Buzzword – a combination of ‘verbing’ a noun to make it look elegant, fresh and dynamic and an attempt to re-brand and hence own, something that has been out there for ages.
As discussed on this blog before, storytelling is a noun, a verb, and an adjective; what is called a gerund or a gerundive complementizer (see link for explanations). Storytelling was formed in the oral cultures and cultivated to the level of high-art, way before a written word appeared somewhere.
So it wasn’t that first there was story and then came the telling. It’s not a combination of two words – it’s one! you can’t re-verb it, you can’t re-brand it, and any attempt to add something to it just dilutes its original power. Now I also understand why all these attempts seem to me like fractions of the real thing. The people doing it don’t get it, and what they do isn’t even close.
Εὕρηκα