3 Simple Tips To Stop Struggling With Your Stories

3 Simple Tips To Stop Struggling With Your Stories

Here is a confession for you: I used to be horrible at telling stories. Here are three tips I have learned to stop struggling with your stories – that make story-telling much more fun – and successful!

Transcript

Greetings, Dr. Stephie here. I’d like to make a confession, and that is, I used to be horrible at telling stories. I would start a story with a pretty clear vision of where I was going with that story, but then I would get tangled with details inside stories. Then pretty soon, the people I wanted to tell the story to would secretly look for the nearest exit.  (Oh no!)

Three Simple Tips

I’d like to give you three simple tips for stopping struggling with stories. 

Tip number one is I’ve learned that every story pretty much has really three parts. 

  1. There’s the beginning part where you’re talking about a situation and the character in that situation. 
  2. Then the battle begins. What is the struggle that this character is going through? 
  3. Then the third part is the resolution. That’s where you find out whether the story has a happy ending in it or not. In any case, there probably are some lessons that were learned along the way.

The second tip is to keep it moving. Cut out the unnecessary detail because the story gets too long, and you will lose your listener’s attention. 

Number three is to make them feel like they’re with you in that story. As a scientist, that was not really something I was used to doing. Don’t just describe the facts and what exactly happened, but give them the smells, the sights, the feelings – something that makes them feel like they’re there with you. 

In summary, the three tips:

  1. There are three parts to every good story.
  2. Keep it moving.
  3. Make them feel like there are there with you.

Happy story-telling!

I’m Curious

What are your experiences with story-telling?

2 Comments

  1. Jacquelyn on at

    Love your graphic today.
    My experience – I have a tendency to make my stories too long



    • Stephie Althouse on at

      Yes, me, too – unless I am quite conscious of not doing that!