Of course, there are masters of impromptu who do not need preparation to tell something interesting.

They know how to tell interesting stories almost from birth. They have a story or story in store for every topic - all that remains is to find a grateful listener. For most of us, in order to come up with something truly entertaining, it is advisable to rehearse in advance - to think about how exactly to construct the story and what to focus on.

As wit guru Mark Twain said, “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a brilliant impromptu speech.”

The honest truth

Sometimes, in order for the story to have a greater effect on the audience, there is a temptation to embellish it a little - to make the fish 10 centimeters larger, to double the number of attackers, to triple the number of admirers who sought marriage... This is not entirely the right path.

Lying and embellishing - of course, if we are talking about a real story and not a story - is not recommended even in small things.

Then it’s easy to get confused and make yourself laugh. Life is full real stories, so unusual that the most talented novelist could not have come up with them.

Essence and details

The two most memorable things about a good story are its moral and its small but important details. When thinking about how to learn to tell an interesting story, it is important to remember this:

The essence of the story should be close to the audience, their age and interests.

During the story, it is important to mention amazing little things that highlight what is happening, stimulate the imagination, and allow you to more fully imagine the picture. Most likely, listeners will not remember the names and dates - but the fact that the lady had a heart-shaped birthmark on her forearm will be ingrained in her memory, and the boss, who drank too much champagne and performed dances on the bar, had underwear with Mickey Mouse on it.

It’s just important not to overdo it - a story too burdened with details will bore you. They should be scattered throughout the story unobtrusively and appropriately.

In a good story, it is advisable to use vivid comparisons - they give a more colorful picture of what is happening.

Voice

Of course, this is a key tool for a storyteller. Everything about it is important: volume, the ability to place accents and make meaningful pauses, if appropriate. It is possible and necessary to develop the ability to control your voice.

Facial expressions and gestures

They joke that if an Italian or a Spaniard's hands are tied, they won't be able to talk.

The activity of facial expressions and gestures during conversation varies significantly among people - it depends on national traditions, temperament and habits.

• To make listeners more curious, it is important to be able to control not only your voice, but also non-verbal manifestations of your body: facial expression, movements of your arms and body.
• If the story is long, you need to change your position relative to the listeners. Either stand still (but don’t pretend to be a statue), then walk around (but don’t flicker). This helps maintain the level of interest.
• Sometimes more active movements than careful hand movements are quite appropriate in a story - for example, if you need to show how you raced on a dashing horse along endless fields.

The best way to learn to control facial expressions and gestures is to practice in front of a mirror and record yourself on a video camera.

Emotions

Good story affects emotions. When crafting a story, it's important to choose your tools according to what the speaker plans to do: make people laugh, puzzle, or make people think?

You walk into a friend's party and immediately see beautiful woman. You're good looking, your body is Arnie's best years. You are well dressed and radiate an atmosphere of complete success. But the woman doesn’t pay attention to you, like all the people around - everyone is looking attentively at the puny guy who seems like a complete loser, but he seems to hypnotize everyone present. This “loser” is the main advantage of the whole party, because he knows how to tell stories. You also want to learn this art, right? If so, what do you need to know? what exactly does it do good story good. This is a whole science that begins with the personality of the storyteller.

Narrator's personality

A good storyteller is always interesting person. The storyteller does not have to be a great personality with unlimited talents, but he must have a character that is based on the following qualities:

Confidence;
- ability to formulate thoughts;
- sense of humor;
- passion;
- communication skills;
- erudition;
- ability to be creative.

The storyteller has a relationship with the audience and must interact with them as their clients. He “sells” a story that should be of interest to listeners. The reaction occurs not only at the psychological, but also at the physiological level. This happens due to the hormone oxytocin, which enhances the feeling of empathy and increases a person’s ability to experience various emotions. To put it simply, the action of oxytocin creates a connection between the storyteller and the listener - this connection is, in a sense, chemical.

