Whatever Happened to Storytelling? We All Need Stories.

Whatever happened to storytelling?

It’s a question I’ve found myself asking quite a lot lately.

I read that people want real stories, the personal, authentic glimpses into someone’s life. I was watching a YouTube video on this yesterday, and I thought, “Yes, I’ve been there.” But scroll through your average feed, and you’ll see something else entirely. A parade of how-to guides: how to write better, how to be more productive, how to succeed at something (anything!), how to do this and that.

Then there are the ‘how-to’ stories — which, ironically, often don’t contain much storytelling at all.

They all seem to follow the same formula:

• Identify a problem.
• Explain why it matters.
• Offer a neat solution.
• Finish with a motivational takeaway and a promise of success.

And that’s fine, for a certain type of writing. There’s a huge audience for that kind of thing. The self-help and “personal development” world is thriving. But that’s not always storytelling. That’s instruction. It has a purpose — but it’s not quite the same as sitting someone down and saying, “Let me tell you what happened to me one summer…”

Or, “I wrote a book of good stories that might offer a life lesson or two. Hopefully, you enjoy the read.”

A story doesn’t need to solve a problem. It doesn’t need to teach you how to fix your life or build a better version of yourself. Sometimes, a story just needs to help the reader drift off into a different world for a few minutes — escapism.

But surely, storytelling is, and always has been, about entertainment.

I write to entertain. That’s the goal. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and I don’t always feel the need to wrap everything up neatly in a “what we can learn from this” way. Life doesn’t work like that. Sometimes it just gives you a moment in time. The story might be funny, frustrating, touching, or odd; it might even stir the emotions.

I write articles too (like this one). But what keeps me writing is the hope that someone, somewhere, will read a story of mine and like it. Hopefully, the reader wants more.

Maybe it’s unfashionable to say it, but I believe that people still read to be entertained. They always have. Not everyone opens a book hoping to solve a problem. Some of us read to simply escape the real world for a while. I prefer a book to be an adventure, even if the story is made up.

Look at the numbers: across the world, billions of books are sold every year, most of them in fiction. That should tell us something. The long-form story still matters. It hasn’t gone away, even if the online world and obsession with “short-form” sometimes make it feel like it has.

Fine, I like a short story as well. In fact, in my own long-form, non-fiction writing, I try to make each chapter a story in itself. The book will have a story that holds everything together, but each chapter can also be read in isolation. That's what I tried to do with Son of My Father.

Most of the books I own fall into the “entertainment” category. Fiction, memoir, humour — even the non-fiction I enjoy tends to have a good narrative at its heart (I did think of rewriting Son of My Father as a fiction, family drama). 

I like stories that take me somewhere, ideally, a page-turner that I don’t want to put down.

Yes, I sometimes read to learn or to find an answer, but mostly now I read because I want to be told a story. And I like to read for pleasure.

So, whatever happened to storytelling?

Nothing, really. It’s still here, and it still sells. You might find it in the bookshop just around the corner from the “how to” and “ten ways to improve your life” books. There’s a place for both.

And I, for one, hope that storytelling never goes out of fashion.

Because we all like to be entertained — right?

 

Free image by DIY Team from Pixabay