Beginner's Guide to Storytelling

Key takeaways

• Learn six words, character, want, obstacle, stakes, turning point and point, and you can see why any story works or falls flat.
• Open with a time, a place and something already happening, never with an apology or a promise that the story is hilarious.
• Summarise the dull stretches and slow down into a scene, with one detail or spoken line, for the moment that matters most.
• Finish on what changed and one sentence of point, then stop, because a second ending undoes a story that has already landed.
• Test each story on someone who knows nobody in it, and ask before telling a true story that is partly someone else's.

Inside this bit

1. What turns events into a story

   Most of us tell events, not stories. Events are a list: I went to the pier, the ferry was late, I reached work at ten.

2. Why stories stick when facts slide off

   A fact asks the listener to remember it. A story gives them a reason to.

3. The words storytellers use

   A few terms make stories easier to build and discuss. The character is whoever the story follows, often you.

4. Starting, showing and landing

   Three moves improve almost any story straight away. The first is starting inside a moment.

5. Four mistakes almost every beginner makes

   Weak stories fail in predictable ways. The long run-up is the commonest: minutes of background before anything happens.

6. Practising on newcomers, telling fairly

   Storytelling improves through telling, not reading about it. Choose one story and tell it to three different people over a week, including at least one who knows nobody in it.