Everyone Loves A Good Story

I love a good story. Don’t you?

A funny family story told by your favorite uncle, a stupid and hilarious story shared by your drunk college roommate.

Steve Jobs didn’t sell millions of iPods by announcing all the technical features. 
It’s the same reason that you can’t put down Harry Potter; you can’t wait to watch the new season of Orange is the New Black.

Everyone loves a good story.

You want your message to stick? Tell a story.

According to Harvard Business Review, the human mind makes sense of things by assembling the bits and pieces of experience into a story. Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.

I was a master storyteller when I was a kid, I told my teacher story after story about why I didn’t hand in my homework the whole week and why I encouraged my classmates to do the same. (My teacher seemed to have a very different perspective, though.)

Yet, as much as we love to hear the stories, we are not always good at telling them.

Everybody likes to tell a story. Little children do it effortlessly. Great artists do it with talent and years of practice. Somewhere in between stand you and I. 

                                                                            - Sylvia Ziskind

How to Tell a Killer Story?

You are not a “natural born storyteller”? No problem. Telling a good story is a skill that you can learn.

Have you noticed that stand-up comedians always have funny stories to tell?

Well, the top comedians often practice and refine their stories for months before telling them in front of an audience.

You can take the same approach to tell your stories.

Create A Story Collection

Like cooking a masterful dish, we need raw materials to work with.

It’s challenging for many to think of a good story on the spot, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

The cheat sheet: Start writing down interesting stories when you hear them, they don’t need to be perfect, but they will provide raw materials you can work with later. I like to keep stories in Evernote and Google Docs. A physical notepad and Microsoft Word work just fine.

I slipped a few funny stories into a speech I gave earlier this year and they almost turned my presentation into my solo standup comedy show. Did I come up with all the stories on my own? Nope, they are part of the stories I collected over time.

Be a human

I read an article like this one day and almost vomited.

Good God, can anyone be more boring than this?

Yet, this is the kind of article you read on a typical corporate blog: No emotions, no personalities, it makes you wonder if they hired a robot to write that article.

A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal and familiar.
                                                       ― John Steinbeck

Be Relevant

Have you ever listened to a story or a presentation, the guy went on and on then ended with “So…Yeah.”

Many people seem to tell stories just to tell them. But what’s the point of the story? Why is that relevant?

Write down the point of your story, it could as simple as “I want to show people how to tell a good story.”
 
Trim the Fat

I once heard a story like this: “Yeah, so, 8 months ago…Oh wait, I think it was 10 months ago…Mm, maybe 8 months ago…it doesn’t really matter, but anyway we started…”

By this point, I was already planning a brutal homicide just to get out of the conversation.

Nobody wants to know all the nitty-gritty. Just look at this guy’s comment:

Sometimes it’s necessary to fill people in with a little bit of background, but trim the details that no one cares about.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
                                                      - Leonardo da Vinci

Practice, Practice, Practice

I am often a little embarrassed to let anyone watch while practicing. So I hide in my house and secretly record myself on my phone. It sounds silly, but it is an effective way to hear my story from the outside.

As I listen, it’s easy to find out:

• Is it interesting/engaging?
  
• What’s the point?
• Is this too long?
  

If you want to take it up to a notch, record yourself in a camera. Watch your body language: We want to make sure that visually we are presenting the same message as our story.

It sounds like a lot of work, and it is. But it pays off.

I don’t always have the luxury of testing stories. Instead, I make changes while speak. You can do so by observing people’s reactions:

• Are they checking their phones/looking at their watch? (You might have lost their interest)
  
• Are they laughing at your funny stories/jokes?
• Do they look confused?
• Do they ask questions/Are they engaged?
  

There are a million ways you can change your story. But you will quickly find out what tweaks help you to tell the best stories.

Sometimes, even if your story sucked, people would say “That was a good story” to make you feel better. The point is, don’t just take their word for it, watch what they do. Their reactions tend to be less filtered.