How to tell a good story

The most important skill in life.

Storytelling is maybe the most important skill set for anyone to have. You want to be good at dating? Be good at telling stories.

You want to be a successful sales person? Be good at telling stories.

You want to run a company? Be good at telling stories.

You want to make interesting art? Tell a good story.

Being funny? It’s actually just being a good storyteller.

It is the core to everything in life. It’s THE thing that separates amazing people from mediocre people. Looks fade. Story telling ability doesn’t.

Now, life experience obviously helps with storytelling. Like if you have lived an interesting life then you should have more material to weave into good stories. But you’d be surprised at how many exceptions there are to this. There are people who have traveled the world and can’t make it interesting at all and there are also people who have never left their hometown and can have everyone on the edge of their seats as they describe their walk home from the grocery store.

Now I’m not going to claim I am the best storyteller in the world, but I know what makes a bad story. So here are some rules that can help you out for being better at storytelling.

Is the story worth telling?

Not everything that is interesting to you is interesting to everyone. It’s important to first assess if the story is a story at all. If someone were not you, would they care about this? This is important to examine because having an issue with your laundry machine or forgetting your keys or whatever may have been an event in your day, might just be a you thing. General rule is if it is something that happened online, leave it online. It just doesn’t translate to IRL.

Don’t get hung up on the details.

So last Wednesday. No wait, Tuesday. No… wait… yeah, Tuesday. I was walking up 7th ave. Sorry, 6th ave. You see? Ruins the whole thing. Don’t give people a bunch of distracting details.

Create characters.

People don’t remember names. Pronouns are hard to follow “he walked away and then he got mad” WHO?! Tell people something interesting about the person to make the character stick. Don’t tell a story about Dave. Tell a story about the fat guy at your work or your friend who is obsessed with Magic the Gathering. Tell a characteristic about them and it will be way easier to follow. They did a study on this and tested if someone introduced as Mr. Baker or if someone introduced as a baker was more memorable. Result? Tell the story about the baker.

Don’t fret the relationships.

Just say they’re your friend. Even if it’s your older brother’s soccer coach’s son. Just say “my friend.” No one is going to fact check it. They just wanna hear what happened.

Talk about your feelings.

The emotional state is important to put people in your shoes. Were you stressed? Were you surprised? Were you confused? Put that in the story. Put the viewer right in your mind. Makes it more fun if they can feel what you feel.

Misdirect.

A story isn’t good if you can see the end coming from a mile away. Lead ‘em one way then take ‘em another. Treat it like a ride. The most fun thing about telling a story is that you know what’s going to happen and they don’t. The most fun part about hearing a story is that you don’t know what is going to happen next.

Do the accent.

This one is a little controversial. If you want to play it safe, just do accents of people with the same skin color as you. But accents in a story are fun. Even if you’re bad at them. Even if it’s a little offensive. If someone in the story has an accent, just go for it.

Don’t make yourself look cool.

This is such an important one. If the story is about how you charmed some beautiful girl or kicked som guys ass who thought he’d try you. It’s lame. You don’t have to be the butt of the joke in the story but you can’t be the cool guy hero either. No one wants to hear about your quick witty comeback that totally put them someone in their place or how you saved the day. If you really did something that great, other people will tell the story. So just sit back and wait for that to happen.

Anyways, there are lot more dos and donts than this. What did I miss?

I hope you learn to tell good stories and get everything you ever dreamed of in life.

Bye! ✌️

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Note: This is an excerpt from Uncynical #38, a post I wrote over a year ago when I didn’t have any subscribers. So apologies if it looked familiar. I just came across it again and wanted to share it with more people because I liked it. A dip into the archives if you will.