Storytelling, to me, is when someone recalls on events that have happened to them or someone else with a strong emphasis on detail.  Without the detail, there really isn’t much to the story.  The person listening needs to be able to visualize it the best that they can or else it really doesn’t work the way that it should.  I guess storytelling could include made up things, but I like to think of storytelling as more truth than fiction.

One of my best friends, Justin, is the best storyteller that I have ever met.  Whenever he tells a story, I can literally imagine myself being there.  He provides so much detail and makes the story so funny that it’s impossible not to laugh at what he is talking about.  The thing that makes his storytelling so unique is that he will incorporate a lot of gestures with his hands and actually recreate the noises and facial expressions that were involved with the story.  That same story could be told with just the facts, but then it wouldn’t be NEARLY as interesting.

When I incorporate the word ‘digital’ into storytelling, I think that in the instance of Justin telling the story, a lot is lost.  He wouldn’t be able to include all of his techniques when telling a story like he does in person.  That being said, there are crazy advantages to digital storytelling.  One way that you can display emotion and passion is through other media.  You could use gifs or YouTube clips that may be from something completely unrelated, but get the same point across.  This unique way of portraying emotion is advantageous to digital storytellers because then you can really play around with tons of different emotions.  For example, you could literally tell an entire story through gifs or YouTube videos and include absolutely zero words.  Since we aren’t aloud to look anything up for this exercise, I won’t try to find anything, but maybe later I’ll search around and see what I can find.

Another great thing about digital storytelling is that all of the story is preserved online or however you publish it.  When you tell a story in person, the story is automatically lost after it’s told.  Someone can do their best to recreate the story, but the original story told will always be altered with each additional telling.  Digital storytelling would never have that problem.  The words that I am writing here are going to, as long as this website is up, remain on this page.  It is 100% preserved and millions of different people can read the same words and see the same images or videos.  In that aspect, digital storytelling is far superior.

In my opinion, this is what storytelling is and the difference between verbal storytelling and digital storytelling.

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