We at Konversations / InsideIIM are going through a rather exciting period these days. We are making entertaining courses, shooting interesting videos, organising offline engagements at Hard Rock Cafes, creating immersive games and quizzes, building a most unique book of short stories with multi-media capabilities. Everyday, everything we do forces us to be good storytellers for our audiences. 

After having worked on courses around such diverse subjects as Finance, Marketing, Social Impact, Interviewing, Creative Writing, Operations, etc, we have realised there isn’t one job in this world which cannot get enriched with a bit of storytelling in it.

With this in mind, we present to you, a Konversations Curates dedicated to storytelling - that most primal of our instincts (after food, sleep and sex, of course.)

The first article is actually a review of a book that we enjoyed reading and absolutely recommend to everyone. The article brings out the all pervasive nature of storytelling and its applications beyond books and films.

Next, we have a TED Talk by the director of such amazing films like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. He talks about the ingredients of a great story. And then he turns our gaze towards that one ingredient that can be universally experienced, but is rarely created and added to a story with its essence intact - wonder.

When one talks about Finding Nemo, there is nowhere else to go but back to one’s childhood. The next article is about keeping the child within us, well fed and cared for. Because some of the best ideas on storytelling will come from the child within us.

The folks at Guardian have put together a wonderful collection of quotes from great writers on their process. Do have a look to get more insight on how to go about looking for stories and also how to build the rigour to tell them in the best way possible.

We would like to end this week’s Konversations Curates with another talk from a lady who knows a fair bit about stories and their impact. Here she talks about the problem with creating stereotypes and how telling stories can help one break stereotypes.

Do write in to us with what you felt about this week’s playlist. We have some exciting stuff happening around storytelling in our offices. Watch out for the creative writing course we are launching this Christmas - full of actionable advice and ideas from the writer of Bollywood’s most successful film this year, the founder of one of the most exciting Facebook pages on stories, the National Creative Director of one of India’s leading ad agencies. 

Exciting times ahead!