But a good story doesn't always work perfectly. The reason is simple - each situation requires a specific approach. The same story goes well among friends, but shocks colleagues. To understand this, you have to understand the types of narratives. Conventionally, they can be divided into three: social type, professional type and emotional type.

Social history

Social history contains a huge layer of storytellers. As a rule, we are talking about comedians, actors, showmen, pop stars. They all fall into this category. The essence of a social storyteller is simple - tell jokes and entertain the audience. Social history works best among friends or people who cannot be “offended.” To tell a good social story, you need to know a few simple truths:

History should entertain. Try to tell something that will evoke pleasant emotions - don’t tell topical stories, people don’t want to hear them at parties.
- Be open. You need to be your guy. Don't move away from the crowd, make them think that you are their most loyal friend.
- Savvy. You will have to work with the audience to capture their attention. Try to pull material out of those listening to use it in the story.
- Short and to the point. If your story is too long, you will lose attention - speak to the point.

Professional history

This type of story is in demand among religious leaders, CEOs, chieftains and various life coaches. Great for people who want to tell a good story from the height of their authority. The rules of this story are a little more complicated than the previous one, but not much.

Manage conflicts. This is important when you need to show confrontation, a point of disagreement, which can be great fuel for the perception of the story.
- Provide the story with the context of the past and a forecast of the future - this must be done so that listeners see the story in volume, and not in fragments.
- Describe difficult situations in simple words. Your audience must understand you. A good storyteller should not use highly specialized vocabulary.

Emotional story

Suitable for women's ears, which perceive the world much more sensually than we do. Also great for small group conversations. An emotional story is perfect choice when you talk to a person face to face. This story has a number of distinctive features:

Fear. Use this feeling to thicken your colors.
- Excitement. Keep the ending unclear so that the listener waits with bated breath for the ending.
- Disappointment. You can talk about the problems that concern you.
- Compassion and love. These feelings are still strong on this planet - use them for the story.
- Vulnerability. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Thanks to this feeling, the listener takes the side of the narrator.

To tell an emotional story well, you must use body language, eye contact. You must also understand the importance of voice intonation, its tone. You should not evoke pity, but through the story you should evoke sympathy, pain, fear or any other strong emotion. If you master even one type of storytelling, you will be able to become the life of your company - we know this for sure.

Whether you're telling a joke, a fairy tale, or a story, knowing how to teach it correctly is a very important skill. Some people have a natural gift for storytelling, while others have to learn it. Never be afraid. You can learn to tell better and more engaging stories, and wikiHow can help you do it! Just start with step 1 below.

Steps

Part 1

1. Engage your audience. Begin your story by capturing your listeners' attention or engaging them in the story. Ask questions, even rhetorical ones, related to some conclusion, plot twist, or context of the story. Alternatively, you can say something catchy to grab attention (get your audience hooked, just like big newspaper headlines do). This way you will intrigue your listeners and they will want to hear more.

   • Example for a fairy tale: "Have you ever wondered why a moth flies into a flame?"
   • Example for a funny story: “I have a story from my university days that will outshine all others. It has to do with the toilet.”

2. Build an action scene. Throughout the story, you must create an immersive experience. The audience should experience the story as if they were participating in it. Start with the introduction. Create a story by adding details that convey atmosphere, emotion, and action. Choose your expressions very carefully: use words with strong emotional connotations.

   • An example of a fairy tale: “A long time ago, in the old world, where magic did not cease to exist, and animals could speak...”
   • An example of a funny story: “I’m pretty quiet and homely, like a cat, right? But my roommate in the hostel was quite a party animal.”

3. Build up and release tension. Of course, the main storyline will become increasingly intense, reaching a climax, after which the action will begin to end. However, you should also ease tension between the most intense moments. Otherwise, the story will seem crumpled or too schematic. In real life, there are moments that fill the gaps between events. The same goes for stories. This could be a description of a scene, a small aside to add detail, or a joke to add flavor to the story.

