Assignment: Storytelling in My Field

After studying Roman rhetorical pedagogy and the various preliminary exercises (the "progymnasmata") outlined by Quintilian, it's clear that preparation for speaking and writing required the ability to tell stories convincingly.

I'd like my students to find and relate a story (or to compose one of their own) that exemplifies one type of storytelling typical in their career field. They should follow this pattern:

Title "Storytelling in [my field]"

Foreword

• What type of situation and genre of communication this exemplifies. ("In the field of _______ it is common to relate an account of ______________ within a [document / setting / situation] and to [audience(s)]")
• What is the purpose of such stories / storytelling?
• What are the parameters for such storytelling (length, medium, audience, etc.)?
• Where did you get this story or how do you know it's representative of your field?

Example Story

• Set up the story if needed (one sentence only)
• Give the example story. Try to keep it under 100 words if possible. Bold the story so it stands out.

Analysis

• Point out the component ingredients of the story
• How is persuasion at work here? 

Retelling the Story

Show that you understand how to rework stories for different purposes or audiences by revising and retelling the story you just communicated.  (See the model below for an example).

• Indicate the variation in purpose or audience.
• Retell the story you gave above, but as recommended by Quintilian when he outlined the narrative exercise, change the order in order to make a different point or to address a differing audience. (While you can take a bit of creative license here, still try to stay within the parameters or appropriate tone for the genre you're writing in.) You can slightly lengthen the story but focus mostly on varying the order of events, either telling events in reverse order or from the middle, as Quintilian suggests. (Bold the story so it stands out)
• In a follow up sentence or two remark on how you varied the story and why that variation might be more persuasive

Use the label "storytelling in my field" as a label for the blog post.

A model for this assignment follows the break.

EXAMPLE

Title: Storytelling in Design

Foreword
When studying Design Thinking, one learns to tell stories both to identify problems and again as part of analyzing feedback during an iteration phase. These stories are shared among team members primarily but will also involve clients or stakeholders when gathering anecdotal evidence and when requesting feedback on iterations of a product. The purpose of such stories is to convince fellow team members that a given problem is important and specific enough to merit designing a solution, or to argue for specific changes to a prototype. These stories can be written, but are usually shared orally in a design team meeting.

I made up this example based on my knowledge of design thinking when applied to manufacturing engineering

Example Story

• Setup: Let's say a company that makes blenders is conducting focus groups to get feedback on their products so they can get ideas for improvements 
• Story:
  One of the focus group members was a young mom who bought our ZippyPlus blender to make breakfast shakes. It seemed like every time she was about to load up the blender, she realized that our powerful machine would wake up the family. She ended up opting for cereal instead of her green smoothies so often that she finally took her blender back to Costco for a refund.  Maybe we need to focus on the customer's experience of using our product and make a blender that's quiet.

Analysis

• This is a typical anecdote reporting on a problem by giving a quick case study. A scenario is set up with a user, and a situation is described in which there is a problem. It's a simple cause/effect scenario whose purpose is to identify a problem and make it seem worth solving. In this case, listeners can easily identify with consumer anxiety.

Retelling the Story

• If the engineers are trying to convince management that a near-silent blender is worth developing, they could create a more frightening scene:
• Tanya is driving back to Costco with her brand new ZippyPlus blender that has only been used once. She's still in her running clothes, but the huffing and puffing isn't because she got her five miles in this morning. No, she didn't get to do her morning run at all. "I'll just whip me up a green smoothie with a protein boost to get me going today," she had thought to herself. All the ingredients in her shake were quickly blended into a perfect smoothie. Success? No! The megadecibels that rocked her apartment woke up the baby in the bedroom down the hall. "Honey!" her husband calls. "I don't mind listening for the baby when you go running, but if she's screaming -- I SAID IF SHE'S SCREAMING -- I can't get ready for work. -- I SAID WHY DID YOU WAKE UP THE BABY WITH THAT D*** BLENDER!" Tanya dumps the perfect smoothie into the sink, throws the unwashed blender back into its box, straps an unhappy baby into her car seat, and heads to Costco where she'll get her refund and never be our customer again. Is that what we want? 
• I put the last event (the woman returning the blender) as the first event, and added dialogue and description to emphasize the family discord that can result from a blender used in the morning. Maybe this will wake up middle management to our need for a quieter blender.