20% Of Storytelling Tips, 80% Of Outcome, In 16 Minutes

You're walking with one of your best friends outside when they ask you: "how was your week?"

This is it. This is your big chance to tell a story. You've been learning about storytelling for the past few weeks writing, analyzing films, reading books, listening to podcasts, and now you finally get to implement it.

You take a deep breath. All you have to do is remember the storytelling advice you heard. The storytelling advice you heard... There was so much, which one do you focus on?

There was "focus on character," "hook 'em," "get the plot and structure right," "don't make boring dialogue," "create conflict and suspense," "draw them in," "focus on emotions," and a bajillion more things. Damn. You practically stumble at the intellectual weight of it all.

Looking at your friend, you force a smile and say: "good."

As you likely know, storytelling is one of the most valuable skills you can build. It builds relationships. It helps you make a point with emotion. It builds trust to fuel business outcomes. And so much more.

The problem is getting into storytelling is overwhelming--there are an insane number of tips. I've read countless storytelling books, made 200+ YouTube videos, written 200+ newsletters, and recorded 100+ podcasts--I've told a few stories (and hopefully have gotten decent at it). That's why I made this article: 20% of storytelling tips that account for 80% of the outcome in 16 minutes. These tips work for non-fiction as well as fiction because great storytelling is timeless.

Enjoy.

Start Right Before The Character Get's Mauled By A Bear

I'm walking down the trail with my friend Fionn when we spot a couple thirty feet ahead of us staring off into the woods. They look entranced by something. Glacier National Park will do that to you—Fionn and I have spent two weeks here already and still have so much left to see. The man is staring through a pair of binoculars, and the woman is snapping photos like she's just discovered a unicorn in the underbrush.

The man lowers his binoculars and looks at us. My friend puts his thumbs up to ask, "Are we good to go?" He adopts a radiant smile and waves us over.

As we're walking we hear a branch break to the left, and freeze. We are fifteen feet away from the couple and Fionn whispers, "what is it?"

The man pauses and then says something that sends ice through our veins: "Grizzly bear."

I slowly turn my head to the left, and sure enough, fifteen feet away, in the underbrush, I spot a dark brown shape. It begins moving straight at us. Many thoughts crashed into my head at once. What is my family going to do if I die, what will my friends at Cornell do, my girlfriend? But one thought emerged victorious--I won't let these tourist idiots get us killed.

It's funny, in moments like this the world becomes crystal clear. As soon as the initial shock went away, my brain recruited all of my body parts to act in tandem. I began walking slowly backwards, grabbing my bear spray--which now felt more like a plastic toy--from my bag.

The bear continued to move toward us, snapping branches and rustling leaves in its wake. Its eyes looked calm—the calm a giant has before it accidentally steps on someone's house.

Suddenly, a man comes from behind us. He's heavily built, with a bushy red beard. The man spots the bear, looks at us, and says, without skipping a beat, in a heavily Texan accent, "The bear's scared of my pheromones."

Somehow, that worked... The bear came out from the forest onto the trail, gave us one last look, and crossed over to the other side.

We waited a few more minutes before continuing on. This time we avoided going anywhere near that couple...

Many storytellers give way too much telling and not enough story. There's a reason the story is first. Don't make the same mistake.

In the words of entrepreneur Wes Kao, "start right before the character gets mauled by a bear."

Image came from one of Wes Kao's Newsletter editions.

In my case, it really was a bear--but it doesn't have to be. Replace bear with the loss of a job, fight with a romantic partner, or something, anything, that is interesting.

You can give the exposition during or after the mauling. The point is, you've interested your audience first. But it's not enough to just start with conflict and suspense. You must keep it going throughout your entire story, bringing us to the next tip.

Conflict And Suspense: The Satisfying Emotional Encapsulation Of How A Character(s) Deals With Death.

Tell me what you think of this movie idea: let's record your life, every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, for the rest of your life...

I can hear your snoring already. What makes this idea so aversive?

The problem is simple: there is little conflict and suspense.

When you start brushing your teeth in the morning, nothing makes me think, I wonder what will happen next. When you talk to your best friend over Boba, I don't ponder whether an explosive argument is coming. When you pour cereal into your bowl, I don't agonize over what milk you're going to put (oat milk is the only option of course).

The reality is for most of us on this planet, this is 99% of our lives. Routine, everyday, hodgepodge. That makes a stable life, but it makes a horrible story.

My favorite definition of a great story- one with conflict and suspense- comes from James Scott Bell in his aptly named book Conflict And Suspense: the satisfying emotional encapsulation of how a character(s) deals with death.

In this case, death can mean three things:

• Physical death: literal physical death of the character(s) through any means.
• Professional death: stress or end of a character(s) career.
• Psychological death: stress or end of an idea, relationship, or identity for a character(s).

