You can inadvertently bore people to death by telling long, uninterrupted personal stories that offer no entertainment value whatsoever. At the same time, people may take you too lightly if you don't have much to say in conversations either. One of your main objectives as a master communicator is to learn how to effectively tell an interesting personal story with the freshness and color that grabs and holds an audience's attention. That way, you can naturally affect other people emotionally with each tale you share.
The following suggestions are designed to help you gain more skill and self-confidence at telling interesting personal stories:
o Say that it's going to be quick.
Before you begin launching into your story, let your audience know that you're going to be brief. Right up front say, "I've got a quick story for you" or "This will only take a minute." This alerts your listeners to pay attention for only a short period of time which is something that most people are willing to do. After you've done this, it's up to you to deliver on your promise by making your story brief, briskly paced, and to the point.
o Don't waste time setting the scene.
Cut to the chase and don't spend much time at all describing the circumstances of your story. If your audience is captivated by your story, they will naturally ask you for more details after you finish. Your objective in telling a story is to give your audience a taste of your experience. Give them the short version and then if there's more time and sufficient interest you can fill in the details later.
o Relive an action moment immediately.
Within the first ten seconds, make a point of getting right into the action. An example of this would be to say, "Last Tuesday afternoon, I'm walking across the street and out of the corner of my eye I see a car coming straight for me. I'm thinking to myself, 'I'd better jump out of the way or I'm a goner.'" The key here is to capture your audience's attention while you have it. The first 10 seconds are critical. If you don't start off good, then you risk losing your audience's attention for the remainder of your story.
o Replay the exact dialogue.
Like a tape recorder, rewind any interesting sound bites that you have in your story and replay it for your audience. Instead of telling people what you said or heard in the third-person or after the fact, restate it in first-person like you were reliving the experience all over again in the present. For example, you might be inclined to say, "Fred told me that there were a lot of pretty women at the wine festival." But the more captivating way of expressing this is to say, "I'm at the wine festival and Fred blurts out, 'Steve, would you look at all the hot women here!" By replaying the dialogue, you will be able to capture the original emotion of a particular moment. But if you simply describe the event in the third-person or as something in the past, your story loses the impact of its original freshness and color which makes you less interesting to your listeners.
o Act out the drama with your face and body.
Like a game of charades, a little playacting can give your story some added flavor. By acting out your story with an appropriate assortment of facial expressions, hand gestures, and body movements, you will allow your audience a chance to see what happened in your story as well as hear it. Don't make the common communication mistake of letting your words do all of the talking. Give your audience a repeat live performance of your story instead of just a bland overview of the content.
o Reveal your internal dialogue in your own voice.
A powerful communication technique used by professional speakers is to express internal dialogue as another way of capturing an audience's attention. For example, you might describe a moment by simply saying, "After he humiliated me with his unfair comments, I needed a lot of time to recover." A more effective way of expressing this same incident is to say, "I'm walking around in a daze thinking to myself, 'The nerve of that guy! Who the heck does he think he is? When I recover from this, it will be my turn to give him something to chew on. That's what I'll do!'" By recreating the voice inside yourself for your audience, you can reveal your thinking with the kind of emotional intensity that naturally moves people.
o Finish your story in 60 seconds or less.
Your objective in telling a story is to give your audience the short version. If they ask for more, you can fill in the details or continue the adventure later. Remember that people's attentions spans are short. What you might think is a great story may not be of much interest to that particular audience. Or what you thought was an intriguing tale gets bogged down in the details when you try to recreate it. In any event, almost everyone will listen to you as long as you are excited about your subject, say it in an interesting manner, and make it brief. Like a good fast-food restaurant, remember to serve your stories quick and fresh. Then be ready to switch roles and let the other person do their share of the talking.
When you tell good stories in an interesting way, you will have a subtle positive effect on other people. It opens the door to further discussions with your listeners in the future. Otherwise, a poor display of storytelling will cause people to avoid getting into conversations with you out of their fear of being bored.
THE BOTTOM LINE
When you learn how to tell interesting stories, your self-confidence and influence will improve dramatically. All it takes is some additional awareness, accurate feedback, intelligent refinement, and practice with the purpose of getting better. Before long you'll be able to tell stories that people will naturally pay attention to because of true interest instead of forcing themselves to listen out of mere courtesy. Both you and your audiences will be happier when you develop this important, yet largely under appreciated skill.
Steve Nakamoto - "The Voice Of The Other Half"
iVillage.com's Ask Mr. Answer Man Relationship Expert
2-Time Writer's Digest Award-Winning Author
Author of Men Are Like Fish: What Every Woman Needs To Know About Catching A Man
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