Transcripts
1. Introduction: These days, good
storytelling means doing three things
to grab attention, to keep it, and reward it. So in this class, we'll boil down storytelling
to its essence, and then we'll watch and
analyze an excellent example of a short viral video story
to understand why it works so well and see how we can apply that to
our own stories. My name is Aaron Palabyab, and I'm an award winning
filmmaker and content creator with nearly 20 years
of experience. In the past, I've gone in depth on storytelling
academically, but that may be too much
information for most people. So now I want to analyze storytelling in action
in a more practical, applicable way for
social media today. First, we'll talk about
what a good story needs and then how
to get a good story. Once we understand that, we'll move on to how to craft a good story by breaking
down a viral case study. And finally, we'll go through a framework you can
follow to begin crafting your own engaging short stories for social media and for life. So I'm looking forward to seeing what you get
from this class. So now let's dive in.
2. Class Project: Class project will be
to build a story using the provided worksheet
that reflects the storytelling framework
you will learn in this class, and this is all you
need to complete it. However, I do encourage you to expand that story into
one of the following. Say, tell a story on video
for two to 4 minutes or write a three to 500
word story or even use illustrations to show
a story comic book style. If you do go ahead and
create one of these, please submit that too
as a class project. This is your chance to
get supportive feedback to supercharge your learning. With that, let's move
on to the first lesson, the essence of a good story.
3. The Essence of a Good Story: Past classes, I've
gone in depth on the hero's journey and the
classic three act structure. But I've realized that
while this is effective, it's too much
information for people unless you're writing
feature films or novels. So I've realized that
boiled down to its essence, good storytelling is to quote
YouTuber Johnny Harris, a promise, a promise that says, If you stick with me,
I will reward you with enlightenment or
entertainment. Ideally both. In other words, good storytelling
makes the audience need to know what happens next and rewards them for
sticking with it. The power of this is that
if you do it repeatedly, they will come back
for more every time. All great content creators, whether they know it or not,
embrace good storytelling. And the mark of a truly
great storyteller is that they can make almost
anything sound interesting. Of course, the question
is, how do they do this? It can be learned. So in the next lesson,
we'll talk about first, how to find a good story
in the first place.
4. How to Find a Good Story: Does one find a good story? Often stories just happen whether you want them to or not. But if you want to
do it consistently, you don't leave it to chance. In this lesson, we learn how to prepare to ensure that we
always have a story to tell. Preparation is essential. We want to go out with intention to find or create a story. Start by asking these questions. What is the mission here? What do I want to achieve? Or what am I curious about
that I need to investigate? That question works
when you want to do an explainer type of content. Remember, getting an audience curious is the
essential first step, and if you are curious
about something, chances are others
will be, as well. Next, what's standing between
me and achieving that goal? What might get in the way
of things going smoothly? Bad decisions or
unforeseen mishaps are always the part where
the story gets interesting. Now, if it's something
that's already happened, then just ask in past tense, what was the mission and what obstacles were
overcome to achieve it. Remember, the price of
getting a good story is that, by definition, things
cannot go without a hitch. Notice how great stories
often begin with, but then if nothing goes wrong, that's a nice way to
go about your day. But that doesn't leave
you with a story to tell. The door has to be open
for drama to happen. Think about stories
from daily life, where your mission
is usually just to have a normal day with
nothing to talk about. But then what if your coworker does something stupid that
impacts you directly, or maybe something crazy
happened on the way to work? There's usually the beginnings
of a story in there. If the incident was of
sufficient severity, like if this co worker was really toxic and they blame
you for their mistake, then I, as the audience, now I'm listening,
I want justice. Now, what about if the
story isn't about you? Then all you have to do is ask the same questions
about the subject. A great secret that
almost guarantees a great story is that
the best subjects, the best protagonists
are people who are obsessed with
achieving a certain goal. Because you can't obsess over a goal that's easy to reach. There will inevitably
be challenges. The gap between the
likelihood of success and the intensity of the desire is where great stories happen. And this is why, by definition, anybody who tries
something out of the ordinary will tend
to have good stories. Whenever you go
against the grain, you run against the grain.
You get challenges. It's why people who
travel to crazy places or for long lengths of time
have a lot of stories. Similarly, many
entrepreneurs and people like NGO workers, they face so many
hurdles that they can't get through life without
gathering a lot of stories. To sum up, the key is to approach story gathering
with intention. Don't just expect
stories to happen. They often do, regardless, but to get good
stories consistently, pursue your curiosity
and embrace challenges. Then, of course, document
as much of this as you can, so you have a lot of material
to take on the next step, which is crafting the story. In the next lesson,
we will finally look at our viral
case study and see what we can learn from it at each step of the
storytelling process.
