New Delhi, 1st May: “There is no concept like a global story in the world today. Your ‘personal’ story becomes a ‘global’ story. The most important thing in storytelling is to engage the audience.” Durgesh Singh, author of the famous web series ‘Gullak’, shared this idea while addressing the students during ‘Friday Dialogue’ organized by the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. He said, “The stories make us. We all definitely have some story. If we don’t tell our story, who else will?” On this occasion, Director General of IIMC Prof. (Dr.) Sanjay Dwivedi, Dean (Students Welfare) Prof. Pramod Kumar, Course Director of Advertising and Public Relations Department Dr. Meeta Ujjain, faculty members & students of all the centers were present.

Addressing the lecture organized on the topic ‘Storytelling from Heartland’, Durgesh Singh shared that in the last twenty-thirty years, we have been listening to the stories of ‘Class’ and not ‘Mass’. Successes like ‘Gullak’ and ‘Panchayat’ are proof that this is the best time to tell your story. Today, OTT, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter stories are going everywhere and these stories are being told by people like you and me and also cinema or web series have their own grammar, which needs to be decoded. Scriptwriting is a technical matter. Like a story or a novel, you do not write it for yourself, but for the public. He told that his characters have a huge role in any story. Every successful web series is best remembered for its characters. According to Singh, traveling introduces us to new characters in life. That’s why we must travel.

Stories emerge from small places: Prof. Dwivedi

Director General of IIMC Prof. Sanjay Dwivedi told the students that we all have stories in life. We are all the heroes of our own stories, but we don’t tell our own stories, because we don’t know how to tell. This is the situation when we have been a country of stories. We are a nation that tells stories to the world. He said that now we have stopped looking towards the ground, now we look towards the sky. Stories do not emerge from sky. Stories are found on the ground, emerge from small places. We need to pay attention to this.
During the program, Durgesh Singh answered the questions of the students and also discussed the important aspects related to writing.