Have you ever been listening to someone tell a story and it seems to take forever to get to the point if they ever do?
Have you ever been telling a story that you weren’t finished with when someone interrupts or their eyes glaze over or in some way they are no longer listening?
There are many ways to tell a story but the two most common ways are 1) a novel where the characters are introduced near the beginning and through the course of the pages events unfold to a final “denouement” and 2) a newspaper or magazine article that starts with a headline and tells the simple high level story to that headline and each subsequent paragraph adds more background information about the events or characters involved.
The novel approach is great if the story teller and listeners have a lot of time and the story teller has a gift for humor and dynamic range to keep the listener involved. But we have all started novels that we couldn’t stay with because the character development or events leading to a crisis event took too long. Not every novelist has a hit bestseller. Likewise we all know people who converse like a novel requiring the listener to understand all of the background of the characters or events involved before arriving at the point.
The news paper approach is best for quick stories where attention is short like parties, or church, or work. Tell the headline and then a paragraph of directly related information that the listener could walk away with the relevant parts of the story. If the listener is hooked, add another paragraph. If he or she isn’t they can move on with one of their stories or head to the refreshment table. I can read an entire newspaper in a short time by reading only the first paragraph of every story and I will know as much as I need to or want to. This approach also lends itself to minimizing getting off-story on tangents and forgetting where you are.
Who do you most commonly look forward to conversing with? The person with the story like a novel or the one with the quick story.
What kind of story teller do your want to be known for?
