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Here is the scenario. You are sitting in an unassuming corner of the room and allowing everyone else to talk.
You wait for a pause in the conversation, and then, in a quiet voice — but loud enough to be heard — say, “I have a story to tell you.”
That’s the secret.
Telling a story. That’s all you have to do to capture the audience.
Keeping control is another matter. It will depend on the strength of your story and the skill and generosity with which you tell it.
Tell the story well, but don’t perform it. Tell it with great care, great involvement, great vulnerability, and great sensuality.
The story shouldn’t be like a spotlight shining on you; it should be like a gift you’re giving the listeners.
Giving gifts is how you take over the room, and the best gifts are stories.
The reason that stories are so appealing is that you can transport customers into the story and give your message more meaning.
Here are 12 ways to create a story that will permit you to hold onto the audience you have captured.
Parts to a story
Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your story.
Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development.
Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.
Build on your experience
To tell great stories, examine your life for times, places, and perspectives nobody else had.
Where do you find material for storytelling?
Draw from your experiences and look inside yourself.
Rely on what you know and draw from it. Capture a thought, truth from your experience, and express values from deep down in your core.
When you tell about these experiences, make it is as if your audience were there.
Good stories are largely an act of curation. The greats detect stories as they move through life and then pull them together in ways that make us stop and think.
In ways, that inspire.
Whenever you write an article or record a video, speak or write authentically, from the heart. Don’t worry about what people will think.
Whether you swear like a sailor or are as clean-cut as they come, whether you are reserved and quiet or as intense as a Navy SEAL instructor, use your personality and style whenever you share your message.
Attention-grabbing … create a strong theme
A strong theme is always running through a well-told story.
The theme is often not stated directly in the story, but it is the essence or the core idea at the story root.
A clear sense of your theme or controlling idea keeps you from trying to throw too many ideas into one story.
Attention-grabbing statements … create a challenge or conflict
Good stories are about challenge or conflict. Without these elements, stories aren’t very interesting. In its most basic form, a story is about someone who wants something, and either gets it or does not.
That character’s desire brings out the conflict that moves a story forward. The appearance of the conflict is the beginning; the resolution is its ending.
The compelling part of a story is how people deal with conflict–-so start with the people and the conflict.
Make it hard to separate the challenges from the characters.
Start working on your ending as soon as possible
Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle.
Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
Capture attention … construct anticipation
Raise questions. Provide the “bait.” The anecdote should raise a question right from the beginning.
Implied in any question that you raise, however, is that you are going to answer it. Constantly raise questions and answer them.
The shape of the story is that you are throwing out questions and answering them along the way.
Attention-grabbing statements … give characters personality and opinions
Give your characters a unique personality and opinions on various topics. What is your character good at, comfortable with?
Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them.
How do they deal? Personalities add greatly to the stories.
How to capture attention in a speech … tap into your audience’s emotions
Whenever I can listen to the best storytellers capturing their audience, I am struck by their power to pull listeners in. It is much like a gravitational force that’s impossible to resist.
The best way to pull your audience in is to make them care … emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically.
But how do you make the audience care? This is the most fundamental question of all.
There is no single answer. One important answer is having empathy for your audience and trying to craft your story and design your content always with the audience in mind.
Stories in all their many forms are never just about transferring information alone. We are emotional beings.
To make the audience care enough to listen to you, you have to evoke their emotion.
Build mystery and surprise
A well-told story is one where you can stop at any point and have the reader wonder “….and then what happened?”
Each time a piece of the mystery is solved, another one appears.
That’s what keeps us listening until we reach the ending.
If you find yourself struggling at times, step back and find some mystery.
Use language to show and not tell
Show and don’t depend just on telling. Intensify the story with vivid language and intonation. Tap into people’s emotions with language.
Use metaphors, idioms, and parables that have emotional associations.
“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.” – Ernest Hemingway
Show creativity
Be creative. Create a storyboard; draw it out. A good story always has ups and downs, so “arc” the story.
Pull people along, and introduce tension. Make it just like in a fairy tale.
There should be nothing that is standard fare. Focus on making it always creatively unique.
Employ curiosity at the end
Great stories pull readers past the obvious (but wrong) to show them the profound.
You don’t have to beat people over the head with your message, nor do you need always to make your message painfully obvious.
This is not about being vague or unclear. It is about letting the audience work on their own a little to figure things out.
Always create some curiosity.
That’s one of your jobs as one who creates a story. We’re born problem solvers. We’re compelled to deduce and to deduct.
That’s what we do in real life. It’s this well-organized absence of information that draws us in.
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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics that relate to improving the performance of a business.
Go to Amazon to obtain a copy of his latest book, Exploring New Age Marketing. It focuses on using the best examples to teach new age marketing … lots to learn. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
12 Lessons from Ben and Jerrys Marketing Strategies
10 Examples of How Zappos Marketing Strategy Makes a Difference
2 Ultimate Social Media Campaigns to Stimulate Learning
13 Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study
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