It’s funny how something as natural as storytelling needs a guide. We’ve been telling and listening to stories for years, yet so many people (and businesses) fail to do it properly.
With the rise of technology language, and how we choose to share language, is constantly changing. Just think back to the last time you had to look up what a new catchphrase or acronym meant. Nothing makes you feel older than having to Google (hello fairly new adjective) what something the “kids” are saying means. Remember when TTYL or LOL was new? Yikes!
As languages changes, so does the way we tell our stories and how our stories are perceived by our audience. In order to be successful in today’s digital world, we have to understand, not only what our audience wants, but what we want our audience to see, feel and take away from our stories.
After going through a number of resources on the meat and potatoes of storytelling, I found some key elements that stood out for me. To save you hours of reading and searching (who has time for that?) I’ve created a short and sweet infographic to help you get started on your Storytelling in 2022 journey.
I hope these elements help you gain the traction, trust and support you’re after. If anything, they’ll help you build an online presence you can be proud of.
Keeping up with live tweeting is a challenge for me. My ADD brain has trouble keeping focused and remembering to include all the proper hashtags and all that fun stuff, while also keeping up with what is happening in front of me.
Squirrel!
Just kidding!
Joking aside, I completely forgot to attach my class hashtag to half of my tweets, and feel like I missed a lot of the game that I was tweeting about because I wasn’t fast enough at typing on my phone. Insert applause here for all the people who can do this well. At this point in the post, I guess you are probably wondering what the thread even is that I am talking about! Well here it is:
Live event happening now! It begins… the Dad-Son pool competition has commenced! Who will win? Only time will tell…
I have been doing a lot of reading about digital story telling strategies and live-tweeting principals. Using some of these strategies helped me bring everything together into a story that though may not be as exciting as some Twitter threads, I feel was engaging and held some intrigue and emotion. There was a beginning, middle, and conclusion, as well as a wrap up for the little side note about the cat!
If you have made it this far into the blog post and haven’t gone to read the thread yet, here is a little synopsis for you. My husband and I are on vacation at my in-laws house in Nova Scotia. Both my husband and his dad are avid pool players, so my live-tweet thread is commentating on a game that they had this evening. It went so fast that it was hard for me to keep up! But they are still playing as I am here typing this post. His dad is currently up 5 games on him, haha!
Side note…
If you have any suggestions to help my husband’s game get better, feel free to leave them here. (Also don’t tell him about this or I’ll be the one in the dog house).
This week I decided to base my storytelling on real events we face at our small business. We frequently receive late-night phone calls from panicked individuals encountering plumbing emergencies. Most of the resulting damage from these emergencies can be avoided or significantly reduced with some pre-planning in place.
The most common emergency we address with homeowners is flooding. Many of them leave their homes unattended to travel or have newly moved into their properties with no idea where their main water shut-off is. We found this to be a frequent issue when sales in the housing market increased over the pandemic. I suspect many of these new homeowners never had proper walkthroughs with their realtors at the closing of the sale.
The Twitter story below documents one of these conversations and some useful tips if you find yourself in this situation.
Short Story Time Conversations we have with new homeowners late at night #EXSM3989
— Calgary Plumber and Drains (@CalgaryDrains) July 26, 2022
For over 30 years, The Simpsons has entertained families, adults and children alike. The Simpsons is a TV show about a family of 6: Homer (dad), Marge (mom), Bart (son), Lisa (daughter), Maggie (baby daughter) and Abe (grandpa). The first episode of the show aired on December 17, 1989.
Now you might think that I know all these details about The Simpsons because I, like audiences around the world, have enjoyed watching and rewatching episode after episode over the years. Well, you’d be wrong.
Confession time: I have never watched an episode of The Simpsons.
Not during a high school class, or even briefly while flipping through the channels when cable TV was still a thing.
So, why did I choose to live-tweet me watching my first episode of The Simpsons? As we learned in last week’s lesson, a good story is a relatable story. And what’s more relatable than the antics of a lovable (but slightly dysfunctional) family living in the suburbs of a town named Springfield?
