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The Evolution of Storytelling
The Evolution of Storytelling.
As storytellers it is our job to evoke emotion in our audience. As humans we rely upon our senses to perceive and understand the world around us. Sight, sound, touch and smell all play integral roles in our realities and, therefore, our emotional states. Storytellers have arguably had he most difficult job of all artists when it comes to evoking emotion.
Other art forms can utilize the senses to gain access to their audience; painters and sculptors use the sense of sight, musicians use the sense of hearing, cooks have the senses of smell and taste. The poor storyteller was left to conjure emotions with only words.
The first paradigm shift for storytellers was writing. Our stories could be passed down in their original form, without mutation. Next came the printing press. This made our stories available to much wider audiences. We were still limited to words on a page though, without access to our readers senses.
The third paradigm shift changed that. Sound was added as radio allowed our stories to be broadcast to the masses. The human voice and its ability to convey emotion greatly increased our engagement with our…
