Mind Cafe

Relaxed, inspiring essays about happiness.

Member-only story

Avoiding These 6 Things Will Help You Tell Stories People Want to Hear

7 min readMar 1, 2021

--

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Humans connect with emotions, not facts. So the best way to put your ideas in the world is by telling stories.

Yet, many people don’t know how to captivate an audience. They recite a list of events, get lost in abstractions, or take away the surprise before even starting.

As a result, the audience feels bored and doesn’t listen. Instead of wondering where a story will take them, all they care about is when it will finally end.

My dad is the best storyteller I know, but I didn’t inherit his skills. My stories sucked. And while I was convinced you can learn most things in life, I thought storytelling had more to do with innate talent than learnable traits.

Turns out I was wrong.

Storytelling is a skill you can learn. After completing a TED masterclass, studying Matthew Dicks, and practicing in public, I discovered a pattern most bad storytellers have in common.

1) They recite events in chronological order

When asked about their vacation, we all know people who give a list of locations and activities. “Well, our first stop was in a beautiful hotel in Paris, where…

--

--

Mind Cafe
Mind Cafe

Published in Mind Cafe

Relaxed, inspiring essays about happiness.

Eva Keiffenheim
Eva Keiffenheim

Written by Eva Keiffenheim

Learning expert with 5M+ reads. Committed to building a fairer future, one narrative at a time. Start writing for millions of readers http://bit.ly/learnletter

Responses (5)