Storytelling is one of the oldest art — if not the oldest — practiced by humans. I was delighted to see some very interesting points on a site pointed to my by Amarnath Gupta. Some very insightful parts from there are given below:
Stories fill our lives in the way that water fills the lives of fish. Stories are so all-pervasive that we practically cease to be aware of them.
“The products of our narrative schemes are ubiquitous in our lives: they fill our cultural and social environment. We create narrative descriptions for ourselves and for others about our own past actions, and we develop storied accounts that give sense to the behavior of others. We also use the narrative scheme to inform our decisions by constructing imaginative “what if” scenarios. On the receiving end, we are constantly confronted with stories during our conversations and encounters with the written and visual media. We are told fairy tales as children, and read and discuss stories in school.” (Polkinghorne)
“The narratives of the world are without number…the narrative is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; the history of narrative begins with the history of mankind; there does not exist, and never has existed, a people without narratives:” (Barthes).
It will be great to formalize some of these to bring storytelling in EventWeb. Fundamentally, stories are sequence of important information related to events that are considered important.
I always thought that anybody should be able to tell stories until I actually tried it and realised that it is actually an art form in itself!