How To Become An Incredible Storyteller

Your guide to pulling audiences in and making them care

Photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash

Ive been to the movies a couple of times in the last couple of months, and the AMC pre-movie video has an incredible line that I find cheesy but powerful. “Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.”

They’re not wrong.

A good story pulls us in, makes us hurt, and we love it every time. In fact, we crave it. We pay for it, time and time again in the form of a Netflix subscription, a movie theater ticket, or a Prime video purchase.

“The greatest story commandment is: Make me care.” — Andrew Stanton, Pixar filmmaker and writer

Every good writer takes in creative masterpieces all of the time, asking themselves, over and over, what it is that they need to do to create work that’s compelling.

#1: Start small

The best stories start out as the simplest and most common ideas.

Anne of Green Gables is about an orphan, and so is Star Wars. Rocky and Creed are about a boxer. All of our favorite characters, old and new, are just people. (Or, you know, whatever creature they are that has a human mind and personality.)