Storytelling Lessons for Beginners
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We humans have been telling stories since the beginning. It is a social and cultural activity that engages us to be proactive in gatherings and events. It is also a source of entertainment for the masses. We have been consuming content in the form of plays, films, books, videos, magazines, dramas and all of them are based on storytelling.
The fact is that every relatable, engaging, and popular piece of content is based on a creative story that is delivered by using calculated and touching storytelling techniques. We all love amazing and engaging stories. We still remember our relatable and touching bedtime stories as a good story with effective delivery tends to have a lasting effect on our memory. This is a reason why strong storytelling is effective and crucial in most parts of our lives.
We use storytelling to motivate the masses for just and developmental causes. Leaders use storytelling to motivate disciples in a positive, constructive, and fulfilling direction. Entrepreneurs use it to grab investments for their startups or businesses. Qualified teachers use it to deliver lectures most effectively and engagingly. Storytelling is effective in every aspect of work. Everybody should work to develop effective storytelling skills.
Today, we’ll be covering the 12 best storytelling lessons for beginners. The lessons are focused on teaching you everything about storytelling from scratch.
12 Best Storytelling Lessons for Beginners Review
1) MasterClass: Neil Gaiman Teaches the Art of Story Telling
Neil Gaiman is an award-winning creator who has gone through more than a quarter of a century creating striking, retaining fiction. Presently, the creator of Stardust, Coraline, and The Sandman instructs his approach to creative narrating in his online composing lesson. Learn how to discover your special voice, create unique thoughts, and breathe life into your characters. Find Neil’s reasoning on what drives a story.
In this course, apart from revealing his techniques and findings through his experience, Neil Gaiman develops a strong base for the students to rely on so that they can develop their taste and style. This course expands over all aspects of storytelling with details regarding all popular genres of modern storytelling.
From developing an arc for the story to detailing out the characters, every element of building an effective story and impressive delivery is covered in the course. In this course, students will learn how to engage the audience in the most effective way.
2) Udemy: Storytelling to Influence
The instructor for this course is Jeff Tan. He served 26 long years as a helicopter pilot and flight instructor with the Singapore Air Force. He was serving at the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel before starting a training & coaching company. He discovered an incredible amount of super useful tools and shortcuts that helped him become a practitioner of influence. He completed his Masters in Social Science and he is also a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming coach.
Maintaining a positive and constructive influence is crucial to make your message spread or to get important work done in the most efficient and timely manner. One needs developmental influence in the workplace to gain success and make your presence and opinions well known and reputed.
This course is designed to develop storytelling skills focused on developing a positive and respectful influence in the workplace. This course is based on three main lessons spanning over 23 short videos. There is no pre-requisite for this course, all Jeff requires from you is to start with the dedication and build your influence.
3) Udemy: The Complete Story Telling Course for Speaking and Presenting
The instructor for this course is TJ Walker. He has created and instructed multiple Udemy best-selling courses for public speaking, presentation skills, media training and storytelling skills, and other personal developmental factors.
Walker is the founder of Media Training Worldwide and has been conducting public speaking training workshops and seminars in over six continents. Students for this course can reach him out on his LinkedIn account for his webinars and workshops on personal and professional development.
This is a unique course that primarily focuses on the one-to-one connection with the students. In this course, TJ forms the foundation for effective communication through storytelling as a coach, presenter, and teacher. TJ builds this unique connection by excluding all graphics and only recording face to face videos for better engagement as he will teach through demonstrating.
The course requirements from the instructor are, “Willingness to practice”, “A webcam or cell phone camera for recording videos”. The instructor will ask to submit videos in which students will demonstrate their storytelling skills and he will evaluate each individual for enhanced learning and engagement.
4) Udemy: The Story Course – Storytelling Masterclass
The instructor for this course is Paul Jenkins. He has been working as a professional documentary filmmaker, writer & narrator for more than 30 years. Working with BBC and other organizations around the world, his investigative and history films have been watched by millions.