As long as your character(s) is experiencing one or more of these deaths throughout the entirety of your story in some way, the audience has a reason to stay. Most of the time, however, your characters will be juggling with a smaller objective relevant to these deaths in any individual scene. How you thread these scenes together to keep the overarching conflict and suspense over death alive brings us to our next tip.

Yes But, No And

Every scene of your story, and I mean every scene, should have an objective (even if unspoken), an obstacle, and an outcome.

What makes stories interesting is watching characters juggle the conflict between objectives and obstacles. If there's no obstacle blocking an objective, there's no story. Most people can get an objective and an obstacle in their story--albeit with a few hundred or thousand extra words. The thing that many mess up on is they make the outcome too obvious.

Your reader should rarely predict exactly what is going too happen: that's boring. To make things interesting you almost always want your outcome to be worded with "yes but", or "no and."

Yes, the character gets what they wanted, but...

No, the character doesn't get what they wanted, and...

A great example of "yes but" comes in Brandon Sanderson's fantastic novel, The Way Of Kings. Shallan is trying to get a wardship with one of the most powerful women in the world (objective), Jasnah Kholin. However, Jasnah is stubborn and only wants to consider a ward of extreme merit (obstacle). Her family back home has fallen into financial struggles after the death of her father. She needs this wardship because, in secret, she is going to steal the soulcaster (an extremely valuable in other words, worth lots of mullah) and use it to solve her family's financial struggles.

After many months of travel, and a lot of interviewing, Jasnah agrees to potentially take Shallan on as a ward, but only once she has filled the historical and philosophical holes in her knowledge (outcome). This is "yes but" at it's finest. Shallan gets what she wanted (yes), but with a slight change (but). The problem is Shallan doesn't have years; she has weeks. How is she going to solve this problem? By not giving us exactly what we were expecting, Brandon keeps the conflict and suspense alive.

A fantastic example of "no and" comes in the same novel with Kalladin. Kalladin has just arrived at The Shattered Planes, the war station of The Alethi against The Parshendi. He is a slave but wants nothing more than to be accepted into the army as a soldier and feel the glory of battle again (objective).

As he's they're selecting him for slave duty, he tells the presiding officer his past experience as a soldier. It's her decision what to put him in (obstacle). Unfortunately, spotting his shash brand (which translates as "dangerous" in the novel), she decides not only to reject his soldier placement (no), she puts him in the bridge crews (and)--the worst possible slave placement he could get (outcome). The bridge crews are forced to run with heavy wooden bridges against The Parshendi force getting shot at with arrows all the while so the Alethi forces can cross the chasms on the planes.

Readers are left with one question: how the heck will he get out of this one?

Create A Character Web

My favorite musical ever made is Wait For It, Hamilton (if you got the reference high five). It's a gripping encapsulation of the story behind The American Revolution. While Alexander Hamilton is the star of the show, what truly makes the musical is its complex character web.

The character web is the contrasting and complimenting relationships between all the characters in your story. In Hamilton, Alexander is a go-getter, a relentless worker willing to do almost anything to make a name for himself and win the war against Britain. Contrast this with his main opponent--Aaron Burr--who also wants to make a name for himself but is much more patient, sly, and careful. Alexander's wife, Eliza, is satisfied with raising their child and living a calm life in the country where, as he has a need to do, do, do.

These complex relationships apply to all the characters, and they're truly what makes the entire musical feel alive. When making your own story, you want to think about how your characters interact with each other. How can you clash characters' objectives with each other to create conflict? But just having a character web isn't enough. Each individual character must feel alive through inner conflict.

Inner Conflict

In most stories, we won't have experienced the same things the characters have been going through. What allows us to relate to the characters, therefore, is their emotions—their inner conflict. It's this inner conflict that differentiates characters who pop versus ones that explode.

There are two main frameworks I have learned for adding inner conflict:

• Stimulus + Reaction
• Emotion + Analysis + Action

Stimulus + Reaction is simple: something happens, and the character reacts to it. Without this, the parts of your story feel disconnected from each other, ingredients in a dish that don't fit together. You'd be baffled at how often people give details that have no reaction/relevance to the story. We're not here to hear a history of the entire Universe, we're here for a story. Each thing you say should have a purpose in the story.

Every. Single. Thing.

Emotion + Analysis + Action works exactly as it sounds: the character experiences an emotion, they think about it (or they don't think which could be interesting in itself), and they act. The balancing act comes in where and how often you integrate this inner conflict.

I recommend splitting your story into action and reaction beats. Action beats include action, while reaction beats include characters reacting to what is happening. These can be as short as a sentence or as long as an entire scene. The crucial thing is to balance these action and reaction beats.