5. Beginning a story: Previous lessons, we
learned the theory behind good stories and how
to approach getting one. Now you have all of
your raw material, which we can call
your story stuff, but this isn't the
actual story yet. An experience that was really
intense in real life may not make for a good story if you don't know
how to tell it. There are many books that
teach you how to do this, but I would boil it down to this one piece of advice
for the social media age. Don't waste my time, especially when
you begin a story. Remember, a story is a
promise to the audience, meaning there has to be a point. This is why many creators start their short video
saying something like, I promise I'm getting somewhere
with this usually when their story doesn't have the obvious hook from
the very start. In any case, you have to stay locked in on the
details that matter. And to see this in action, let's finally look at our
viral case study video. This is from Laura
Kelly on Instagram. She's from South Africa, and she has kindly
given us permission to refer to her video
for our class. I will link to it down
in the class resources, and I suggest you watch it a couple of times
before coming back. It's only 3 minutes long
but worth the watch. Fair warning, there's a
bit of profanity there. So from the start, we see the chief irony and source of dramatic
tension in her story. Watching a movie should
be easy and drama free. But for her, that evening, things went wrong and
kept getting worse. Again, sometimes stories
just happen to you. I wanted to watch a movie, but then and now our protagonist has no choice but to deal with the situation. Notice how she starts with a specific social
media savvy technique, saying that this message is only for the theater and
everyone else can move on. Now, this is a good
trick because it's designed to grab your attention
with reverse psychology. Remember what we mentioned
at the beginning, you need to grab curiosity. And this technique works
because we are such gossips, also known as storytellers. And next, we quickly learn what her mission is to watch
the movie Obsession. Knowing all of this, a question has formed in our
heads as listeners. How in the world could such a
simple mission go sideways? And even better, she mentions that she
wants to see obsession because she wants to see herself represented
in the media. That may just sound like, you know, a funny remark, but it's actually
a brilliant bit of character introduction. She doesn't tell you
something corny, like, I'm a funny and
intense kind of girl. We call that kind of
bad writing on the nose because it's too direct and kind of insults
your intelligence. Instead, she cleverly folds
together stating her mission, watching the movie with illustrating her character,
what she's all about. And this not only
makes us laugh, it sneakily makes us more invested in what this
person has to say. In screenwriting, you
know, they always tell us show don't tell. The trick here is that
saying one thing, I like to see myself represented
in the media actually shows another thing that
she is funny and intense. Moving on. She says, You can imagine
my confusion when I arrive at the
theater, dah dah, dah. And notice this is where the
story actually gets rolling. Something has gone wrong. In screenwriting, we call
this the inciting incident, the unexpected turn of
events that takes us out of the ordinary drama
free world and sets a story in motion that
needs to be resolved. And so ends Act one. Yes, the three act structure is still at work in
this short story. We're ready to
jump into Act two. In this lesson, we
learn from example, how to start a story using
different techniques to grab curiosity from reverse psychology
to clever word choice. In the next lesson,
we'll talk about how it continues into Act
two the main body of the story and how it illustrates the most important element
of Act two escalation.
6. Escalation: The previous lesson, we saw
how a viral short video effectively grabbed curiosity
and set a story in motion. In this lesson, we'll
see how it exemplifies the most important element of the main body of your
story escalation. A great story, as you learned, hooks us in from the start. But if the storyteller is then able to continually
raise the stakes, the impact multiplies because
the worse things get, the more satisfying it will
be when they're resolved. Back to Laura. Watch
her video again using the Link below if you
haven't seen it recently. I want you to notice now that every succeeding detail in her story keeps
making it funnier. I notice how the worse
it gets for her, the more invested we feel
in how the story turns out. What makes this such a great
learning example is how mundane this story
could have been if she were not such a
consummate storyteller. She doesn't say, I walked in and I found out my
ticket was double booked. No. She takes us vividly step by
step into what she's doing, thinking and feeling, further solidifying our sense
of being in her shoes. For example, she mentions
that she paid 175 grand, which is just over
$10 for the ticket, and thus, they must let her in. She's not spouting
this detail randomly. She's trying to drive home
how much it means to her to have a simple drama free
evening at the movies. In fact, she says that
she's made herself virtually bankrupt in
pursuit of this lofty goal. But it's okay because hooray, she's going to see
her movie alone. But then the manager informs her that her ticket
is double booked. Her expectations
collide with reality. And not only does she
not have a ticket, which is bad enough
because she paid for one, she can't even get
into obsession, the movie she wanted
to watch because the cinema is full escalation. And the fact that the
movie is obsession is a great meta joke
because it reflects her disproportionate feeling of being wronged that she might not be able to watch it after
spending ten whole dollars. Now, just a second. You as a storyteller, need to be careful in
these kinds of situations because without self
awareness and humor, this type of behavior
could easily come off not as funny, but
as unsympathetic. We want the audience to care. We don't want to make them mad. Laura brilliantly manages this because from the beginning, she's able to present herself as a likable and funny underdog. I mean, girl just wants to watch a movie and enjoy