To help tell my story and recount the events that took place during the episode to my Twitterverse audience, I used the 8-Point Story Arc:
The stasis of the story takes place on a snowy night in December in The Simpson’s in Springfield. After getting home from a Christmas pageant, the family is gathered around the living room planning their holidays. Patriarch, Homer, is excited to plan a special Christmas for his family with some Christmas savings and an expected work bonus.
The trigger occurs when Homer’s boss informs staff that no bonuses will be given out. To make matters worse, Marge has to spend their Christmas savings on removing a tattoo that Bart had done.
Without telling his family about his bonus, Homer begins a quest to make the best Christmas.
The surprise occurs when Homer decides to make up the money for Christmas by becoming a Santa.
After learning that being a Santa only earns $13, Homer makes a critical choice to try betting his earnings at a dog racetrack in hopes of a Christmas miracle.
His quest reaches a climax as he chooses to bet his earnings on Santa’s Little Helper, a dog with a 99-1 odds of winning.
Homer loses his earnings, but a reversal occurs when he sees that Santa’s Little Helper is also down on his luck after being cast away following the dog race loss.
We reach a resolution as Homer decides to return home and confess to his family that he didn’t receive a bonus. After introducing Santa’s Little Helper to his family, Homer learns that the perfect Christmas isn’t filled with expensive gifts, but with love.
Painting A Yellow Picture
I knew I couldn’t group-watch the episode with everyone on Twitter, but I wanted to at least try and give audiences an idea of the world I was encountering on the TV screen.
Using gifs inserted throughout the thread, I shared with the audience some of my feelings and snippets of the episode to build a sense of community.
A Happy Ending or Beginning
Now, if every good story has a beginning, middle, and end, what is the end to this story of a girl who watched her first episode of The Simpsons? Well reader(s), I think I now understand what you see in the TV show. So check back on my Twitter to see if I catch a few other episodes along the way.
I moved to Edmonton in 2013, coming from Beirut, Lebanon. A Mediterranean city with distinct 4 seasons: Chilly autumns, wet windy winters, lovely springs, and humid summers. Like any other ancient city (Beirut has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years) it has tiny roads and is over-populated.
Beirut Downtown… busy tiny roads.
Everything is a walking distance in Beirut. Although in other parts of the country there is snow 6-8 months a year, because it is a coastal city it’s rare to witness snow in Beirut. So equipped with an umbrella, you could walk anywhere within minutes.
A ski resort in Lebanon
To Edmonton
Moving to Edmonton, I had to adapt to a snow winter city. Not only that, but Edmonton is also city spread wide! Walking from point A to point B is not an easy task in -25C, even if it’s only for 15-20 minutes. I was amazed to learn how well connected some buildings are to each other. My first experience was at the U of A, where I was able to cross the street from my residence, Newton Place, just across the U of A hospital on 114 str, go into the Li Ka Shing bldg, then walk indoors for 15 min and reach the Edmonton Health Clinic Academy on 112 street. For a Mediterranean person, walking indoors when it’s freezing is a bliss!
Walking indoors from residence to class while avoiding the -30C… heaven!
Walking, yes! but…
Moving to working in #yeg downtown got me excited! Have been working on campus since graduation. One of the things that I completely like about the city core is how busy, diverse, and lively it is during lunch break! I was always guilty of skipping lunch break before moving to #DTyeg. Now I look forward to my lunch break so I can get out and go on the scenic #yegrivervalley paths. There is the funicular, the river, the stairs… everything packed in a few miles around DT.
Edmonton’s beautiful funicular, stairs, and path in the background
But, given how wet our summers are, I had to skip my lunch walk to avoid getting wet. Even on dry days, if it’s humid, it’s certainly not advisable to walk outside in any office attire. I tired it once – so based on evidence, not even walking slowly helps!
I’ve got a “well-connected” friend…
Realizing I skipped my walk a few times, my friend Derrick asked me if I’d like to join him for a walk.”It’s +28C… no thanks” I said, to which Derrick responded: “so we will walk inside!“. This is how I got introduced to the well-connected system linking Central Station all the way to Rogers Place.
Tunnels but overground!
