Professional storytelling: Courses and the sectors where you can find work

Storytelling is emerging as a fundamental skill in key sectors like business and education. Only articulation and the ability to cater to different age groups wouldn’t make you a great storyteller; the intelligence to deal with sensitive topics is an essential trait that you have to learn and internalise to shine in this profession.

Scope of Storytelling

Storytelling combines the narration of incidents, stories and experiences through gestures, postures, voice modulations and expressions. It is increasingly being practised in the corporate sector, educational institutions, performing arts and in social development fields.

Students can grasp complex ideas through visual storytelling, physical storytelling or through digital sessions. It has also emerged as a fundamental business skill to persuade people to support projects or motivate the members of a team.

How to become a storyteller

To become a storyteller, you need to have certain skills. These can be acquired over time or developed early in your career. You need to be able to ideate your thoughts and pen them down. While you should pay attention to details , you need to be direct and crisp in your presentation.

Creativity sets a good storyteller from an average one. One story can be narrated in multiple ways through the creativity of storytellers. As a storyteller you must be able to improvise instantly.

Apart from that, there should be empathy in the narration, but never should it sound too preachy. While the art of storytelling can be learnt by attending workshops, observing other storytellers and practising on your own, there are several storytelling courses that can be useful for beginners.

Storytelling courses:

• Storytelling to Influence — by Udemy
• Storytelling and influencing: Communicate with impact — by Coursera
• Storytelling for Social Change — by edx
• Kathalaya’s International Academy of Storytelling
• Truth School: Institute of Innovation and Storytelling, Haryana

These courses will enable you to become a storyteller. They will teach you how to find stories, identify your audience, curate stories for them, capture their attention using multi perspectives and visuals in your narration, and present your stories. Through effective storytelling and communication, you will be able to put forward your points in an organised structure and influence decision-making.

Storytelling in different sectors

The scope of storytelling has found a way into education, corporate, social development and media as it helps to form public perspectives and opinions.

“Storytelling can be used in education to explain different subjects, while storytelling for marketing, sales and team bonding can be used in the corporate sector. Whether we discuss health and hygiene or global warming, there is a story for everything. It could be a folk tale or a personal narrative,” said Kavita Gupta, storyteller and founder, Mirror Workshops for Children.

“Storytelling has become a unique and integral part of education in recent years. Its merit lies in its ability to capture and captivate the attention of students. This art enables listeners to form their own ideas and experiences with the help of the themes presented in the story. Above all, storytelling brings students back to books,” said Chitralekha Bhaskar, storyteller, educator and subject matter expert at Scholastic India.

Career prospects:

Storytelling can become a full-fledged career as it is the most powerful way of putting ideas into people’s heads. Most importantly, the storyteller and the listener can celebrate their journey together. They can create memories to cherish and perhaps turn their dreams into reality.

• Professional storyteller: You can become a professional at your art and deliver tailor-made educational or corporate sessions for training and recreational purposes.
• Entrepreneur: you can launch your own company and provide storytelling services and associated projects.
• Social development sector: You can get associated with NGO projects and use storytelling to bring about social transformation.
• Performing arts: You can work with theatre groups and participate in educational sessions with students of educational institutions.