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DO EVERYTHING BETTER IN 2008
By Megan Malugani
1 KEEP IT SIMPLE. “A story doesn’t have to be a huge epic or Shakespearean drama. Everyday events can be compelling stories for people,” Strauss says. “In terms of choosing your stories, the things that are the most personal are the most universal. We’ve all faced challenges at work, or if we’re parents, challenges raising kids.”
2 KEEP YOUR CAST OF CHARACTERS SMALL. When you’re telling a story, you have one shot at getting your point across and you don’t want to confuse your listeners. Include only a handful of characters who are easy to delineate (like the bear, the wolf, and the rabbit in Aesop’s Fables), Strauss says. “If you have five brothers and sisters, it may be hard to tell a story that involves them all at the same time. People telling personal stories will sometimes combine characters,” Strauss says.
3 GO SCRIPTLESS. Consider using the same words for the beginning and ending of your story. But don’t memorize the rest of the story. Writing your story out and memorizing it is a “recipe for disaster,” Strauss says. “If you forget part of it, the whole rest of the story will disappear in your brain. You lose one link and the whole thing goes.”
4 CHANGE IT UP. A story that is all humor becomes a stand-up comedy routine, while a story that is 100 percent serious seems more like a church sermon, Strauss says. A good story includes both elements—something storytellers call “emotional diversity.” “That way you can say something that is serious but humor makes it easier for people to listen and enjoy it.”
5 AVOID BRAGGING. AND PREACHING. People like funny stories that are self-deprecating, but easily tire of stories of the “I’m great and look at how many great things I did” variety. And the same goes for preaching. “If you have a story with a moral, you never want to say what the moral is. The quickest way to turn off any listener is to tell them what they should think about the story. If it is a good story, the moral is already in there.”
6 PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Practice your story in front of the mirror. If you’re starting to get bored with it after a few tellings, give the story up; you won’t engage your audiences in your story unless you’re excited about telling it. If you decide to stick with it, Strauss says that “stories get better the more you tell them.” Doing a story a couple of times with a live audience will teach you what works and what doesn’t, and you can keep tweaking your story to perfection, Strauss says.
For more storytelling tips, visit Strauss’s website at www.naturestory.com.