Now he is determined to share his insights and skills of storytelling and narrating to accelerate young storytellers. He also runs a great virtual studio called Paul Jenkins’ Brilliantio Academy. This studio is designed for production and creative experts.
This course is designed to give in-depth details regarding the behind the scenes process of professional content that tells a story. From planning to mapping out and then producing, this course gives step – by – step process to follow to develop engaging stories.
Further, this course will teach students regarding the latest technologies for this purpose, effective workflows, and key principles to follow while developing an arc for the story. His requirement for the course is that students should be aware of their end goal they want to achieve with this course.
5) Udemy: Story Telling for Persuasion and Transformation
The teacher for this course is Alex Glod. He is a proficient coach and a renowned speaker in the realm of self-development and motivation. In his 8 years as a professional, he has trained people for public speaking, narrating amazing stories and sustainable leadership, in many regions.
He is a solid advocate for a compassionate and relatable approach for commercial showcasing and compelling education by relatable communication methods. He empowers business people and teachers to utilize their own individual stories to associate truly with their group of onlookers.
This course is based on the fact that stories ignite emotions. This course is designed for managers, trainers, social activists, marketers, and entrepreneurs to teach them how to use their personal stories that could resonate with their audiences and develop strong engagement.
This course will help to develop persuasion skill that helps in bringing the audience on the same page as the speaker. This will help in building confidence and combating fears and anxieties on stage.
6) Udemy: Storytelling for Marketing and Entrepreneurship
The instructor for this course is Alex Glod. He is a professional trainer and three-time TEDx Speaker. Throughout his 8 years as a professional coach, he has trained over 22,500 people for confident public speaking, effective storytelling for marketing and entrepreneurship, and determined leadership in Europe and Asia.
He is a strong advocate for a humane approach for commercial marketing, engaging leadership, and effective education by relatable communication techniques. He encourages entrepreneurs and educators to use personal stories to connect authentically with their audience.
This is one of his multiple courses on personal development and storytelling. This specific course focuses on marketers and entrepreneurs. The primary purpose of this course is to help in building a trustworthy brand image and engaging customers with the most effective method – storytelling. This course is designed to map out processes in communicating relevant stories in marketing campaigns for better and lasting results.
7) Udemy: Intro to Storytelling: Wow Your Crowd
The instructor for this course is Kevin Allison. He is a renowned writer and actor. You can look up his critically acclaimed sketch comedy series,” The State” on MTV, “ Flight of the Conchords, the beloved performance troupe Blue Man group, and the popular comedic website JibJab.
His portfolio covers all kinds of stories. He also created a popular live show and audio podcast called “Risk” where people share stories which they never thought they could. He is also the founder and head of a school called the Story Studio, devoted to teaching great storytelling.
This course is designed to equip students with practical storytelling, presenting techniques, and skills where relevance and engagement are key. This course will help you in shaping your story according to your audience’s taste, to develop relatability.
After completing the course, students will be able to understand different live reactions and emotions of their audience, key moments in the pitch to leverage, emotional triggers, and how to develop stamina for an intense emotional ride. This will form a base for identifying emotional drivers in the story for suspense, comedy, sadness, and more. The instructor requires his students to arrange a pen, a notepad, and a video recording device for this course.
8) Udemy: Storytelling Fundamentals for All – 1 Hour Super Course
The instructor for this course is Matt Livadary. He is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and Creative Director and loves all communicating mediums where he can share his stories. He went to USC film school and worked in Hollywood for several years including Creative Artists Agency and Apparatus Productions.
After his documentary QUEENS & COWBOYS: A STRAIGHT YEAR ON THE GAY RODEO got international attention, he got a distribution deal with Netflix. This was a turning point for him as he moved to digital storytelling on the web.
Consider this lesson as a crash course of storytelling as this is only a 1-hour long video course. Matt mentions that this course is designed to develop the base and give an overall perspective into the digital world of storytelling.
This program was originally designed for his staff to train them on how to communicate effective stories quickly. He believes that better stories lead to a more successful life. He will briefly discuss all digital mediums and how to develop your unique taste for the audience.
