The Art Of Story Telling – Crafting Compelling Narratives That Resonate
The Mt Kenya Times 
David Ndirangu
By David Ndirangu
Worth Noting:
- In character development, every event that takes place in your story is defined by your character’s feelings, thought and actions. Characters’ response to conflicts is the ones that make the story interesting.
- Conflict is the life blood of the story. The protagonist usually wants something but has to overcome difficult challenges or the antagonist is standing in the way or just disorganises the protagonist’s life.
- The reader must connect with the characters in the story in which case they will care about what happens to them and will be eager to follow them right to the end. Most well written stories will normally include the protagonist, antagonist, secondary and tertiary characters. Your characters should come out like real flesh and blood human beings.
Story telling is the art of weaving words into a concrete chronicle with the aim of creating a rich and believable narrative. Story telling is not just a transmission of facts but it should make the listener or reader ‘sits in the story’.
Every good story must have a plot. The plot is the structure that holds the story together like a skeleton. It helps in building a logical flow of events that emulate real life. The story’s plot need not flow a chronological order.
Many stories weave together from the present to the past making a very interesting read. The reader should be able to follow the plot in order to understand and enjoy the story. Your characters write your plot, your plot does not write your characters.
In character development, every event that takes place in your story is defined by your character’s feelings, thought and actions. Characters’ response to conflicts is the ones that make the story interesting.
Conflict is the life blood of the story. The protagonist usually wants something but has to overcome difficult challenges or the antagonist is standing in the way or just disorganises the protagonist’s life. The reader must connect with the characters in the story in which case they will care about what happens to them and will be eager to follow them right to the end. Most well written stories will normally include the protagonist, antagonist, secondary and tertiary characters. Your characters should come out like real flesh and blood human beings.
The point of view of the story defines who is communicating to the reader and from what vantage point. We have five points of view in story telling; First person – whereby the narrator is the protagonist telling the story from their point of view. There is first person peripheral where the narrator is a close acquaintance of the protagonist – the story being viewed form their perspective. We have the second person (you) whereby the narrator casts the reader as the protagonist. This one is a bit difficult to apply and is rarely used.
Fourthly we have the Third Person Limited – the narrator tells the story from the vantage point of one or more protagonists. Finally the Third Person Omniscient is whereby the narrator tells the story from multiple vantage points. A story can however move from one point of view to another.
The story must have a setting – that is where the story takes place. Characters are mostly defined by their setting which is where dialogue and action happen.
The theme indicates what the story is about. That is the ideas that a piece of writing explores – themes should be open ended, debatable and thought provoking. The story teller should not attempt to resolve the theme’s conflict.
The way the author tells the story is referred to as the style. At the line level it is influenced by the choice of words, syntax, sentence structures and length. At the global level it is influenced by the story’s pacing, length of scenes and chapters.
A story well and meaningfully told should be capable of transporting the reader into a world of the writer’s own making.
David Ndirangu Bsc. International Business Administration (USIU- A) CPA (K). Business Management Consultant and author of the book; This is DAVE. Email: ndirangudavid2023@gmail.com
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