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Storytelling
The mark of an expert conversationalist is to be able to become an effective storyteller.
Human beings, by default, are enrapt by stories, or more specifically, a story-arc. Politicians use them to campaign, teachers use them to explain important concepts, comedians use them to make us laugh, and we use them constantly in our day-to-day interactions.
But what you probably didn’t notice is that the best communicators you know are fantastic story-tellers.
The Story Arc
Have you ever had a friend who would start telling you about something and it just seemed to go no where? Like, they’d start telling you about their trip to Chicago and after describing the hotel and maybe mentioning the concierge, the story just went no where?
Or have you ever known someone who consistently makes jokes that don’t completely make sense, or most people don’t ever seem to “get it?”
Or maybe you’re one of these people… Do people ever stop paying attention to you mid-story? Or do you have trouble making others laugh (intentionally, that is)?
Chances are, these people (or you), aren’t following a strong story arc. For whatever reason, humans have evolved to be absolutely fascinated when information is communicated in a certain pattern. This is true of just about any culture and background.
There are three main points of a story arc:
Set Up: The set up is exactly what it says, you’re setting the scene or the context for what you’re about to say. It’s the foundation of what’s about to be told, and if you don’t set up properly, then your stories, jokes and ideas will always seem to be random. People will consistently comment that you’re really random, weird or “off the wall.”
Content/Conflict: After setting up what you’re going to talk about, you get into the actual content. This can also be the “conflict” in your story. Whatever it is, it’s something that causes tension and expectancy. The content of your story needs to be intriguing and hook people into wanting to know what will happen next. If you don’t build much tension with the content of your stories, you will find people losing interest or get the feeling like you ramble on a lot.
Resolution: The resolution releases the tension from the conflict or content. Resolutions can come in forms of punchlines (for jokes), conclusions (for ideas), or just closure for a generic story. People who don’t resolve their stories and ideas well will often get blank stares when they’re finished speaking, or people asking them, “Yeah, and…?” not realizing that the story is finished.
When I was in college, my first roommate had a funny habit whenever he got drunk. He’d basically turn into a narcoleptic — he’d spontaneously fall asleep in strange places and at random moments. (Set up)
Well, literally the first night I knew this guy, he and I go out to some orientation party. We meet a couple girls and go back to their dorm with them. He and I are totally drunk and I notice he’s kind of stopped talking to his girl and is dozing off in the corner. Kind of weird, but it was like 3AM, so whatever. Suddenly, he says he’s going to go and gets up and leaves. I think nothing of it until I go home, wake up the next morning and he’s still not back. Hours pass and I start getting worried. (Content/Conflict)
It turns out that the guy went out into the hallway lobby, laid down on the floor and slept there the whole night. But not only that, he left his jacket in the girl’s room. So at like 9 in the morning he had to sneak back in, wake her up and take his jacket back. It was pretty hilarious at the time. But yeah, that was my college roommate. (Resolution)
Often adding a line like, “Yeah, that was my college roommate,” is good because it indicates that the story is finished and that you’re finished speaking.
I knew I wasn’t meant for the 9 to 5 world almost immediately. Out of college, I took a nice job at a prestigious bank in downtown Boston. (Setup)
I hated it from day one. In fact, I remember thinking about three hours into the first day, “I wonder how long I have to work here before I can leave?” (Conflict/Content)
My next thought was, “This is probably a bad sign.” (Resolution)
Notice that I allude to the conclusion in the beginning of my story. This is called “foreshadowing” and often helps people follow along. Also notice that it really doesn’t matter how long or short each component of the story is as long as you convey the correct information.
When most people talk about a crazy city, I don’t think they’ve ever been to South America. I lived down there for a few months last Spring and you see things every week that are just beyond our reality here. (Setup)
Like one night, we hopped in a cab to go to another night club. It was a Tuesday at about 4am. The taxi driver promptly turns around and asks us if we’d like to try some of his cocaine. We politely refuse. So the cabbie says in Spanish, “Fine, more for me.” He then proceeds to do lines of coke while driving 50mph with his knees. (Content/Conflict)
We all thought we were going to die that night. (Resolution)
All true stories by the way… At the end of this step, I will provide a lot of similar exercises to this for you to practice your storytelling. When I meet guys with poor conversational abilities, storytelling is almost always a glaring reason why.
Integrating Stories into Conversation
In the last section, we talked about “jump off points” in conversation and how that’s how we learn to relate to one another in conversation. The examples showed jump off points in individual sentences.
Well, in real life, people speak in more than sentences, they speak to each other in stories. So you’ll want to develop the ability to formulate entire STORIES around jump off points, as well as notice jump off points within entire stories.
This is actually much easier than it sounds, and you probably do it naturally with your friends and family in a lot of situations. The idea is to just do it consistently and naturally and with ANYBODY, including attractive women.
We’ve put together some in-depth exercises to complete Step 5 for you to practice just that.
What I’ve also noticed working with guys over the years, is that for those with trouble with conversation skills and storytelling, it takes quite a bit of practice for them. So if this is your particular problem area, you may want to continue to do the exercises while moving on through the program.
3 Responses to “Storytelling”
Tac Kit Diep says:
December 13, 2010 at 1:16 pm
structuring your life stories in that manner takes some time, again, bad habits are not easily removed out of your brain.
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Kevin says:
March 17, 2011 at 7:50 pm
I’ve heard people say to get good at storytelling, but this is the best breakdown of i’ve personally seen of it
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Hudson says:
July 9, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Wow, that’s really well explained. Thank you Mark.
Set up
Conflict/Content
Resolution
Then add: ‘ Yeah, that was my … ‘
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