Seven Stories
In 2005, British journalist and author Christopher Booker published a book based on years of literary criticism and his own writing, in which he identified some common themes in literature throughout the world. His conclusion? That although the nature of storytelling itself is as infinite as that of language, there are only really seven stories that we ever tell, and that anything outside of this is merely a variation on a theme.
What is that draws us to the number seven? Lucky Seven. Seven Deadly Sins. Seven Samurai, and the subsequent Magnificent Seven. Seven days in a week - in Judaism and Christianity, the number of days it took the man upstairs to get stuff done. In Islam, it’s the number of heavens - perhaps fitting that there are also seven colours in a rainbow. Dante’s Purgatory had seven terraces. There are seven wonders of the ancient world. Seven notes in a major scale. In chemistry, it’s the number of neutrality. In maths, it’s a prime number, and we all know how tricksy they can be. It shows up in poetry all the time, although this might be simply because it’s the only number under ten with two syllables (good for meter) and it also rhymes with ‘heaven’. Way too easy.
The number seven resonates throughout the history of human experience. Perhaps we should be unsurprised that it also applies to the way we choose to communicate that experience.
For this year’s blockbuster Wildfire seminar to be held on Wednesday 24th June at 4pm, we’ll be breaking down the seven types of narrative and examining how they’ve been applied to advertising over the years. The advertising industry has always walked a delicate line between the reflection of popular culture and the creation of it. Even when we take into account all the myriad different forms of media which have fragmented our narratives and allowed for the contribution of a host of participants - are there really only seven kinds of ad?
Wildfire Stories: Pass It On.
We’ll be updating this Tumblr with storytelling content that we dig up over the next few weeks, and encouraging you guys to contribute anything you think is interesting.
We’re also doing our own little storytelling experiment, the results of which will be posted here! More to follow shortly…
