Many of you would love to hold the attention of a crowded audience, a classroom, or just a group of your friends by telling them a great story. You have felt the pressure of a public presentation or the disappointment of a story that is ignored and you are ready for more.
Always ask, why do you want to tell it?
Storytellers tell specific stories for a certain reason. Some want to scare the kids around the campfire. Others want to impress the friends with their exploits. You are trying to make someone cheer, or make them cry, or send them a message. Be sure to know why you are telling it. Know what it is about, something might be much more important, and then you can show everybody else what it is about. Find that invisible leash that ties you to the story. It really matters.
Plot is the rout you should choose on a story map
A story is so much more than the thing you might think it is. You should lay down a map, that map has a host of possibilities, though sights are unseen. Turns are unexpected. The plot is just the course- plot upon this map. It is a sequence of events, of turns and landmarks. Your story should go beyond simple sequence. Your story should be about what you will experience and about who you will meet. You have to imagine whole story, the characters, the time, the feel, the context as the world. Trouble lies in conflating story with plot. Nevertheless, it is very easy to do.
On the subject of originality
As a storyteller you will find no original plots. But original stories are limitless. They are like flowers on our planet. Go surf the net and you will discover that you have no idea about all species —the same flowers that everyone knows. But how you use them is where it gets interesting. Plot is flower garden. You care about them- that’s a story!
The span between you and audience
The audience wants to feel connection to the story. They want to see themselves inside your story. The story draws a line between the audience and the storyteller— you are letting them see into you and they are unknowingly finding you inside them.
Effect above entertainment
People love to be entertained. A good story entertains but a great story knows that it has in its arsenal the ability to do much more. The best stories make a person feel something. They come along with your emotions. They make you form certain impression about places and characters and concepts that don’t exist and will never exist. The way a story harangues people with happiness, stabs them with sadness, runs through the gauntlet of rage and jealousy and denial and undergo-shellacking lust and fear is equal to none. Anybody can entertain. A juggler entertains. A storyteller should make people feel something. You should make people give a damn when they have no good reason to do so. Entertainment is not the last stop on the story train. You must become a master of manipulation.
In A Story, Tell Only the Story
The story you tell should be the story you tell. Don’t have to go far afield. That’s not to say you can’t digress. Digressions are their own kind of peak or, in many cases, valley. But those digressions serve the whole. Lines which come together to form a pattern, a shirt, a blanket, a hilarious novelty welcome mat. Only those lines which serve the end are woven into play. Deviations – no. Digressions- yes.
Great ideas do well in small space
The audience cannot relate to big ideas. Such ideas are, well, too big. You should go from big to small. Big ideas are shown through small stories: a single character’s experience through the story is so much better than the 10,000 foot view.
Take skin off bones to see how it should work
A story may be cut to a thin slice of steak and still sound interesting as anything. To learn how to tell stories, tell small stories as well as large ones. Find a way to tell your story in as few beats as you can. Look for its constituent parts. Put them together and take them apart. See how it lays and plays. Some limbs are undeveloped.
If you jump too fast into very depth of water your audience will drown
Don’t jump too fast into a narrative otherwise story will be confusing. You have to become invested first. Go all high -action and your audience won’t get any context for the characters that are in danger, and no context means they don’t care, and if they don’t care then they are already packing their bags in the first three minutes. The audience always needs something very early to get their mind feed. That always comes back to the character. Give your audience reason to care right from the start. Otherwise, why would they walk through it?
Characters should be the vehicle to carry audience into/ through the story
The best story is the story of people, and this means it is people/ character which gets audience through the story. They are Wave Runners and the dune buggies on which the audience rides. Above all else, your story should have interesting characters, characters who the audience can see themselves in, even if only in a small way. If you fail that, what the point will be?
No story survives a vacuum of conflict
Conflict is the “nutrient” that feeds the audience. It is a main spicy ingredient. A story without conflict is a story without sense. As a storyteller you should have truly profound powers, though: you have to create conflict in the audience by driving them forward with mystery, by making them feel a battle of emotions, by angering them. The storyteller operates best when he is a little bit of an investigator.
Backstory is a frozen pond; its ice is too thin
Backstory in narrative is sometimes a grim necessity, but it is better to approach it like a lake of thin ice. Take quick and delicate steps across to get to the other side. Lingering too long or growing heavy in the telling will crack the ice and you will plunge into the frigid depths.
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