Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling

Make the audience wonder what will happen next. 2. Make your audience experience the same emotion, or something like the same emotion, that the storyteller experienced in the moment about to be described.

Sometimes the place to begin is convenient and easy to find. Sometimes not. In “Charity Thief,” for example, my story ends with the realization that I know nothing about loneliness. Once I found that five-second moment, I asked myself, what is the opposite of knowing nothing about loneliness? The opposite of knowing nothing about loneliness is the

In its best form, storytelling is time travel. If I am doing my job well and telling an excellent story, you may, for just a moment, forget that you exist in the present time and space and travel back to the year and location that I am describing.

Every story must have an Elephant. The Elephant is the thing that everyone in the room can see. It is large and obvious. It is a clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery. It signifies where the story is headed, and it makes it clear to your audience that this is in fact a story and not a simple musing on a subje

The ideal connective tissue in any story are the words but and therefore, along with all their glorious synonyms. These buts and therefores can be either explicit or implied.

Asking a rhetorical question causes the audience to devise an answer in their mind. You have just turned your story into a Q&A session.

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

in terms of actually crafting your story, where you start your story is the most important decision you will make. The right beginning creates a satisfying narrative arc that will cause people to connect to and remember your story. It will provide a clear, coherent path to the end. It will serve as an enormous arrow that will point both you and the

As you begin to take stock of your days, find those moments — see them and record them — time will begin to slow down for you. The pace of your life will relax.