   • An example of a fairy tale: “The Moth flew up to a tall white candle, where the Flame was blazing in all its glory. The Moth felt a blow somewhere in the stomach area and love awakened in him. Of course, heroes do not save princesses in one day, and the Moth spent many delightful nights , falling more and more in love with the Flame."
   • An example of a funny story: "It came New Year and we moved to new area, cute and... insecure. So I lived almost all the time in a state of emergency. By the way, it stimulates blood pressure quite well."

4. Focus on what's important. When telling a story, it's important to include details to create immersion. However, the story should not turn out to be incoherent and drawn out. Therefore, it is very important to focus on the main thing. Omit the unimportant details and leave in those that add spice or clarity to the story.

   • Try not to get ahead of yourself or slow down; add details if necessary to see the audience's response. If they get bored, speed up and get to the point.

5. The narrative should flow logically. This is where it is very important not only to know history, but also to teach it correctly. You've probably met people who constantly interrupt their story with the words: “Oh, I forgot to say...”. Yes, you don't need to be that kind of person. Don't stop to go back. This distracts the listeners' attention and confuses them. The story should flow smoothly and logically.

   • If you forgot to mention something, weave the detail into the story without interrupting the main line. For example: “Now the Pied Piper was hunting for the city’s money for a reason. After all, a deal was made with him earlier."

6. The story must have a clear conclusion. It's very awkward when your audience isn't sure whether you've finished your story or not. So your story needs to have a clear ending. There are several completion options, for example:

   • Ask a question and answer it. “Isn't this crazy? So I'm not going to do it again."
   • Draw out the moral. "This, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of why you shouldn't bring your cat to work."
   • Choose your tone and manner of speaking carefully. Try to speak louder and faster to escalate the situation, and then lower your voice and slow down to show that you have come to the end.

   Part 2

   Using voice and body

   1. Create characters. Let the characters in your story sound different. If you get used to different roles, you will avoid a dull and annoying empty story. You can also make the story more real. Play with accents, speech, people's voices. You can add comedy by parodying silly or stereotypical voices.

      • For example, make your father's voice sound overly deep and raspy, adding a special twist to the dialogue: “[Important part of the story] ... I'm also going to the garage to build a platform. Or part of the platform. Or maybe I'll watch a TV show where they build platforms."

   2. Make your narrative "big" or "small." Choose the sound of your voice so that it is appropriate in one or another part of the story. Change the intonation, tone, volume to make the story sound calm or exciting, depending on the plot. Speed ​​up and speak a little louder towards the end. Slow down at the very end.

      • You should also experiment with dramatic pauses. A little silence and facial expression can make a story much more interesting.

   3. Control your facial expression. If you want to become a truly great storyteller, you must master the ability to create and change facial expressions depending on the progress of the story. The whole story should actually unfold on your face. If you really want to learn this, watch a video on Youtube, search for John Stewart or Martin Freeman.

      • Remember, facial expression has more than 3 shades. You can create truly vivid emotions with very specific facial expressions.

   4. Speak with your hands. Knowing how to sign can take you from a really boring and boring storyteller to someone who commands all the attention in the room. Hands convey emotions. Hands capture the audience's attention. Hands create a sense of action. If you don't use your whole body, at least gesture with your hands as you talk.

      • Of course, you shouldn't overdo it. There is no need to hit someone or knock over your drink. Or throw it in your face.

   5. Play the story. If possible, move your whole body while telling the story. You don't need to reproduce every movement, but you should use your entire body at key points to capture the listener's full attention. It also adds a comedic effect.

      • Look at the behavior famous people and their facial expressions and gestures. For example, enter in a search engine: Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield, Conan O'Brien and Robin Williams.

I will be impudent. Come to the “Read and Retell” non-fiction book retelling club.

Once a month we gather in apartments in the center of Moscow and retell 3-5 books about the non-fictional, drink wine and eat. Before the meeting, we post teasers of retellings in our Facebook community.

Seven years ago the Gutenberg Smoking Room movement began. Lecturers talked about books and ideas to audiences ranging from 30 to 300 people. Its founder, Misha Yanovich, became disillusioned with the lecture hall format a couple of years ago and went “underground” into apartments. Now, together with Misha, we are doing “Read and Retell” for 20-30 participants, but in the evening we have time to communicate and discuss ideas and books.