some popcorn alone. Is that too much for
a person to ask? So faced with this
disappointment, she doesn't go, Oh, will. No, we're talking
about obsession. It means so much more than that. She exclaims, What
is this? A plane? Which not only adds intensity
with the way she said it, but also conveys the
absurdity of the problem using a specific
visual metaphor. When crafting your story,
prioritize concrete images. That is things the audience can visualize in a millisecond. A mental picture is
indeed worth 1,000 words. In contrast, abstract ideas just don't have the same impact. They need processing time,
and they don't stick easily. So imagine if she had said, double booking, that's
an unacceptable mistake. That does so much less
work in more words than, What is this a plane? One sentence puts
nothing in your head. The other plants a memorable
image that stays there. So on that note, again, notice how she stays
focused only on the details that add
to the overall effect. I talk to a lot of
people honestly, who, though they might
be good speakers, they can't seem to stay focused on the main thread of a story. They'll start talking
and get distracted by the details of their own
thoughts until by the middle, we've completely
literally lost the plot. And the story has no
momentum because it keeps getting interrupted
by irrelevant things. In contrast, Laura doesn't
go on a tangent about, say, what she did before
this or her taste in movies or what other movies she was considering, et cetera. Each detail escalates
the problem further, especially
the next one, about the teenage
girls who literally add insult to injury
by calling her stupid for not doing exactly what she did do,
which is book her ticket. Again, this increases the
irony that she is suffering this much despite doing everything that she
was supposed to do. And then, of course, she
reacts, What if I killed you? What if she had just said
Those kids were so mean? That would have killed the upward momentum
of the narrative. In fact, what if I
killed you I think ultimately gives the energy that pushes us to
the high point, the climax of the story. And so here we are at the
point of highest tension. We need to resolve this, so it's time to move on to act three. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the importance of endings, using this example to show how to bring a story home well.
7. How to end a story: Endings are extremely important. Writing a good story
with a bad or lame ending is pretty much like
skydiving without a parachute. A good ending must be earned, satisfying and not predictable. In screenwriting,
we're often reminded, give the people what they want, but not what they expect. Where we left off in the story, we were at the point
of maximum tension. She's been told the
movie is double booked. The teenagers have insulted her, and now we need to finally
lay this matter to rest. So she confronts the
manager and says, What are we going
to do about this? Collaboration? She's chosen a productive way forward
instead of just being angry. Again, she manages to be a likable protagonist
that we want to root for, and she's still trying
to do what's right, despite the iniquities
she has endured so far. And so she is presented with
a free movie in the future, at the very least, and then any of the other
movies showing that night. Okay, in a less interesting
story, it would end there. But somehow it's still not over. This is the story
that keeps on giving. If they had just let
her watch obsession, I don't think this video
would have gone viral despite all the entertainment
we've gotten thus far. But the fact that she is only left to choose between
two movies that, regardless of their
actual merits, have ridiculous sounding titles, sheep Detective and tuna, that is just icing
on this funny cake. So she has to rule
out sheep Detective because it started
already too long ago. So she swallows her
pride and picks tuna like the fish, as she says. But then there is
a parting shot. There is no tuna in
the movie the end. The abrupt cut off at the
three minute limit for reels, which robs us of full closure,
makes it even funnier. That may seem and
indeed be coincidental, but it actually
perfectly punctuates how unsatisfying this entire
evening has been for Laura. But an unsatisfying
ending for her becomes an ovation
worthy ending for us. Bravo. So let's review. Satisfying check. Unpredictable, I think so. And earned, yes, but not in, like, the traditional sense
that she completed a quest. In this case, it was earned
in the sense that the tone of the ending was entirely in keeping with the overall
absurdity of the situation. There's no jolt of a sudden
shift in tone or a let down that the ending wasn't worth the time we
spent listening to her. She took us on a ride and safely landed us at the
destination satisfied. What I hope you appreciate is that Laura has
managed to cram so many layers of humor
and irony into 3 minutes. She has real comedic chops, which, to be fair, you
don't develop overnight. But the result is
that even though I've watched this video a
dozen or so times, it still makes me laugh. It's a classic example of
that comment where you say, at no point did I have any
idea where this was going? And that's a quality
that I think the best stories exhibit. Because if you can never predict the next thing
that's going to happen, then you never have an opportunity to disengage
from the narrative. You stay until it ends. The storyteller thus has a sacred duty to the audience to make
it worth their while. If you as the storyteller, fail to stick the landing, all of the work
just goes to waste. If you don't believe
me, just look at what happened to Game
of Thrones and all the other TV shows that
built up more tension and mystery than their
writers could resolve. A disappointed audience
remembers and doesn't come back. Now, guys, let's be honest, Laura is an actual pro. She's a stand up comedian. I'm not going to ask you or me to be like her by the
end of this class. But all we need to
do is to start with appreciating that
great storytelling comes with real work. From now on, when you
listen to a great story, you can better understand
why it works so well. But before we wrap up,
we should give it a go. In the next lesson,
I'll take you through our worksheet for
the class project, and you can begin to try your hand at being a
better storyteller.
