Storytelling – A Social Skill
Gather around, it’s story time:
Last Sunday, 11 AM. Outside an insurance company building in Munich, Germany.
The sun is shining. It is unusually quiet.
A black Audi sedan pulls into the parking lot in front of the building. The windows of the car are dark. It drives very slowly. There are six or seven other cars in the parking lot. There are no pedestrians anywhere in sight.
The car turns slowly around. It stops right in front of the main entrance. The building is a structure of glass and concrete and five stories high. The windows reflect the sky. It is not possible to see what is going on inside. The engine of the car stops.
Suddenly both front doors of the car open. The sound is barely audible. Two people step out. They wear black suits and black sunglasses. They don’t carry any suitcases. They move slowly but with determination as they approach the door. A dog barks somewhere.
This is where the story ends. Actually it is where it ended when I attended a story telling seminar a few days ago. The lecturer was speaking slowly and made a lot of pauses. By the time the dog barked in the story you could have heard the pin drop in the room where around 100 people were silently listening for the conclusion.
Philip K. Dick is considered by many to be one the world’s greatest science fiction writers ever; as a sufferer from mental illness himself he had the ability to turn his hallucinations about the universe into an extraordinary writing career.
