Story First. And Always.

It’s trite to say it—and I’ve seen so much hype around the concept of storytelling in branding and such, but that’s doesn’t mean it’s not fundamentally true. Story is everything. And everything serves story.

That last bit is what I’m thinking about today. LinkedIn has become clogged with genai debates. It’s either wow, look what I did, or wow, you’re a tech overseer shackling us to dark future. I’m skeptical by nature, but it’s weird to me that tenor of the debate has reached such a fever pitch.

From my perspective I’ve never been impressed with the ethical underpinnings of our digital technology. One person’s ’fair use’ has been another person’s copyright violation forever. At this point people holding up Photoshop like it’s purest of artistic intention, or insisting midi strings are legit but genai strings are not is tying us into a meaningless knot.

So I retreat to where I’ve always lived. Story first. You don’t need genai to write a great story. In fact, you don’t need computers, screens, keyboards, smart phones, apps, DAWs, productivity hacks, blogs, email, streaming, social networks, or nuclear plants pumping out gigawatts of power.

What I’m trying to say (and I’m doing it without the smooth wordsmithy genai) is our creative survival depends on this simple principle: Your tools must serve your story. Story first. If the tool serves the story, okay then.

The question is always is this the best way to tell the story? What does the story need? What makes the story magic? The best stories don’t need much more than a good storyteller in a room. A human voice.   Has that ever changed in human history? Isn’t that something to chew on? Storytelling hadn’t changed at all in 100,000 years. The way stories are told has changed, but the way stories are imagined hasn’t.

I know the ai tools are here. They are tools. They might be the right tools for the story. Or not. I’d say at best it’s a 50/50 proposition. But that’s not really the question that concerns a storyteller. Tell your story to people in a room and see if they like it. You can tell right away. You can feel the response.

I’ve always believed that. As a kid I used to rush to play my songs on the school bus every morning. Best focus group I ever had. That feeling you get back from people? It can’t be digitally duplicated. There’s no ai that can get there. That’s my whole point. The emotional connection of story is either there or it’s not. No amount of hype will make it happen. And the only way to truly know if your story connects or not is to feel the room.

Our digital world’s biggest glitch is flattening out our instincts. It’s hard to read the room when you’re sitting alone in a room with a screen.

Story first demands humanity above all else. Otherwise, it’s truly meaningless. Choose any tool the story needs when the time comes to produce your story. But the first step is always gather people around you and tell your story. For a good story, that’s all you need.