1.8 Telling Stories to Audiences

Stories attract audiences—readers, viewers, listeners, reviewers, or anyone else who experiences the story. Elements of stories are there not only to make up the story but also to cater to audiences—to give them a story worth caring about.

An Audience’s Needs

Audience members have needs: things necessary to their enjoyment of a story. These needs usually include a comprehensible narrative, relatable characters, and conflicts and stakes that cohere with the events in the narrative. Not delivering these elements in a story risks alienating an audience or, perhaps even worse, never generating one in the first place.

In creating our stories, we’ll want to remember who our audiences are and what they need. Many story choices are made by asking ourselves how an audience would think or feel about some aspect of the story. The needs and expectations of our audience should always be near the front of our minds in designing stories and determining how events will unfold. We can violate those needs and expectations, but we probably want to do so only for good reasons because violating them always involves a risk.

Audiences are always right in the sense that they are the final judges over what they like. If an audience decides it likes a book, then it will read that book, maybe two or three or a dozen times, regardless of what critics or others have to say. When we fail to engage a target audience with our story, the fault probably lies with us, not them.

Storytelling and Communication

The stories we tell will have many purposes, but at their heart, stories wish to communicate something. It may be something about the story’s narrative and characters or a latent message only dimly represented in the events of the story. Whatever it is, we’ll want that information to come through as clearly as possible.

But storytelling is about more than just sending a message—it’s about sending a message in a way that impacts audiences. Clarity combined with charm gives our ideas unmistakable appeal and will have audiences listening. We’ve also discussed other tools that can enhance our storytelling, such as voice, characters, the hook, and so on. As we continue with this course, we will learn even more skills we can use to captivate an audience and create a memorable message.