An example of a teaser for Denis Gorelov's book "The Motherland of Elephants".

The July Retelling Party recently took place. Our editor forgot his responsibilities and warned one of the participants late. In the end we made a replacement. Instead of a story about selling drugs online, we listened to the story of an apologetic editor about Denis Gorelov’s book “The Motherland of Elephants.”

The guilty editor claims that “The Motherland of the Elephants” will help any reader fall in love with Soviet cinema, even if he has not watched it and does not intend to watch it. Denis Gorelov, a film critic from the 2000s, describes the highest-grossing Soviet films - from Sergei Eisenstein's "October" to Karen Shakhnazarov's "City Zero". Almost all the texts in this book are written in a cheeky, familiar language, as if between the fifty-year-old author and, for example, the most famous children's poet of the Soviet Union, Sergei Mikhalkov, there is only a pioneer tie and hymns that the founder of a famous clan wrote for every turn of Soviet politics.

Gorelov most often uses the film as an excuse to delve into a controversial decade. There, through the muddy water of red myths, he looks at the unexpected pieces of the puzzle, on the box with which the USSR is still glimmering, although after seven decades the game has ceased to be put together. The author sees Girls as the first feminist film behind the Iron Curtain, traces the connection between spy series and the strengthening of the security forces within the party, and casually notes Eisenstein’s pathological desire to kill children in his films. Gorelov follows the master and spares no one.

The author manipulates the reader's gaze, before which facts and opinions flash without citing sources. The reader looks at these fireworks almost in despair. His hand, typing another query into Google, stops, frozen in respectful awe before the total self-confidence of this film critic, who is now finishing a book about foreign films in Soviet distribution. This means that we are waiting for another meeting with texts that, according to Roman Volobuev, at first you don’t understand, then you hate, and in the end you accept as an impudent page in the history of film criticism

If you try to select several associations for the phrase “good storyteller,” then expressions such as “the soul of the party,” “charismatic personality,” “ringleader,” “leader,” and so on in a similar vein will come to mind. This suggests that there is an equal sign between popularity and the ability to tell interesting stories, which is why so many people dream of mastering this art. It is often enough to undergo training to develop self-confidence, remove pressures, develop the power of your voice, and the necessary skills will reveal themselves.

“A good storyteller is halfway along the way.” Ukrainian proverb.

Ingredients for a compelling story:

1. Intriguing name.
2. Structure.
3. Dramaturgy.
4. Verbal and non-verbal means of expression.

Intriguing title

No matter how much folk wisdom teaches us not to judge a book by its cover, in practice almost no one succeeds in this, as any experienced marketer will readily confirm to you. A story can also be viewed from a marketing point of view: it is a product that you sell to the listener in exchange for their attention, and it is very important that the listener not only agrees, but also wants to pay with attention for your story. The difficulty is that the listener pays in advance and does not know whether he will be interested or will waste his time. And since he doesn’t know, he will try to guess based on the information available to him, that is, from the name.

The story does not have an exact title, like a movie or a book, but each time before you tell it, you tell the other person what it will be about in a nutshell. “Did you hear how Petka crashed the car? No?! If I tell you, you’ll die!”

So, if you start with the words “Let me tell you about sharks!”, your interlocutor will definitely not be delighted. This is a bad option, because the definition of “about sharks” includes such an array of information that it is impossible to imagine what exactly will be discussed, which means there is also nothing to be interested in. You want to retell the plot of Jaws, discuss the extinction of species from the Red Book, or talk about how shark meat is prepared in the Scandinavian countries - all these topics are “about sharks”, but they are all very different.

And another option: “Did I tell you how a shark almost bit off my leg in Australia?” This is a win-win start. It’s as if you said to your interlocutor: “Hey! Before you stands a man who has been in such a cool situation that not every movie will show it!”

