The power of a story

Everyone likes a good story. Narrative is a big word for story. Stories, or narratives, can be entertaining and educational. They can make you laugh or cry, or both.  They can teach you about history and culture. Storytelling began as a way for the older generation to pass along their ideas and beliefs about the world to the younger generation.  Stories can be real or make-believe, or a combination of both. Sometimes true stories can be the most powerful kind.

We have all had a lot of interesting experiences in our lives that we can tell or write about.  If you have travelled or lived in a foreign country, I'm sure you will have many interesting, and sometimes funny, stories to tell.  You can write a five-paragraph about an interesting experience from your life. It will include an introduction paragraph that that sets the stage for the story, three body paragraphs that tell the story, and a conclusion paragraph.  Your story should include a setting, the place where it happened, a plot, what happens in the story,  characters, the people in the story, and a climax, probably at the end of your story, which is the high point of the story, followed by the conclusion. The conclusion might include what you, or others, can learn from your story. We call this kind of ending "the moral of the story."

Storytelling is more of an art than a science. The success of your story is based on how the people who hear or read it react to it. If it makes them laugh and cry, or scratch their heads, it's probably a good story. It's about feelings and emotions. Remember that there are three main reasons that people write. It's as easy as P.I.E.  People write to Persuade, Inform, or Entertain. A good story can entertain and inform, and maybe even persuade. That is the power of storytelling.