10 Steps to Better Story-Telling

salamanderroom
I‘ve written frequently on these pages about the value of stories as a context-rich means of persuasion and knowledge-sharing. And I’ve written about the structure of good stories. But despite my knowledge and respect for the medium, I’ve learned that I’m not yet a consistently good story-teller.

The two most obvious differences between my successful and unsuccessful story-telling experiences are (1) the amount of practice I get telling the story (the more practice, and the more re-tellings, the better the story gets), and (2) the veracity of the story (true stories from my personal experience work well, stories of other people’s experiences and future state vision stories have been largely unsuccessful).

So I’ve done a bit of research and, building on the two lessons above, developed this list of 10 steps to better story-telling:

  1. Practice and hone the story: You need to be able to tell the story from memory, without even looking at notes, if you want to keep the audience’s full attention. This is hard work and takes a lot of time, but it’s essential, and worth it.
  2. Tell your own story, and keep it truthful: It’s much easier to tell a story credibly if you have experienced it first-hand. But if it is someone else’s story, say so up front, provide some context about the person whose story it is, and make sure it rings true (i.e. that it’s plausible) because if the audience is dubious about any elements of the story and know it isn’t your first-hand experience, they will tend to discount its veracity. And future state stories tend to be either utopian (everything is perfect) or dystopian (everything is horrific), and therefore invite the audience to create a less extreme ‘anti-story’ (and reject yours). This is all about trust, and how you establish it with your audience.
  3. Suit the story and pace to the audience: It’s important that the audience relate to the protagonist of the story, and also that the story have enough detail to be engaging, yet leave enough ‘space’ in the story so that listeners can fill those spaces in with their own personal context and ‘make it their own’. Stories for adults should generally be longer than those for children, but taking too long will make your audience restless, and rushing to the conclusion will leave them unsatisfied. The metaphor to making love is inescapable. And if you have a mixed audience, aim it at the younger listeners or those most likely to be moved by the story, and let their response infect the rest of the audience.
  4. Convey your own sense of amusement from the story: Your enthusiasm and empathy for the story and its characters will be infectious. So will your lack of enthusiasm and empathy. Good stories are entertaining, and if your audience senses that you don’t find it entertaining, they won’t expect to either.
  5. Use imagery to transport your audience: The details of the story should all be sensory, not analytical. You want your audience to see, feel, hear, smell, taste and touch what the protagonist does. You don’t want them to envision a PowerPoint slide with bullets.
  6. Understand that stories are creations, not re-creations or performances: Every listener will create their own internal ‘version’ of your story. You will annoy them if you try to make the story too precise, recreate the details too exactly, ‘correcting’ the story they are creating as they listen. And if you over-perform (ham it up), the focus shifts, inappropriately, from the story to you, the storyteller. You are just a vehicle for the story.
  7. Accommodate differing listening styles: The majority of most audiences will be watching you during the story, and you must make eye-contact with them, and not be overly stiff, to keep their attention. But some people in the crowd will, once they know a story is being told, look away or even close their eyes because this helps them better imagine the story. So don’t rely on props or body language, and don’t get flustered if this latter group doesn’t look at you — it doesn’t mean they aren’t listening, they’re just listening their way.
  8. Make sure it makes sense: The function of a story is to help people learn and understand something better than they did before. Even gossip stories have this objective. But no matter how artful the presentation, if the story doesn’t ‘make sense’ to the listener, the moral — the thing you want them to learn and understand — will be missed. It’s precisely like telling a joke in such a mangled way that the audience doesn’t ‘get’ the punch line. This is absolutely fatal. Try out the story on someone before you tell it to a crowd, to make sure it makes sense.
  9. Study the structure of great stories: Any good story can be made even better by using structures, like the fable, that have been proved to work well in millions of stories in the past. I highly recommend the knowledgebase (requires free registration) of Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Institute (Dave also teaches courses in this) for studying storytelling in greater detail.
  10. Don’t forget surprise: Good stories are dramatic, and the easiest and most compelling way to add drama to a story is to reveal something unexpected. Not something out of left field, a deus ex machina, but something that introduces surprise while at the same time being plausible, so the audience mentally goes back to try to think whether this surprise was predictable or not. It has to be plausible, but also has to be something that the audience wasn’t anticipating. Hard to do, dynamite impact when you do it well. Surprise makes the story memorable, and contagious. 

Illustration from the award-winning children’s book  The Salamander Room written by Anne Mazer and illustrated by Steve Johnson

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4 Responses to 10 Steps to Better Story-Telling

  1. Darcy says:

    Hi – this is very interesting and an idea that is near to my heart. All stories are “good” – the trick is to tell them well. One thing I have noticed is the tendency to rush – and to avoid the necessary spaces in the telling. I have also been fascinated by the tendency for people to tell stories about what has happenned (to develop meaningful context?) in the guise of conspiracy theories. And then, of course, there is the “NEWS”. An interesting take on stories. I thought of your post on insanity when I read it: http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-09-16/cols_ventura.html. Great blog – even if I can’t wrap my little brain around a lot of it! ;-)

  2. Shaded says:

    Pollard: Great post!I can’t help but wonder if one of my entries yester effected or inspired the creation of this post.Once again I find myself sharing a wavelength with you. Thanks for the resources, I’m interested in the information on structure.

  3. What a great a story. Did you write this Dave? I’m going to have to practice.aloha

  4. Dave Pollard says:

    Thanks everyone. And Darcy, great link to the Austin Chronicle. I’m going to have to check out more stuff by this writer.

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