I was fascinated by the different pedways and how strategically they are positioned to show different parts of downtown! And today, I decided to share this path with everyone who works or lives in DT and prefer the heated/air-conditioned lunch break walks when the outdoors is too much to handle!
Prepping to share my walk step-by-step, I got my phone ready to document the path and take pictures, my water bottle full of water, my earphones ready with soft music, and started the walk. No equipment ready: just your happy mood and comfy shoes. My thread started at Central Station, where my first tweet went live.
I wanted to share my walk in an engaging way, inviting my followers to engage and buying-in into how enjoyable an indoor walk can be! I mean, these blogs also live forever! So bookmarking it and using it as a guide in the winter is not a bad idea 😉
I tried to highlight what else is there to check indoors: the different nice cafes, food court options, and stores:
The other interesting aspect is that every medway highlights a different city skyline. I even asked my followers if they are able to identify some of these:
If you guessed “City Hall” you are correct!
Wow! I am an expert! Umm… nope.
Now walking through the different pedways while trying to focus on making it to Rogers Place and taking pictures is no easy task! I did end up by mistake somewhere where I was not supposed to be! But the nice thing about wearing comfortable shoes is to run away when needed. Nah joking. I simply tracked back my steps, and went to the nearest pedway and looked outside to identify the direction of Rogers Place. It’s so easy and cool. What I also like about these different paths is that every time you walk, any slight change or turn can lead you to a different place.
Engaging is key
The most important part of telling a story is to invite your audience on this exciting journey with you. Asking questions, showing pictures, and exchanging knowledge, all are key to better engagement. My walk felt way better knowing that many were join gin me on this trip, and even more through this blog post.
Do you know of any other secret paths, whether outdoors or indoors? I love to explore these. Next time, I will take you on a nice walk by the Mutant, and with enough motivation, I will share a secret spot to enjoy the view from the Muttart (for free!)
For my live tweeting, I chose to share a story about a person I met by chance and knew for a short time back when I lived in London. His name was Ricco. (Or was it?)
This story is kind of two stories in one. The central story is about my former flatmate being a bit of a jerk and firing a client of his, but I’ve bookended it with bits that explain how I was a part of things, since I needed a place to live, and how it all affected me.
The story doesn’t follow a traditional beginning – middle – end structure. One could argue that there are multiple beginnings to the story, or multiple endings. But each snippet follows from the one before it in a domino effect. Kind of like triggers and heaps. And from there, a beginning, middle, and end emerge in both the central story and the bookended parts.
However, I have answered the basic Who / What / When / Where / Why / How questions that all stories must answer. The bookended parts of my story are central to some of those questions, which is why I included them rather than leaving them out.
Similarly, I have (hopefully) evoked a reaction from the audience with my story. The reaction I hoped to evoke was one of sympathetic annoyance at what my flatmate did, and also one of amusement as I describe what I took away from it.
I had a difficult time thinking up something to live tweet about (my life is boring), so I hope this story and its conclusion and corollary are fitting.
This summer we finally got to go on a vacation and leave our small little village we call home. Between work complications and Covid restrictions, my family hasn’t gotten to take our annual vacation in 3 years!!!
This year we decided to go camping for a week at the place my husband called home while he grew up. This Vacation had a few firsts for my husband and myself but a TON of them for my two boys. None of us have camped for a week before, we rented paddle boards for us all to try and we got to explore all new places with hiking and even seeing a bear! But this story is going to be about a 2 firsts for the kids.
Boating and Tubing
On our side of the lake, we had the campground, town amenities, lots of housing and the popular beach, so we were excited to rent a boat to be able to see the other half of the lake that we were unable to explore. The boys were pretty nervous to go on a boat since they haven’t before. One gets motion sickness so he was afraid of that, and the other was just afraid because he didn’t want to fall in the water. We rented a pontoon boat, so how fast could it really go?