9) Udemy: Storytelling for Public Speaking
The facilitator for this course is Alex Glod. He is a certified trainer and a speaker. His main expertise revolves around the field of developing verbal and presentation skills in students so they can build confidence for public speaking.
This course is one of many of his courses based on practicing storytelling and communicating. He is a strong advocate of practicing storytelling in every medium of communication for better engagement and delivery while speaking.
Moreover, this course is based on two stages of public speaking, preparation, and delivery. Here, Alex will teach you how to plan the arc of the delivery and how to place the emotional elements incrementally.
After making a blueprint for the whole speech, he will teach you how to understand the live audience and introduce an emotional trigger spontaneously based on their responses and attention towards you, all fro to gain attention. After this course, you would understand how audiences are motivated by effectively communicated emotions.
10) Coursera: Storytelling and Influencing: Communicate with Impact
This course has been developed by a partnership between two renowned corporate professionals, delivering their experience on the need for effective communication and methods for developing it for corporate success. This course is led by Lawrence Ang and Arabella MacPherson.
Lawrence is a Program Executive for Marketing and Media. He has taught official MBA educating, in-house preparing and yearly vital workshops for organizations, and has worked on a wide run of promoting counseling ventures, campaign following, brand wellbeing evaluation, and client fulfillment.
Arabella has fifteen years of international performance coaching and ten years as a company communications coach. She coaches CEOs, executives, and senior leadership groups in an exceedingly vary of programs from pitching and presenting to media coaching, emotional intelligence, powerful conversations, and advanced communication.
This course is designed for working professionals who looking to boost their communication skills in the working environment. Communication in a workplace is all about conveying your message in the most effective, efficient, and positive manner. This course is designed to help individuals in boosting their success ratio in day to day work.
11) Coursera: Transmedia Storytelling
Simon McIntyre is that the Associate Dean Education at UNSW state capital | Art & style, and a Scientia Education Fellow. He is a multi-award-winning pedagogue. He is enthusiastic about the effectiveness, maturity, and connection of the dynamic learning experience, and promoting digitally-driven use of technology to pioneer learning and teaching practices. Simon’s analysis explores on-line pedagogies, open education, and resources.
In this course, Simon teaches the basics of one of the most practical genres/use of storytelling, Transmedia Storytelling. Transmedia storytelling is all about the practice of designing, sharing, and participating in engaging storytelling techniques used for marketing, promoting, entertaining, or social causes using multiple traditional and modern digital platforms.
This course will teach you how to transform your thoughts into a well-structured and well-designed narrative after identifying your target audience for enhanced relatability and connection using old and new mediums of communication. This course will make sure that students learn how to leverage modern technologies to be an effective storyteller.
12) FutureLearn: Digital Storytelling: Film Making for the Web
This course is formed in partnership with The University of Birmingham, the BBC Academy, and Creative Skillset. The instructors for this course are Michele Aaron and Richard Langley. Aaron is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Birmingham. She is an author and developed research focused on how films can affect individual, social and political change. Richard Langley is a creative individual keen to develop a fusion of theory and practice that can function as a versatile teaching tool.
This course will develop a critical understanding of storytelling, meaning-making, and all aspects of production. Students will be able to structure and design effective narratives. They will learn pre-production research and planning and go through various practical filmmaking techniques to communicate stories on digital mediums effectively.
Students will go through various principles and processes that make an engaging story for the audience. After forming great narratives for the stories, students will get practical film making skills to convert their stories into digital content.
Choosing the Best Storytelling Lessons for Beginners
Storytelling is a strong and effective tool for engaging audiences for all sorts of reasons. One can say it can play a major role in achieving a professional goal. Some are born with amazing storytelling skills and some just develop them on their own.
With today’s online effective and professional content regarding “How to develop storytelling skills” has made learning this skill quite easy and economical. You can learn at your place at your own pace. Just pick one of the above-mentioned courses and start learning with determination. We all love a well-formed story.