A Picture Is Worth More Than A 1000 Words

Sometimes I listen to people try to tell a joke and I wonder if it would be rude to stop them and suggest they practice telling it a few times before trying it out on people.

Blame the thought on an old colleague of mine whose lack of confidence in his joke telling skills made him rush to hit the punchline in a way that always made me think of premature ejaculation.

Not literally, it didn’t resemble it in the literal sense but from a figurative perspective it worked. Because the guy would pump that sucker out so quickly he didn’t give you time to understand the background of the joke so by the time that punchline hit you didn’t always understand why it was funny.

No one really wants a courtesy laugh either. If you tell a joke you want people to give you a real smile and belly laugh.

A Picture Is Worth More Than A 1000 Words

If you sift through the blog you’ll find more than one post where I talk about trying to find a way to show you the movies in my head. If there is one goal that is shared throughout every post, that is it. It is always about trying to paint a picture with words and it is why The Great Pinterest Experiment of 2012 Meets Gladiator came about.

The Shmata Queen likes to try and tease me about being on a social media platform for girls, but Pinterest Forced Me To Change How I Blog and I am grateful.

When I decided I wanted to monetize the blog I had to take a hard look at how and why to do it. A big part of making that happen was to find ways to increase the number of readers here because advertising and sponsorship opportunities follow eyeballs.

It made sense to me to try and leverage the power of Pinterest and the only way to do so was to make sure that every post contained an image in it. Look back on older posts and you’ll find plenty that don’t have a picture and now they look naked to me.

But when I really thought about making a point to include pictures in every post it made sense to me to do so because a good picture enhances the post. It helps flesh out the mental image I try to paint inside your head and it helps me try to become a better story teller.

Understanding

When I help my children with their English assignments we talk about telling the story we want to tell and how to do it.  When their teachers ask them to write an essay about XYZ they aren’t just looking for a paper that is grammatically correct and free of errors.

They want their students to demonstrate understanding and command of the topic. When we talk about telling the story you want to tell it is about meeting the charge in an appropriate way that not only answers the question but does so in their voice.

Meaning I want them to show they understood it well enough to tell the story in their words and their voice. Don’t just regurgitate what you read. Paint a picture.

How Do You Paint A Picture- Become A Better Story Teller

Confession: I am jammed for time now and am using a veteran blogging trick to help finish this post. Just below this ‘graph you’ll find Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (“Toy Story,” “WALL-E”) Ted Talk about story telling.

I have watched it several times and really like it. There are some great tips in it that you can use for writing/blogging and story telling in general.