How to Tell A Good Story

We all spin yarns and tales from time to time.  Whether entertaining young people, reciting family histories, crafting the "How I got here" response to any inquiry, or building a company, department or growth opportunity.

Stories are the fabric of our lives - they entertain, educate, distract and comfort.

Today I'm re-posting some story telling tidbits from various places around the web, and would love to hear from you - your favorite story, if you want to share in the comments, or email me on the contact page!

Stay tuned for The Little Vicar, an online illustrated story that will grace our pages in 2016.

How to tell a Good Story

From FORBES for Business readers: Kristi Hedges, CONTRIBUTOR

http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2013/12/11/how-to-tell-a-good-story/

Stories grab us. They take us in, transport us, and allow us to live vicariously and visually through another’s experience. As I’ve said often in my work around presence, shared stories accelerate interpersonal connection. Learning to tell stories to capture, direct and sustain the attention of others is a key leadership skill. Storytelling also greatly helps anyone speaking or presenting in front of an audience.
Yet, as much as we love to hear the stories of others, in my research I’ve found that most people don’t consider themselves good storytellers. I will often hear reasons such as:

• I never think of it
• I tend to ramble and lose the point
• I have a hard time gauging interest
• I am never sure how much detail to use
• I don’t have good stories to share

But just because something is uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Learning to tell stories with confidence is worth the effort. As I wrote about here, there’s a good reason. We retain stories far longer than data, and have evolved to listen and learn from them. Stories underpin cultures of companies, organizations, and entire countries. New people learn what to do and how to assimilate though hearing the stories of others.
The same can be said for anecdotes, which are basically short stories. A Stanford research study showed that statistics alone have a retention rate of 5-10%, but when coupled with anecdotes, the retention rate rises to 65-70%.
The reality is that many of us don’t bother with stories – not because we don’t think they are important – but because we’re not sure how to tell them well. Here are some of my best tips for how to embrace the amazing storyteller that lies within all of us.
1. Keep a log of story content.
It’s much easier to find the right stories if you have a list to go to. Get in the habit of jotting down notes about content that would make for a good story – client wins, challenges, times of perseverance, etc. To get yourself started, spend an hour just thinking about experiences you’ve had where you’ve overcome hardship and made yourself (or others) proud.
Once you make a habit of it, you’ll find that you can get new fodder frequently – which you can tap into when you need it.
2. When you have important points, match them with a story.
One of the most powerful applications of stories in a work setting is for conveying messages that you want to have resonance, from widespread culture changes to personal mentoring. To use stories, you only need to pause, and remember to do so. And check that list you just made.
The next time you find yourself contemplating what words you want to say (an indicator of an important message), also consider what story would help support your points. You’ll find that it will help you communicate your message, and for the listener to hear it.
3. Practice them.
There’s a misperception that great storytellers can whip these yarns out of their hats and deliver with aplomb. The best stories are well-told stories – because they get better with each telling. Whenever someone in my workshops volunteers to tell a good story, it’s one that they’ve told many times before.
If you want to get better at telling any story, start putting it out there for various groups of people. I guarantee you that you’ll learn from each experience. And instead of getting stale, you’ll get better.
One caution: you do want to vary the audiences you tell your stories too. Practicing is important, but you don’t want to be known for telling the same stories to the same people.

From The Heart of Innovation:

 http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2016/04/how_to_tell_a_g_1.shtml
Let's start with the basics: You already know how to tell a good story. You do. You've been telling stories your entire life. Today, you probably told at least a few. And later, tonight, you will probably tell some more -- whether they are merely accounts of your day, a memorable encounter you had at work, or a reminiscence from days gone by.
Story is the ocean we are swimming in. And because it is, we don't necessarily feel wet when we're in it, but we are.
Fish aren't taught to swim. And you aren't taught to tell stories. As a child, you didn't need to be taught. All you needed was to hear them and them tell them to others -- which you did -- everything from The Three Little Pigs toJack and the Beanstalk to the excuses you laid on your teachers for not handing in your homework on time.
Of course, if you had to teach someone how to tell a story in the next ten minutes, you would probably resist because you don't necessarily know how you do it. But just because you don't, doesn't mean you lack the knowledge or the skill. You don't. It's in there. It is.
Storytelling is what psychologists refer to as an "unconscious competence" -- a skill, like walking, eating, or complaining that has become second nature to us. It's in our bones and has been since we were very young. And while you may not be as skillful a storyteller as Garrison Keillor, you don't need to be a Garrison Keillor in order to be a good storyteller. In fact, you don't want to be Garrison Keillor. You want to be yourself. Because being yourself is one of the secrets to being a good storyteller.

Is this just a story I'm telling you -- a way to pump you up and get you past your resistances? No, it's not. Having been a professional communicator for the past 27 years and having worked with thousands of people from just about every industry on planet Earth, I've seen, first hand, the extraordinary, untapped and unexpressed ability people have to go beyond their assumptions of who they are, what they do, and how they do it.
Where to begin? With one simple commitment: To stop telling yourself the story that you don’t know how to tell a good story.
Willing? If so, the rest of this essay is for you. Unwilling? No problem. Either skip the next few paragraphs or take a nap.
Ultimately, there is only one thing you need to know if you want to tell a good story: Storytelling is part art and part science. And of the two, it's more about the art than it is about the science.
Communicating your humanity is the art. The more human you are willing to be (i.e. not perfect, not an expert, not a superhero), the more likely it is that people will connect with your story.
The key to communicating your humanity? Your passion for telling your story, your respect for your audience, your authenticity, your understanding that people will get what they need without you teaching or preaching, and your ability to engage the attention of the people you are telling your story to. All of the preceding requires the right application of eight subtle factors: voice tonality, body language, facial gestures, hand movement, pacing, adapting to the non-verbal cues from your audience, how evocative you are, and the choice of what details to include, embellish, or ignore.
Can these factors be learned? Of course they can -- much in the same way that aspiring actors go to acting class. But the real key to successful storytelling is less about study than it is about practice. The more stories you tell, the better you'll get. It's as simple as that. Real-time, you’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t work and then make the necessary adjustments in order to improve.
The science of telling a good story is much less complicated that you think. Fundamentally, it's about structure and the inter-relationships of the elements that comprise the structure. Just like a house needs a foundation, framing, walls, and a roof if it wants to fulfill its purpose, a story needs structure, too. Once you understand the elements of story structure, you're on your way.
What are those elements? There are five, just like the fingers on the hand you use to make a point.
1. Setting (where your story takes place)
2. Character (the hero/heroine/protagonist who has adventures)
3. Plot (the events that unfold, the arc of what happens) 
4. Conflict (the obstacles the characters encounter)
5. Theme (the resolution of the conflict, what's been learned along the way)
"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

​GO FORTH, MAKE UP STUFF!

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