Getting on the boat was the easy part. Once the boat started, now that was where we didn’t know what to expect or how they would react. My youngest was the most nervous and took a bit of time to be ok with not holding on to the edge of the boat, while my oldest had no fear at all once we started to go. They each got a turn to drive after a little bit of time relaxing, which lucky for us was not a busy lake at the time. However, they did a great job and gave them a boost of confidence. Our boat rental came with a tube which we did not expect. It made the trip even more exciting and a second first for them. We picked out a 2 seater so they could have fun together, but again, me being worried on if they will like it or if they would be scared to do it again in the future. We got them in the tube and slowly floated out to begin. With tight grips and scared faces, the boat slowly pulled away.
We started out slow so that they would just have the feel of the tube and the speed. Gradually we increased the speed without them really noticing. After some time they were having a blast and waving at everyone! They just wanted to go faster and faster!! We all enjoyed seeing their smiles and laughs as we spent time driving around the whole lake. Our time was about up to return the boat, so we pulled them in and headed back to the docks. They were a little sad that the excursion was over but as we headed back to shore, with our surprise, they told us that this was the BEST part of the trip!!
For the fun story and images, check out below….
On summer vacation and we got the chance to rent a boat and its the boys' first time on one!! Lets see how well it goes. #EXSM3989
For my twitter story telling I used the 8 point story arc.
Stasis: Family with 2 kids on a summer Vacation
Trigger: Renting a boat for the first time
Quest: Going on the boat and how they will react
Surprise: Getting a tube we didn’t expect
Critical Choice: To try to tube or not
Climax: How are they going to do once they try it
Reversal: How much they enjoyed tubing
Resolution: The boys learned that they love to go on boats and tube on the lake
To help create and visualize the story, I added images to help show expressions and emotions that the kids were having. This helps the audience feel or see how they are reacting to each event. This huge event in our lives is something I feel is relatable to all. Maybe not the exact event that we experienced, but EVERYONE goes through having to try new things in their life. I am so happy we got to participate in this super fun activity on our Summer Vacation!!
“Drumheller” is the center of the Canadian Badlands and mainly known as the Dinosaur capital of the world. There are so many things to do and see in this city from the World’s Largest Dinosaur to Royal Tyrell Museum, from coulee landscapes to hoodoo rock formations. I have visited Drumheller so many times that its getting boring to go there now.
Hidden Gem “Wayne”
But… this past weekend was exciting as we planned a trip to Wayne. Just 20 minutes outside of Drumheller, you will find a tiny village of “Wayne” (Also called Ghost Town), once booming coal mining town with a population of 2490 which now stands at just 27. This small town is a hidden gem which not many of us know. We came across this place last year and wanted to go since then. This town holds a record – 5 Kilometer stretch of road is entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most bridges found within the shortest distance.
Last Chance Saloon and Rosedeer Hotel
Once you have crossed nine bridges out of the eleven bridges you will see the Last Chance Saloon and Rosedeer Hotel. This 109 years old historic site is in a very quiet and picturesque setting. We planned a stay in the hotel so we can experience this vintage hotel and restaurant. The walls are full of history. Hotel and restaurant are a favorite stop for road trippers and supporter of Live Music. There is ice cream shop along with some local/hand made things for sale. Restaurant is famous for their tasty buffalo burgers, onion strings, coleslaw and craft beer. Music festivals are a tradition of this place. You can also book camping around the site.
An Experience
This place has so many stories/facts/history to share which you should experience on your visit (Don’t want to be the spoiler). It’s the atmosphere/experience of this place which brings you back.
It’s a place for music lovers, friendly people, history lovers, bikers, and explorers.
No road trip to Drumheller should be complete without stopping in this unique town “Wayne”.
Tonight I enjoyed a walk in the Edmonton River Valley with one of my best friends. We met at my apartment after work and off we went!
Showing off our new sneakers!
Our route was around 4.5kms and took around an hour to complete. We walked in the trails alongside the Victoria Golf Course, reaching the High Level Bridge. Then made our way down to River Valley Road where we saw lots of cyclists and other walkers out on a beautiful night.
We then walked through the Victoria Golf Course parking lot and saw people playing Cricket and golfers practicing at the driving range.
We then reached the end of our walk with the trek up the 2 sets of stairs. always nice to end the night with a little burn!
EXSM 3989 - Digital Storytelling Class Blog 