Structure

Storytelling is, first of all, the transfer of information, and presenting and assimilating information is much easier and more time-efficient if it is properly structured. Judge for yourself, what will it be like to read a book in which all the pages are mixed up? Listening to a bad storyteller is like reading such a book: he gets confused, gets ahead of himself, reveals his cards too early, or vice versa - he misses something important at the beginning. As a result, even an interesting story loses its charm and becomes torture.

It is not difficult to properly structure a story; it is enough to divide it into three conditional blocks:

1. The beginning. This is the preparatory part, what happened “before”. The most important events preceding the main ones, without which the story cannot be avoided.
2. Climax. This is what, in fact, the whole story was started for, its main and most interesting events, the point of maximum tension.
3. Denouement. What were the key events and how did the story end?

The correct structure reflects the natural course (chronology) of events, that is, it allows the listener to turn on the imagination and mentally live the entire story with you.

Dramaturgy

This is the same structure standing on three pillars, but it concerns not the text in general, but the emotional line of the narrative in particular. The art of storytelling is based on drama. In a story there is always a central character with whom everything happens: sometimes it is the narrator himself, if the story is told in the first person, sometimes it is a mutual acquaintance, sometimes it is a film character or simply a famous person. The entire dramaturgy is built on the segment of development of the emotional life of this hero from beginning to end, and what is important here is only what conflicts with his interests or characterizes the depth of the conflict.

An example of events worth mentioning in a story.

• We saved up for three years for a vacation in Australia, refused repairs and a car, walked to work, owed money to all our friends, and quarreled ten times.
• We lost our passport at Sydney airport and spent days searching for it. We arrived at the beach, there was a thunderstorm and a hurricane. We went to another beach, there was an infection in the water and quarantine. We went to the third beach, everything was fine there, but my wife was bitten by a kangaroo and had to go to the hospital.
• I took my wife from the hospital, they announced the deportation of all Russians due to sanctions. They swore loudly on the way to the airport, got drunk, and got into a fight with the migration service. Now we only vacation in Sochi.

An example of unimportant details.

• While they were saving up for tickets, the neighbor’s husband left her, and a supermarket was built on the corner.
• On the way to the third beach, a dingo was seen trying to attack a wombat.
• There were unexpectedly many Koreans at the airport, a whole delegation. They were very scared of us; they had never seen drunken Russians.

Facts from the second list may be interesting in themselves, but in a story they are ballast, dissipating attention and taking up time. To learn how to tell stories in an interesting way, it is advisable to take these nuances into account.

Verbal means

To tell stories correctly, avoid dry general words and definitions and be specific. Every word you say should be expressive and precise, don’t be afraid of details.

• NO: I'm really tired of arguing with him.
• DA: Another minute of bickering and I would have broken the tablet on his head.

Do not neglect figurative speech, speak in such a way that your words, even against the will of the listener, form a picture.

• NO: I guessed that the cat wanted to steal my sausages.
• DA: I caught the cat’s gaze and understood everything. This is how our Petrovich looks at a bottle of vodka in the morning. Sausages are doomed.

Nonverbal means

Nonverbal, which means non-verbal, includes everything from intonation and pauses to gestures and visual contact. First of all, your body language tells the listener how engrossed you are in your story. An inert posture, a minimum of gestures and facial expressions, a minimum of intonation, speech “automatically”, an even voice - if this is about you, then you need to learn how to beautifully tell stories from life. Engage in the development of emotionality and the technique of beautiful speech, taking into account useful tips.

To understand how the body should behave during a fascinating story, watch an excited person who really wants to achieve something from his interlocutor or is simply performing a very important task. This kind of person:

1. Doesn't do anything in vain or beyond the task.
2. With every movement of every muscle, it is as if he is helping himself to achieve the main goal, no matter what he is doing.
3. Extremely collected, mobilized and determined to achieve results.

Try setting yourself a conditional task and completing it during the story. This task is always expressed with a simple verb, for example, “scare.”

As a rule, enrollment in a theater studio, where training lasts almost a year, begins in September. Therefore, hurry up, because the groups in the classes are small in order to ensure full attention to each student.