Storytelling has become a huge buzzword, but shouldn't be confused with 'content' in general. I've tried to clarify things here, and very quick;y summarise the importance of information being restricted and justifiable. These restrictions are at odds with the idea of storytelling. I'm seeing this as a note to flesh out into a longer talk.

1. STOP TELLING STORIES
Why storytelling isn’t the answer to good content
Monday, 3 October 2011
1. It’s not an English lesson
2. Collect content, not stories
3. Content is needy
4. Arguments for arguments

2. 1. It’s not an English lesson
• Tone of voice
• Language
• Stories Content?
• Character
• Audience
• Points of view
Monday, 3 October 2011
Content has come to be understood in terms of ‘The kind of stuff people who did English
know about’.

3. WHY STORYTELLING?
• Sounds warm and wholesome
• Sounds like something anyone can do, while implying a skill
• Sounds social and/or interactive = hip
• Sounds like meaning and learning will result
• Sounds accessible. We all think we know what it is
Monday, 3 October 2011
Storytelling has become a huge word in the world of marketing and strategising, massively
associated (wrongly) with content, massively associated (wrongly) with writing for the web,
and massively associated (wrongly) with superior accessibility of message.

4. CONTENT ISN’T ‘STORIES’
Monday, 3 October 2011
Content without context has no reason. ‘Story’ implies something complete, opinionated and
meaningful -- and is a really dangerous way of viewing content. A story is a word for a self-
contained report, or message, but content refers to a substance more fluid and
interconnected. Vague memories of English lessons are exploding in a big meaningless mess,
and rigour is going out the window.

5. CONTENT IS JUST
WHAT GOES IN
Monday, 3 October 2011
Content is the stuff that isn’t the structure. It is regulated by the structure, but it isn’t the
structure. It’s not the ‘how you say things’ or the ‘what’s best to say’. It’s just stuff you put
in.

6. THE STUFF THAT
FILLS THE GRID
Monday, 3 October 2011
More than anything, content needs a place to go.

7. 2. MAGAZINES ARE
EVERYTHING
Monday, 3 October 2011
The purest and most successful form of content collection and distribution on earth = the
magazine. Most things are magazines now. Most social websites are magazines of sorts,
collecting themed information after a set of principles. Collaborative websites *are* limits
about collecting and distributing. THE ACTUAL PIECES OF CONTENT ARE THE LAST
CONSIDERATION. A lot of content is interchangeable, within certain parameters, it’s relatively
arbitrary. It can be swapped about, can come and go.
No, content isn’t king. The REASON governing content is king.

8. MAGAZINES ARE
GRIDS OF REASON
•All issues are united by CONTEXT, not content
•Grids are rules.
Monday, 3 October 2011
1. Issues of a magazine are not united by common content but by the identical context they
impose: the format.
2. Grids are rules, they accept some things and exclude others

9. 3. Content is needy
•Unlike stories, content is needy.
•Rationale comes from formalism, not English lessons.
Monday, 3 October 2011
*Unlike stories*, content demands a context – a rationale that justifies every bit of stuffʼs inclusion.
Rationale means understanding the disciplines of formalism, not cobbling together half-remembered ideas from
third year English.

10. “Content is a glimpse
of something, an
encounter like a flash.
It’s very tiny, content.”
- Willem De Kooning
Monday, 3 October 2011
The significance of content depends entirely on how it’s framed. It gets its meaning from
context. Stories, on the other hand, take their meaning with them wherever they go.

11. We don’t need more content strategists
We need more content-ambivalent formalists
Because you can’t start with content
Because stuff needs a reason to be there
Monday, 3 October 2011

12. FIRST
Reason/co ordinates/
rationale/structure/
form/point/
argument/ defense/
case/justification/
grid/rules
THEN
Decisions about
specific content
Monday, 3 October 2011
Content has two phases, by the far the most important of which is the
first.

13. 4. The argument
•Truth-seeking. for arguments
•Testable.
•Frameworks for inserting optimal ideas.
•Precede everything.
•Don’t need an ‘expert’; do need intelligence.
•Go hand-in-hand with the unrepresentable.
Monday, 3 October 2011
•They put things in context. They are a truth-seeking point of view for situating data in the universe.
•They are programmes to be replicated in the head of the recipient, ending with realisation, rather than feelings.
•They are frameworks in which to insert the ‘best case for’... the ‘best case for’ a good tone of voice. The ‘best case for’
including this content over that one, etc.
•They’re more persuasive, compelling, and comprehensible than ‘strategies’, whatever they may be.
•They arise out of the unrepresented. Non-representational work always asks for a case to be made. Representational work
(paintings, movies, stories) ask you to believe without interrogation or standards.
•For these reasons, the non-representational is open to mockery, and people veer towards the representational.

14. Content locks together. Stories don’t.
Monday, 3 October 2011
Pieces of content are battleships that can interlock on a grid. Stories, on the other hand are nuanced and temperamental. They
don’t usually like to fit together, each one wants to be the star.

15. Stories don’t like arguments
• They’re representational
• ...and self-contained
• Online, social storytelling means expressing feelings
and showing off
• No reason here. You either ‘get it’ or you don’t
Monday, 3 October 2011
Stories are representational. They are artful. No one is excluded, so there are no restrictions, so there are no
reasons. They are roundabout ways of delivering messages, and by asking us to provide our own personal
mental context, they play host to multiple interpretations. They are an expression of a point, do not answer to
reason, and do not ask to be trusted.
• A subjective view
• Exist outside of any rational context
• Self-sufficient, with self-governed meaning
• Online social ʻstorytellingʼ is dominated by inward-looking artefacts that put the self at the centre
• No reasoning means no reason to make sense.
You either ʻgetʼ it, or you donʼt

16. WHICH IS FINE
Monday, 3 October 2011
But it does give them a form factor thatʼs incompatible with a lot of other formats.

17. SO... CONTENT ISN’T STORIES!
EVERYTHING IS A MAGAZINE
ARGUMENTS AND REASONS GIVE
CONTENT NECESSARY LIMITS
Monday, 3 October 2011
In summary, then.