Uncover your storytelling
style in three steps

If you aim to know yourself better and share your message with clarity, be mindful of what inspires you and use your taste to build your style. These guidelines will help you fuel your creative core and set the direction of your expression.

Whether you are keen to learn more about the art of storytelling to make your social media profiles more mindful, cohesive and true to you, or you are dreaming of, planning, launching or managing a creative business, you will likely find yourself on the journey of self-discovery. The very fact that you are reading this shows that you are knee-deep in the process of figuring out your story and ways to tell it, eager to set things in motion.

Let˙s begin by demystifying the phrase storytelling itself.  It is a story being told or implied. That simple. When it comes to social media it is all about the emotions triggered by what is written or captured in an image. Good storytelling is about taking you where the story is. About setting the mood, creating a moment in time and engaging you if only with the slightest sensation. It is all about making you feel and capturing your attention. Preferably to make you buy, stay loyal, return for more, or leave you otherwise impressed.

Try the upsidedown view inside

When considering storytelling, be it narrative or visual, one of the basic rules is that you should be clear about your vision to use it as a tool to get your message across. While that is undeniably the case when it comes to communicating your story, or a brand message, the journey of personal discovery each of us goes through, particularly if we are still unfolding our story, trying to build an intentional online presence, or a creative business from scratch is where this approach can be taken backward.

Being asked to fill out a questionnaire by my brand designer, when I first started planing this blog brought on so much self-exploration, that an idea of everyone having to fill one out suddenly seemed absolute. I started digging and quite unexpectedly, storytelling helped me find those answers and many more. If you aim to get to know yourself better and believe you have a message to share, look for a way to be inspired and pay attention as to when that happens. These insights will fuel your creative core and help you set the direction of your expression.

What truly excites you is the only thing your storytelling will ever be able to evoke emotions about

Roam your way to authenticity

When searching for inspiration, look where most of your interest, positive emotions and intentions overlap. The type of content that will not have you think of the time spend considering it as wasted, but rather invested, not feeling overwhelmed, but uplifted, is the where it will be most rewarding to build your narrative and visual style on. You might also find some great insights on how to aproach the search for your cretive style in the Big magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert, I share my thoughts on here.

Now, I am not saying you should copy others to create your style, but allowing some influence to settle is inevitable and more than welcome. We should feel the puls of our time to capture the moment and be able to translate it through our work. What better way to do it but by acknowledging those we learn and draw inspiration from.

Try not to rush through the experience and give yourself a chance to grow into the state of shift and feel comfortable in it.

Find clues in recurring patterns

You might find yourself wander, as have I, but as time goes by you are likely to find yourself returning to what works best for you, both when looking for inspiration and sharing it. Be it the mood, the message, the tone of it, the way it was presented, the styling, the color pallet, the editing…These are the things you might find most beneficial to focus on and the ones that might prove to be the easiest to write about or translate to photography in the long run. What truly excites you is the only thing your storytelling will ever be able to evoke emotions about. Keep what they have in common in mind when creating, to achieve a more cohesive vibe to your overall content. Make that the bone of your story. 

Mind that you will likely need to take a step back now and then, to reevaluate your direction and make necessary adjustments if needed. Try not to rush through the experience and give yourself a chance to grow into the state of shift and feel comfortable in it. You will probably stumble on one or two roadblocks, but many more valuable insights which will help you focus on what matters. In the long run, it is a generous investment of time and effort which will save you from searching for answers when you get cornered, or, preferably getting cornered at all.

Pin for later: