Some of the best conversationalists are also some of the best storytellers and it's no coincidence. Everyone loves a good story.
Start by reading: How to Become a Great Conversational Storyteller
In my last storytelling post, I wrote about four different ways to improve your conversational storytelling skills. Here’s a quick reminder:
- Recognize what stories you already tell and write them down.
- Make sure they have a beginning, middle and end.
- Make sure your stories are emotional/experiential rather than technical.
- Make a conscious effort to repeat your stories
Next, I want to help you refine them.
History is full of stories, but history is not story
Think of stories as adaptations of historical events. Essentially, you take what you remember as personal history and adapt it for conversational storytelling. It's similar to the way a historical event would be adapted to film. You're trying to find the balance between what would make a good story and historical accuracy.
This might seem like too much bending of the truth to for some people. However, we already bend the truth when we tell a story, unconsciously, leaving out details and exaggerating what was important or impactful to us. As a storyteller, you want to consciously choose what to leave out, exaggerate, and emphasize. All the decisions you make about how to adapt the story should be based on the purpose you have for telling it.
Ask yourself: What is the point of telling this story?
- Am I trying to express a piece of my identity?
-Try emphasizing details about my reactions or feelings about the events of the story. - Am I trying to teach a lesson?
-Try juxtaposing the way things were before you learned the lesson and how things changed once the lesson was learned. Most importantly, don't get swamped in technical details. - Am I trying to give a new perspective on something?
-Try including details about someone's shift in perspective during the story, be sure to include how they felt before and how they felt after. - Am I trying to entertain?
-Try emphasizing the places where people react. Do listeners laugh, jump in with questions, or respond emotionally.
The purpose of the story should dictate how you tell it. Whatever the purpose, remember, it’s not history it’s a story. Often, it’s best to leave out the contradictions and chaos of history in an effort to tell a great story with a purpose.
The Unification of Plot
A great story will have one central plot that everything revolves around. Every extra direction the story goes in, outside of the central plot, is a chance to lose the listeners.
The idea is very simple: anything that doesn’t need to be in the central story shouldn't be.
Here is an example of part of a story without a unified plot:
*The most interesting person I’ve ever met was a Taoist monk. In 2001, I went to China to study Kung-Fu, even though it was my first year at college. I landed in Beijing, where I happened to get drunk for the first time in my life because a tour guide told me not to drink the water and the only other beverage I could trust was beer. From Beijing, I took a train to Wudang mountain. When I finally got to Wudang mountain I met this monk named Feng who taught me one of the most interesting things I’d ever learned… *
College, arriving in Beijing, getting drunk, traveling to the mountain, and the year aren’t necessary because the story is only about myself, the monk and whatever makes him interesting. You can see that in the first sentence: The most interesting person I’ve ever met was a Taoist monk.
As I mentioned in the first storytelling post, recording yourself tell a story, then writing it down word-for-word to look at and edit, will help you get a strong sense of what your stories look like and whether you have a unified plot.
When you’re analyzing a story, think about each sentence and say, “could the story be told without this?” if the answer is yes - cut it. If you get to a point where for every sentence the answer is “no,” then your plot is most likely unified.
Thanks for reading!
Let me know what you think!
Ask me any questions you might have!
