A snack size story has become the standard in social media these days. Everything revolves around keeping people’s attention and moving them to action. You can find more about it in this video. Enjoy!
How many words is in a short story? One of the most famous writers ever was Ernest Hemingway. Do you know how long his shortest story was? 3 seconds. It goes something like this: For sale. Baby shoes. Never Worn”. 6 words in total. Of course Hemingway could’ve told this story in 50.000 words with interesting characters, plot twists, exciting intrigues and so on.
Would that have been a more beautiful story? Of course it would. A story like this of just 6 words is more like a snack size story.
Isn’t that the essence of how we tell stories on social media today? Imagine that you are making an explainer video where you have 15 seconds for the awareness phase where you can capture your audiences attention. And in those 15 seconds you want to make sure that your watchers don’t leave. So on one hand you don’t want to let it drag on.
On the other hand you don’t want to be hasty either. Then how do you tell your message? Not in one long sentence. If Hemingway would’ve said that there are baby shoes for sale which have never been worn it wouldn’t have had that much impact as this piece of writing. Instead Hemingway wrote 3 mini chapters. And pushed these one at a time into the mind of the reader.
For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. That’s drama. A story can really be told that simple. Line the facts up. Put them in a logical order. And leave the answer up to the listener. Who actually only can think: tell me more. Will you win the Pulitzer price with it? No. But fortunately that’s not the aim of the game in video marketing. All that matters is that the viewers are moved into action.
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