I grew up with stories. My grandfather was an amazing storyteller. I don’t recall him reading them to me from books. He just made them up in his head as he went along.

My earliest memories of story books are from the library where my mum was a cleaner. I got lost in space, or mildly psychedelic stories about wallpaper coming to life, while she pushed a hoover around.

Somehow, I was breathing in the formula for storytelling.

Take your reader on a journey. Make them laugh, or cry. Make them scared or safe. Change their mind. Make them believe in the make-believe. Make them feel seen. Make them feel something.

Nowadays, everyone is a ‘storyteller’. Even AI is a storyteller. Only they aren’t. And it isn’t.

Storytelling is art, not science. Yes, you can teach it to some extent. But the stories you believe in, invest in and celebrate are never going to be those written by machines. They don’t (yet) understand how to make you read to the end, follow the journey or appreciate the balance of foreshadowing and call-backs.

I approach all of my work as a storyteller, whether that is writing a book, an article or ghost-writing an editorial for a CEO. No matter whether it is an exhibition narrative, business branding or a biography, the story matters. No amount of keywords, jargon or SEO-friendly text can beat the power of a story.

My one rule about storytelling is that you should learn so that the reader can. You must take in new information, parse it and re-use it to bring your story to life. The newspaper writer in me craves the ‘new’ that makes things news. But I also just love to learn, share and inspire.

If you need your story telling then contact me for a chat.