• The Structure of Stories

The iconic chef Julia Child may have said, “If you need recipes, you’ll never be a great chef. All you need is principles of cooking.” I feel the same way about the structure of storytelling: if you need a storytelling template, a rigid structure with ordained elements, you’ll never be a great storyteller.

You can certainly find storytelling templates. You can learn about structural design distinctions, like sequential, categorical, hierarchical, and chronological. Good luck to you! My eyes are already bleeding. I don’t think like that.

No template will cause you to discover your own capacity to enchant, your own voice, your own creative spirit, your own confidence, your own vision. These make storytelling vivid, compelling, and powerful. You’ve got to find these in yourself. You’ve got to develop your own style of storytelling, which includes the structure of your stories. There is no one-size-fits-all. If you don’t want to put in the work to find these within yourself, go work for a bank.

For the sake of clarity, let me say again that I use the word “story” as the word-holder for kinds of stories, genres of stories: sermon, speech, presentation, lecture, talk, workshop. Whether I am giving a one-hour “talk” or a two-day “workshop” or participating on a “panel discussion,” I consider all of them to be a story, within which I will tell lots of little stories. However, the structure of each story, whether big or small, does depend on which genre you’re working in. In my Speaking Truthfully “Speak for Effect” master class, I show people how to use “the flight plan,” which is a clarifying and organizing tool for developing the kinds of stories they need to create. It’s a very flexible and useful tool which allows storytellers to be wildly inventive and creative and original, while providing just enough structure and shape to be a story, not a mishmash of nonsense. (more…)

• What Is a Story?

A story is essentially an account of people, animate or inanimate things, and events — whether real or imagined. Synonyms for story include: talk, lecture, presentation, performance, speech, anecdote, gossip. They are all stories, but the high-grade, high-impact stories are purposeful, with a theme and point (or moral) and lush landscapes and emotive music and thrilling adventures and a cast of characters and suspense and fun and, yes, maybe even romance — intended to produce a particular effect in the minds, hearts, or souls of the audience. Commonly thought to define “story” are fairy tales and tall tales or white lies — but they are genres of story, just as drama and comedy are genres of film. In my view, all types of oral expression are genres of story: academic lectures, political speeches, religious oratory, business presentations, stand-up comedy, commencement addresses, soapbox diatribes, poetry slams — even marriage proposals.

With this in mind, it can now be revealed (cue drum roll): every time we open our mouths, we tell a story. We are all storytellers, all the time. Period.

Stories can be short and succinct, or long and convoluted. Weighing in at a mere eight words is the story told by defense attorney Johnny Cochran in the infamous O. J. Simpson murder trial in 1995: “If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit.” Famed Spanish painter Salvador Dalí once stood before an audience and said nine words, “I will be so brief, I have already finished.” Then he sat down. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19,1863 in Gettysburg PA, consisted of 272 words, and took three minutes to say. (OMG, would that he could come back and school today’s politicians!) (more…)