Last week, reader Raf Stevens challenged me to present more examples of good storytelling in this space. I was critical of the storytelling in the entries in Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest, so Stevens wanted to get a better idea of what I consider to be good storytelling.

Here’s an example that has been making the rounds on Twitter over the last week. While I can’t say for sure that the characteristics that make this video great storytelling work for every attempt at storytelling, those traits are:

• It’s concise (a minute and 14 seconds).
• It has a beginning, middle, and end.
• It’s exciting and suspenseful.
• The viewer wonders where it’s going.
• There’s a great payoff that more than satisfies the “where is this going?” question.
• The story and its payoff are communicated in very few spoken words.
• And you can’t beat the tagline: “Never underestimate the power of a good story.”

I’ll present more terrific examples as I come across them. In the meantime, enjoy “The Closet.”