If you get inner conflict wrong, people will say your character feels flat. Yet another thing that makes your story feel flat is bad setting and description, bringing us to the next tip.

Setting And Description

Setting and description are like salt and pepper in a dish—they should be invisible most of the time, but if they're missing, they ruin the meal.

The audience always wants to know two things when it comes to setting: where are we and when are we? As long as you give those two things, you should be fine. Obviously, there is much more worldbuilding potential, but that applies only to longer stories. In the vast majority of circumstances, where and when is the name of the game.

Description is more nuanced. There are six senses that ground the audience in your story:

• Sight
• Smell
• Hearing
• Taste
• Touch
• Intuition

Which senses you use and how you use them depend on what you want people to focus on. Generally, using multiple is better than using one. The big mistake you should avoid is relying too much on sight. Sight is the dominant sense for most people and thus the easiest to exploit.

You can have paragraphs on paragraphs of pristine description. But if all of it describes the sights of a scene, it will feel dead. Mix it up. Use some of the other senses.

One of the other great tips of description is to describe through comparison. We may not have experienced what you are describing, but we might have some insight into something you compare it to. Here are three tools of comparison in description with example sentences for each:

• Metaphor: "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
• Simile: "As busy as a bee." — Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
• Analogy: "My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." — Forest Gump

Implementing these description tips in your storytelling will make your stories pop, like adding some spice to your food. But perhaps you got the point already and I've told you too much. If so, you've already learned a bit about the next tip.

Show And Tell, But If You've Already Shown, Don't Tell

We've all heard the storytelling tip: show don't tell.

It's decent advice. Telling isn't as bad as people think. It all depends on how you do it. I prefer to show and tell, but if you've already shown, don't tell.

Think of yourself like a magician and your story like a magic show. Showing in your story is the doing of the magic trick. Telling is the spoken segment of the show--perhaps where you ask an audience member to come up and explain what you are going to do to them. Both are necessary. But if you tell too much, you risk revealing how the trick works and literally "spoiling the magic."

In your stories, spoiling the magic looks like describing a character's face as tomato red, having them pound their fists against the table, storm out of the room, and then stating, "they were angry."

No shit Sherlocke.

You may be asking, how do we balance between showing and telling?

My rule is to show most of the time and, when I do tell, to make it feel natural alongside my showing. There are many ways to show:

• Make your characters describe things differently. A soldier might use more soldier analogies.
• Illuminate what your characters are feeling through action. Someone who is feeling sad might binge eat.
• Let the characters express their emotions or thoughts through dialogue. Instead of saying, "She was nervous," you could have her stutter or speak in short, clipped sentences.
• Describe physical reactions or body language to convey feelings. Instead of saying, "He was scared," you might describe how his hands were trembling or how he took a step back.
• And so much more...

When you do tell, make it feel natural alongside this showing. For example, perhaps the enraged outburst of a father (showing they are angry) reminds the protagonist about their father's promise a few months earlier to not drink. Thinking they have broken that promise, the protagonist goes into backstory regarding their fathers terrible drinking habits. This is telling, but it feels natural alongside the showing.

It's impossible to tell how every piece of telling (I'm so sorry) will go with your audience, but if it feels as if it sticks out like a sore thumb, it probably does. This leads me to the second to last tip: avoid cliches, because they stick out like a sore thumb.

Avoid Cliche

One of my most loved and also hated movies is Avatar (which I distinguish from Avatar: The Last Airbender by referring to the first one as "the blue people"). I love some aspects of this movie. The effects are downright gorgeous, majestic, beautiful--copy and paste every synonym for those words from a thesaurus. The thing that spoils it for me, however, is it includes "the evil corporation cliche."

The human corporation coming to the Pandora planet wants only one thing: money! It's so basic you could watch any scene with the corporation as a replacement for melatonin (yay sleep). This is cliche at its worst. You have a great base, and then, like invasive mold, cliche comes in to ruin the whole thing.

To say in your fiction that a landscape is pretty as a picture or a character is as quiet as a church mouse or running around like a chicken with its head cut off is just bad storytelling, plain and simple.

Storytelling should be creative, and there is nothing creative about using cliche's. So please, avoid them like the plague. Crap.

Just Tell The Story

Storytelling is an art. There are so many more things I could have included in this article. But you're likely already overwhelmed.

So my last, and perhaps most important tip, is to simply tell the story. The only thing worse than telling a bad story is not telling one and all and never learning how to improve.

If it makes it easier, find one tip, and focus on integrating that into your next story. As it begins to feel natural, find another one.

Soon enough, you'll barely remember the person who responded to their friend about how their week was with, "good."