- Story is the most powerful
communication vehicle known to man.
When we struggle to understand a concept or idea,
we ask for an example, a story.
It's innate to human communication.
Since the structure of story is universally understood,
it's possible to use that structure
to inspire ideas from participants in a brainstorm session.
The basic components of any story are character and plot.
Think of your character as either the subject
of your problem or the audience
that your solution will serve.
Plot is broken down into three primary elements.
Set up, conflict and resolution.
This is where your stormers come in.
Have your stormers write the premise
to a story using the character you provide.
The plot is up to them, but it has to revolve
around the problem you are solving.
The natural tendency is to simply reiterate the problem
in terms of setup, conflict and resolution.
This is a fine start, but using a filter
to dive deeper can introduce
a new idea handle for the group.
For example, let's say you were given the task
of designing a trade show booth for a client,
putting this through our story structure
may lead you to develop something like this.
Dave is standing at the company table on the showroom floor,
watching the hoards of potential clients
pass his meager exhibit.
So he hires a brilliant designer to improve
his trade show presence
and turn passers and the stoppers.
This is a fine retelling of our problem,
but it doesn't say how.
Let's try putting it through a filter.
So you engage in an ideal web exercise
that produces the word translucent.
Now let's take our story structure
and redevelop our story through this new filter.
Dave is standing at the company table on the showroom floor,
watching the hoards of potential clients
pass his meager exhibit.
So he hires a brilliant designer
to improve his trade show presence
by creating a translucent booth
that refracts the light of the showroom
to create his company logo projected on the floor,
causing attendees to marvel and throw gobs
of money at Dave and his company.
As absurd as this story seems,
it brings to bear how the word translucent
could be used as inspiration for an idea,
but more importantly, it led to another idea
that may have been elusive otherwise,
the refraction or projection of light.
As prevalent as story is in our lives,
recognize that it isn't easy to form.
If you use this technique,
don't get hung up on the quality of the story.
Use it as a leader to not only finding ideas,
but how those ideas can build on one another.