Narrative Theory Applied or Applied Narrative Theory

I have an undergraduate degree and one Masters degree but I find myself sitting in the classroom again headed toward a doctorate and learning about persuasion. It’s a pretty interesting exercise for someone that has practiced some forms of persuasion for the past 15 or so years, but have not thought much about the theory of persuasion. It also highlights a classic faculty and staff rub. Broadly and grossly generalized faculty spend too much time in theory and staff not enough - but I digress.

The thing that keeps resonating over and over for me is Fisher’s narrative theory and how much it explains about what we do in the world of communication. And even if the theory isn’t 100% correct, the thing that it brings me back to is the challenge of always making sure that you are telling a story when you communicate.
Far too much of the day is taking up with creating bulleted lists of accomplishments and features, when in some cases what people want is a narrative. I’m not saying it has to take a lot of space or that people with actually read. (I haven’t lost my mind.) But what I am saying is that telling the story of a new student is more compelling to most people than giving the statistics of the Freshman class.

Having said that, I just wrote an entire post that didn’t really include a narrative flow. Maybe I should have written a story about writing a blog.

For those that are gluttons for punishment, my complete recent short paper on the narrative theory and how it explains how Obama got elected and why we can’t get out of Gitmo I have posted it to my personal site.