8. Your turn: build a story: The previous lesson, we
broke down a viral video to understand how great
storytelling works. Now it's your turn. Let's work on your
class project. I know we're not going to become great
comedians overnight, but we can practice building
a story with intention. So download the worksheet now from the class
resources if you haven't and follow along with the guidance
in this lesson. Let's start with number one. What's a memorable incident in your life or the life of
someone close to you, where things didn't
go as expected? A funny story
probably works best, or a story that's funny
when you look back on it, even if it was
stressful at the time, like Laura's story
at the cinema. The key thing to identify is the so called
inciting incident. At what point did normal
life get interrupted and become a situation that
needed to be dealt with? How it's dealt with is going to be the
body of your story. Onto number two, how did the main character feel
about this turn of events? We want to establish how important it is for them
to get through this. It's this intensity of feeling, as we saw in our example, that drives the story forward while also pulling
in the audience. Then onto number three, how
does the situation progress? We're going now from
Act one to Act two. Identify specific turning
points or even micro turning points that escalate
the situation and increase the need
for it to be resolved. Small pithy details do
a lot of work here. So list them down. We're just brainstorming here. You don't need to
use everything. But think of words said, details noticed, even
little gestures, facial expressions that
in the heat of a moment, mean a lot in the mind of an obsessed,
determined protagonist. Try to list at least
three things to progressively raise the stakes in the intensity of the story. Then number four, how does
the problem get resolved? Let's focus for now on giving stories a closed,
satisfying ending. But it doesn't mean that it
has to be a happy ending, as we saw with Laura. Remember, an ending has to be earned, satisfying
and unpredictable. And of course, this is much
easier said than done, and the real life event may have constraints that don't make the raw story stuff pan out
this way at the outset. Your job now as a
clever storyteller, is to craft the story
using details that may obscure a predictable ending while also making
it feel deserved. Now, of course, this
takes practice. So don't beat yourself
up. Don't overthink this. Don't try to write
the perfect ending on your first draft. For now, the important thing is just to keep it in
the back of your mind. Please remember this that everything well written comes from the process of revision. So trust the process and
keep refining your work. And as you rewrite,
along the way, try to replace vague
and abstract language with concrete visual metaphors. For example, I
originally wrote for this class endings
Make or Break a story. I mean, that's fine.
You understand it. That's a common expression. But saying writing a bad ending
is like skydiving without a parachute is a bit more memorable and
impactful, I think. Again, with Laura, she doesn't say, Double booking is wrong. You shouldn't have
done it. But rather, she says, What is this? A plane? So write, rewrite, and
have fun. Be playful. This may be a class, but
it's not that serious. Okay, once you're done, upload your worksheet
in the class projects, and I'll have a look
and give you my $0.02. I encourage you to eventually turn this worksheet into
some kind of written, illustrated or video story. And I hope that you also share that in the class projects. And, hey, that's it. In the next lesson, I will
offer you some parting advice.
9. Conclusion: Congratulations. You now have a better understanding of how great stories work
than most people do. I hope you learned a lot
and more importantly, had fun, and I hope you're eager to get out there to find
and tell more stories. You know, ultimately,
a life full of stories is a life well lived, and getting to
share those stories with others makes
it even better. So please don't forget to share your class projects because I would love to
read your stories. Now, if you'd like to dig
deeper into storytelling, I have a more in depth,
traditional class on it here on Skillshare
that you can check out. And I also have some great classes on
content creation and video creation that cover the range of skills from
beginner to intermediate. That might be a good
companion to it. With that, thank you so much for investing your
energy into this class. I really appreciate your effort. Again, my name is En Pala Bab, and until the next time, go out there and live
your story. Peace.
Aaron Palabyab, Filmmaker and Photographer
