How To Become An Incredible Storyteller
Your guide to pulling audiences in and making them care
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.)
“All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that’s why it takes so long.” — Steven Spielberg
Even films like the latest Guardians of the Galaxy film have such a basic and simple premise that you can so clearly see. It’s a story about a creature, Rocket, discovering who he is despite the odds stacked against him. Everything else is just extra.
For Dungeons and Dragons players, maybe this looks like spinning a die and seeing what you end up with for your list of character traits out of the handbook.
One of my favorite childhood films, The Fox and the Hound, is simply a story about two unlikely friends — much like many other childhood knockout films.
Every great character started as a list of character qualities or a description, a role that they play. Good writers stick around long enough to turn them into real characters — but aren’t afraid to start small.
We want intricate and wild, but we also want simple. We may not be simple-minded, but we’re more simple at heart than we’d like to think.
#2: Lean into the basic secret of life — people change people
Show how your characters build each other up and change each other. Every good story has a protagonist being a different person (or creature, whatever they are) at the end of their story.
Marlin is a more carefree and unanxious father at the end of Finding Nemo, with some new friends and a perspective on life. The characters at the end of Remember The Titans have become men, a true family of brothers that know no racial divide.
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
In one of my favorite shows of all time, Girl Meets World, social studies teachers Corey Matthews tells his students the following basic secret of life: People change people. That’s the secret. Through some magical means, we inspire one another.
It’s like Augie says at the end of Wonder — “everyone deserves a standing ovation once in their life”, a chance to stand in front of peers and strangers and to know that they have somehow made a difference.
Good storytellers tell stories about people changing people. At our core, we want to know we could change in the same way — and maybe deep in our hearts, we know we should.
“You don’t have an idea until you can use the words ‘but’, ‘except’, ‘and then…’” — Aaron Sorkin, playwright and West Wing showrunner
Every good story has some element at the end where the main character looks back and the proof of change is shown. Maybe they go home, back to their home planet or hometown, or reconnect with someone from the beginning of the story.
#3: Show the significance of the mundane
The writer of Ecclesiastes was right — there really is nothing new under the sun.
In my novel, I decided to go a little deeper when I was crafting the ending and realized that my main character should have an interaction with her father. Throughout the story, he loses his rights and she ends up being adopted. But her ending up happy with her new family didn’t make sense, it didn’t feel real.
“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
But her having a simple meetup in a restaurant with her estranged father? Those are the people you might be walking by today when you take your lunch break or the duo you pass on your drive to your vacation for the weekend with your family.
Stories take ordinary moments and show us how much meaning, emotion, and impact they can have on characters — and, subsequently, ourselves.
Last night I was reading An Old Fashioned Girl, by Louisa May Alcott, and I wept, bitterly. I did so not because the moment was so extraordinary, or because Polly, the main character, had survived any giant journey to get to the moment.
“In order to write about life first you must live it.” — Ernest Hemingway
She simply walked upstairs to a girl who needed her empathy and support and they shared one of the most emotionally honest moments I’ve ever read in a novel.
Don’t be afraid, as you’re growing your storytelling prowess, to lean into the calm and still moments. Maybe it’s a Godfather-style dinner, a Top Gun: Maverick touch football game on the beach, or a moment waiting for their parents to pick them up like in A Fault In Our Stars.
We don’t demand much as readers and experiencers of stories. Sometimes all we need is a simple and mundane moment to show us something incredible.
Andrew Stanton had it right: You have to make people care.
At the end of the day, that’s what a good storyteller has to do. The story has to be reminiscent enough of real life that the reader can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction. Make it real. Make it matter. And you’ll have your readers hooked.
Best of luck!
Kindly, Katie
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