Over the past couple weeks, we’ve discussed how to use Evernote to prepare for a presentation and the best ways to use it for design inspiration. Today, we’ll continue our series by discussing how to use Evernote to create compelling stories.
As we’ve discussed in depth on this blog, we’re storytelling animals. Most every aspect of our lives–– the media we consume, our daily interactions with others, our individual lives as we see them–– is placed into the context of a story. If our day-to-day lives are so enshrouded in stories, why would we exclude them from our presentations? Here are a few tips on how to use Evernote to create compelling stories for your next presentation.
Outline with Ease
One of the best things about Evernote is how it fuses paper products and advanced technology. Lots of us presenters and writers still want to scribble, sketch and jot down notes on paper products when working on a project– especially when creating an outline– and Evernote recognizes that.
They’ve recently partnered with Moleskine to bring users the Evernote Smart Notebook. The notebook is a characteristically beautiful Moleskine that comes with smart stickers that digitally tag your handwritten notes. Use the Evernote app to snap photos of your pages, and upload them straight to your account. (And luckily, you can still snap and save photos of your handwritten notes without owning the Moleskine.)
Also, look into the KustomNote extension if you like to work in a customized template-style note system. The extension allows you to create fields as you wish, and then create notes with those fields embedded in them. This extension can be a great resource when outlining a story. Create a template for story creation (i.e. character, main idea, flow, etc.), and fill in the fields accordingly.
Inspiration: Everything All the Time
Last week we talked about how to use Evernote for design inspiration, and really, that’s our favorite way to use Evernote, including when saving & storing inspiration to create compelling stories. Think of all the engaging, eye-catching stories you encounter on a daily basis––commercials, ads, magazine articles, books, movies, TV shows, and on and on. Save everything that catches your eye to Evernote, and organize it further with separate notes and distinct tags for easy search.
If you’re stuck trying to come up with a story in which to anchor your presentation, you can simply refer back to all the examples you saved in Evernote for inspiration. Maybe you go more detailed by classifying saved stories according to adjectives or types of story (i.e. hero’s journey, memoir, funny, revealing, surprising, sad, etc.). If you’re looking for inspiration to tell a funny story, for example, you’ll know exactly where to look.
Save everything you find inspirational–– the Evernote web clipper is a great resource for that, as you can simply clip an entire webpage or video clip or whatever to your account for easy access. We also really like Evernote Clearly to help with creating compelling stories, as the extension eliminates anything but the content on a webpage, thereby encouraging your total attention on the (hopefully) inspiring story in front of you. Then you can take notes and make observations as you wish.
