If you master the art of storytelling, you’ll never have to worry about your marketing ad spend again. You’ll be able to spin up an ironclad storytelling digital marketing campaign in two days and see results almost immediately.
But, to get to that point, you must master the following:
- You need to know your audience’s position before crafting your story.
- You’ll need to weed out boring or irrelevant points or anecdotes.
- Pay attention to how your audience reacts as you’re telling your story.
- Realizing that stories, by definition, are not lectures and so should be emotional, to some extent.
- Understanding that audience size makes a difference.
Understand Your Audience’s Position Before You Craft a Story
Whether you’re traveling around giving speeches around the country or talking to a wide variety of clients, it’s important to make adjustments both big and small to your story that best suit the audience you’re talking to.
Some might say that it’s most productive to try and push the limits and boundaries of your audience, but that’s not really the case. You’re not trying to get them to think way outside their box most of the time.
Instead, you want them to focus on your overall message of your story, or if it’s for business purposes, you want to persuade them to work with you or whatever it is you’re telling them the story for.
One factor you’ll want to consider when adjusting your story for different audiences is age. This is especially important for stories that might contain slightly inappropriate or graphic details that are fine for adults, but not fine for kids.
Inappropriate content isn’t the only thing you need to worry about with different age groups. You also need to consider what parts of your story they will or won’t understand, especially when it comes to vocabulary.
For example, if you had a story that involved your work, an adult audience would likely understand what a 401k was. This would not be the case, say, with a group of middle schoolers, so you might have to skirt around it or explain it very simply.
You can also consider things like geographic differences. If you’ve always lived in the same area your whole life, you might have to explain certain details a little bit when you’re talking to people from other states or countries.
It can be simple things like names of stores or restaurants. Certain chains only exist in certain states or regions, and someone from outside that region wouldn’t know what you’re talking about without you specifying.
There might also be cultural differences that you ought to explain when going from region to region. If you lived in an area growing up where hunting was common, you would want to explain that it was common when speaking somewhere else.
Explaining these kinds of details and adjusting your story for a variety of audiences can help ensure that you have a smooth performance anywhere. It does require some research on each different area, but once you understand them, you’ll be fine.
Weeding Out Boring and Irrelevant Points When Storytelling
There’s nothing more frustrating for an audience member listening to a story than when the storyteller goes on and on about something that’s totally irrelevant to the overall story. It feels like a waste of time, and it’s annoying.
If you want to be able to captivate your audience, you need to be able to keep their attention throughout your whole story, which means you’re going to need to remove parts of your story that are boring or irrelevant.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to map out your story visually. You can have one main path that’s the primary plot line of your story that runs from the very start directly to the very end.
Naturally, you’ll have little offshoots throughout the story where you deviate off, if only slightly to give more context and background information on the topic. You can visualize these as little paths that go off of the main path, but circle back onto it.
If your side paths don’t actually really connect back to the main path, you either have to change it up so that they become more relevant to the main story, or remove them altogether. These deviations are pretty useless if they don’t return to the main point.
Irrelevant points usually occur when you start giving context about something but end up just telling a whole separate mini story about it, because you think it’s of some interest, or it’s funny to you. This really just detracts from the main part of the message.
It’s a bit more difficult to pick out what parts of a story are boring than it is to find points that are irrelevant. Being boring is largely subjective, and something that might be interesting to you could be boring to an audience, and vice versa.
You should consider how the part of the story you think might be boring affects things like pacing and tone. You don’t want to include lengthy technical explanations while you’re trying to build up tension for something.
Some parts of your story that are boring might still be essential for you to tell the story properly. In this case, you need to either adjust where that part of the story is told, or alter it so that it’s more interesting.
Getting rid of an unnecessary or boring point in your story can benefit you greatly as a storyteller and will have your audience more intrigued and more focused, meaning that your points are going to come across more clearly.
Watch for Audience Reactions When Storytelling for Improvements
When you’re presenting a story in front of a large audience, you might be focusing mostly on your own movements as well as the story itself. Most people do this because they’re nervous about messing up, and want to put most of their attention towards that.
However, if you can get to a point where moving correctly and telling the story correctly come naturally to you, you can focus on audience reactions instead, which are very important and can give you tons of helpful information.
By paying close attention to the looks on the faces of the people in the audience, you can sort of get a feel for how they’re reacting to your story. This tends to be a very genuine reaction at that, because they’re usually not expecting you to look at them.
If you were to ask someone after you presented your story what they thought of it, they would likely tell you that it was great, just because there’s social pressure to give you that compliment.
That might not be the case, though, as they might have been looking tired or distracted throughout the entirety of your story. This is a sign that you need to change your storytelling style up.
This method isn’t just useful for adjustments after the fact, though. Midway through a presentation, you might realize that you’re starting to lose the audience, and can adjust things like your tone and energy level to reel them back in.
You should always consider other things like time of day when trying to read audience reactions to your presentation. Sometimes if an audience appears tired or people are yawning, it can be due to the time of day.
For example, if you’re telling a long story to a large audience right after lunch, chances are a lot of them are going to look tired because they’ve just probably eaten large meals, even if they are interested in what you’re saying.
A big thing to look out for is whether they’re really looking at you. Even if someone is physically tired, they’re going to still look right at you and watch you present. Someone who isn’t interested is going to be looking more around the room.
Try to be able to adapt your storytelling style on the fly to best fit the situation you find yourself in with the reactions of an audience. There’s no shame to be had in trying to make your presentation more exciting if it seems like you’re starting to lose people.
Incorporate A Wide Range of Emotions in Each Story
A mistake you might be prone to making early on is limiting yourself to one primary emotion when telling a story. You don’t have to make your entire story all funny or all sad, but instead you can use many throughout.
The reason some people try to limit themselves is that they don’t want to mess with the tone of the overall story. If the main plot point in the story is sad, they don’t want to include funny parts because they think it will throw the audience off.
In reality, it’s quite the opposite. Focusing on one emotion alone can make your story seem stale very quickly. Being able to contrast the happy times with the sad parts makes each of those emotions stronger in your audience.
If you talk about great times you had with a friend and lead into them passing away, it would be so much more impactful for your audience because you set up how devastating it was for you, instead of just being sad about it up to that point.
When you learn how to utilize the variety of emotions that you can incorporate into your story, you can then really put your audience on an emotional rollercoaster. They’re going to be much more invested and emotionally attached to your story this way.
It’s typically a good idea to have a primary emotion that you want to use, but also to have a bunch of secondary emotions that support the main one. For example, if you were telling a generally happy story, angry or sad moments can help with contrast.
Humor is always a great emotion to evoke out of an audience. Even if the story as a whole isn’t funny, a little bit of humor thrown in can make your audience feel more comfortable and make you seem more relatable if the joke clicks with them.
Angering stories can often be used as a sort of call-to-arms, bringing attention to major issues by riling up the audience and getting them passionate about something that they otherwise wouldn’t have paid much attention to.
Both happy and sad stories tend to be used more to engrain a story in your audience’s mind. They can serve some purpose, but usually really happy stories and sad stories make them remember your story well.
By mastering the use of emotion in your stories, you’re going to be able to make a deep connection with your audience. When you learn to use multiple emotions, you’ll keep your audience on the edge of their seat throughout the whole story.
Storytelling Tips for Different Audience Sizes
When you’re telling stories, you aren’t always going to be talking to the same audience of the same size. Sometimes you may be talking in front of a large auditorium full of people, but sometimes it might be a one-on-one with someone.
Depending on what kind of audience you’re talking to, there are different ways you might have to act or different things you should do to best fit that audience size. By perfecting these mannerisms, you’ll be able to quickly adjust for different audiences.
When you’re in a one-on-one with someone, and you’re telling them a story, you need to pay attention very closely to their reactions. In a large audience, there might be a variety of reactions and responses to parts of the story, but with one person it’s much different.
The way that individual responds can dictate every part of how you should tell the story to maximize their enjoyment or engagement with it. There’s a lot less wiggle room with only one person than there is with a big audience.
In small groups, you still have to act a bit differently. In a small group, it’s important to try to give everyone a bit of eye contact, so that everyone feels included. In front of a large audience, you can’t really tell who you’re looking at, so it’s less important.
Since smaller groups can tell when you are and aren’t looking towards them really easily, being sure to constantly bounce around looking at different people is helpful. Try looking right between people’s eyebrows to feign eye contact if you’re nervous.
In small crowds or one-on-one interactions, you can involve your audience a lot directly, too. You can field questions to them about their experiences with anything similar to what you’re talking about. In a large crowd, though, you don’t want to do that.
Large crowds are certainly intimidating, but you might find that they’re actually a lot easier to talk to. Once you get over the initial stage fright, it feels less personal because there’s so many people in front of you.
In a smaller group you tend to be able to read every single expression and are having to be close to everyone in the room, but up on a big stage, you can’t really tell who’s who easily, and it doesn’t feel nearly as nerve wracking.
In large audiences, it’s important to be a bit more active physically when telling the story, because you’re going to want the people all the way in the back to still be able to see some activity and interaction from you.
When you’re close to someone physically, you don’t need to exaggerate movements at all, since they can see everything you’re doing. People sitting all the way in the back of an auditorium, though, need that bit of exaggeration.
