUBHAV SERIES LECTURE ON THE ART OF STORYTELLING

BY ANKUR NARAIN SAXENA

We all love stories. Be it a blockbuster movie or a novel that we can’t get our hands off. A good
story teller, always finds herself or himself the center of a social gathering. While we appreciate
the value of a good story, but do we value our ability of telling our own stories. When confronted
with this question, we often find tones of excuses to getaway from telling our stories. “Oh, I am
not a writer”. “I don’t have anything interesting to tell”. “Who wants to listen to my story?”
Well, it was this ‘writer’s (or better lets call it – storyteller’s) block’ that the wonderful
communicator and writer Saumya Kulshreshtha, tried to get us out of, through a session aptly
titled ‘the Art of Storytelling’.

At the start, Saumya’s achievements at just 27 years of age, sound a bit intimidating. A poet,
blogger, editor and translator. She is comfortable (to say the least), with English, Hindi, Urdu
and Sanskrit. Her poetry club called Poet’s Collective, is a platform for likeminded souls to give
expressions to their intimate self. Importantly, she is a teacher and derives strength in
communicating with children, who say the most complex things in simple ways.

If her introduction sounds loaded with achievements, Saumya’s immediately relaxes her
audience by bringing out her vulnerabilities, gripping stories, and a soothing smile. She
makes the class, collectively exploratory for the audience and herself by putting up thought
provoking questions. “What is a story?”, “Which are the best stories?” In answering these
questions, the class, realised that how the greatest stories are the simplest, like many Bollywood
blockbusters – Boy meets girl, fell in love or the simplest stories that lead to becoming immortal
– Bhagvad Geeta. It is after all, their inherent temporal and spatially relevant story telling, that
has made religious scriptures, the best-sellers of all time.

To warm up us to the idea of telling our own stories, Saumya made us do an innovative, fun-
filled exercise – What will be the movie title of your own story. Boy, did we come up with some
funny, strange, curious, creative ones. This laughter-inducing exercise, laid down the
undertone for the lecture – How to tell your own story.

Before, we went into the technical details of story telling, we talked about why we need to tell
our stories. While generally people think that in being able to tell our stories, we may help build
a narrative about ourselves. We might, as I tried putting it ‘helps us turn fiction into fact’
(which lead to an interesting debate with Samuya about Subjectivity and Objectivity and
whether or shouldn’t any subjectivity be taken an objective). But Importantly, she made us
realise that stories make us accessible. In telling your own story, you create a bridge between
your own world inside with the world outside.

People relate to people, on emotions, incidents, struggles, perspectives. Stories help us do bring
out these and show the vulnerable side of us. In drawing support to our missions, goals,
initiatives, through which we seek to make a positive impact in the world, we can take the support
of a good story telling. By telling a story, that may connect or resonate with the audience, you
build a bridge with the audience.

A typical story has five ingredients. Character, Plot, Setting, Theme, Climax. It’s how we use
these ingredients that make the story interesting. Saumya explained to us that an effective
story telling uses these five ingredients in the following manner:

1
 1. Lay Down the Premise
A premise helps you build companionship with the audience. One of the most popular
Bollywood movies of all time, Hum Aap Ke Hain Kaun, is a typical example of how the
audience in watching the bond of the sanskari family, got bonded with the family as being
one of their own.

2. Build a Conflict
The stickiness of a story is manifested in the conflict. The deeper the conflict, the deeper the
depth of story. A conflict is a zone (immaterial for the duration), which takes the
listener/viewer to the fork of the story. It builds the suspense in the story.

3. Give a Resolution to the Conflict

Everyone likes an end to the story. A story without a resolution becomes pointless. It
becomes well, real life. Stories help humans find an end to some conflict (inner demon, the
death of the bad man), with which they can have a takeaway from the story.

But an, effective story telling has to also take care of these sinkable issues for the listener:
• Can’t follow this story: The length or order of a premise, conflict or resolution isn’t
necessary. What matters is that each of these ingredients should be properly dealt with.
So, if you build a complex conflict, don’t be economic in laying down the resolution.
Many readers build a strong premise with an interesting theme and plot, but the absence
of a conflict, makes the story pointless
• What how did that happen: A logical flow to the story is a must. Even a story set in an
abstract, follows a certain pattern to set the listener to its flow
• All Over the place Story: A story should be cohesive. A good story is tight
• Wasn’t this story supposed to be about Spain, then why is he talking about Mars: It is
important to capture appropriate detailing. Hence, we should focus on keeping
superfluous details out while keeping in, interesting details

In telling your own stories, use some of these ingredients to make them purposeful:
• Character’s psyche: To build a strong conflict, give the listener a peak into your
character’s psyche. It helps the audience approach the character from a more humane
point of view, making his/her even morally unjustifiable actions as plausible human
reactions under a given circumstance
• Dialogues: Dialogues makes an incident more drawing
• Message: If you have a message, say that message out loud, for it to resonate with the
listener and not get lost in the story
• Context: Aim to fit the story in a context. For a story to sell, it has to relate to the audience
that is targeted towards

Lastly, Saumya gave us the key in telling our stories to the world. To be able to tell your story
you need to know our own stories. Not just one story, but multiple stories, which we can use as
we deem appropriate. This will help us reach out to audience in a context. In doing so, we might
just find out ‘meta-narrative’, which might help us achieving our goals, passions, missions.

So, the art of story telling class, has set us on a discovery of finding our own stories. They are
there right in front of us. We are living them. Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. All, we need to do is to
start collecting them and strewing them together. A big thank you to Saumya and the
Anubhav Series team for giving us an essential tool in understanding ourselves.