Storytelling Basics: 7 Powerful Steps to Telling Great Stories!

Over time, the greatest speakers and teachers have illuminated their lessons by telling powerful stories. Storytelling is a great way to engage your audience and show them how your topic, point, or lesson specifically relates to them. Unfortunately, not everyone is born a great storyteller, and some stories are better than others. Follow these 7 steps to tell great stories every time!

1. Know your audience and make sure your story is appropriate

When telling stories, it is very important to know who you are telling them to and to get an idea of ​​how they might react to them. Age group, professional level and culture are extremely important factors; make sure your story is appropriate for your audience. Even when you’re telling a “tried and true” story, what might be appropriate and fun for one group might be off-putting and unacceptable to another. Be careful when choosing the subject of your story and the language you use to convey it.

2. make your story relatable

Story themes should be broad enough that anyone can relate to them. This tactic is also used in stand-up comedy. The funniest comedians take everyday situations that everyone experiences and take them lightly. This is what makes a good story. It has a plot that everyone can relate to, a theme that is simple, direct, and illustrative of the lesson. If you’ve chosen the right story and delivered it correctly, you’ll see the light bulbs go off over the heads of your listeners. If you have to say, “I guess I had to be there,” you haven’t told a clear and effective story!

3. Write your story when you first introduce it and cut it in half.

I’ve seen too many speakers go and talk about things where I just want to stand up and yell, “Can you make this long story short?” When you plan to tell a story for the first time, write it the way you want to present it, and then cut it in half. Remember the KISS philosophy: keep it short and simple. Give us the nuts and bolts and nothing else. Sometimes storytellers get wrapped up in details, usually because they experienced the situation and find those details relevant. But usually the details of what you were wearing at the time and where you bought that outfit don’t add to the lesson or the plot of the story.

4. Have a clear link between your story and your lesson.

A story is only worth telling if it has an obvious link to the subject being taught. We all know from common conversation how annoying it is to hear someone’s long story only to wonder at the end why it was shared. Effective speakers have a very clear link between the moral of their stories and the topic at hand. If this link is missing, the story is useless and your listeners wonder what it was for.

5. Engage your listener by engaging the senses

A good storyteller engages all of our senses. We could hear you tell a funny story about ice cream, and that will be nice, but what if you could make us taste that ice cream, feel its creamy consistency on our tongues, visualize the mess that has been made all over your face like a child, etc. That’s what will make your story great and memorable.

6. Be aware of audience cues when telling your story

As a speaker, you should always be attentive to the response of the audience. The attentive speaker will always know when the audience is losing interest and will make appropriate changes to the presentation of the story, the language used, the theme, or even the final moral or joke. Different audiences will not always react in the same way to the same story. No matter how well you do your homework, you can still run into trouble. Be flexible and have a backup plan if your story doesn’t go as well as you planned.

7. Convey your story with some feeling!

The key to an amazing story is in its delivery. A passionate storyteller will get a much more enthusiastic response from listeners than a bored one! Use variations in pitch, volume, and intonation to make the story interesting to listen to. Be sure to pause at the right times for dramatic effect and to draw your audience in with mystique and emotion.

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