🥜Mastering the Art of Storytelling: Tips and Techniques

Be a great storyteller. Storytelling is super important. We’ve all heard it before, but why do so many podcasters and creators struggle to tell captivating stories?

Most people never study and practice telling stories to develop the skill. They wrongfully believe this is a skill you either have or don’t. Fortunately, that’s not true. Storytelling is a skill that can be improved by studying the proper techniques and using them to develop your style.

In today’s issue of Podcast Nut, we will provide quick and actionable storytelling tips to make your episodes more engaging. Let’s tell some better stories.

In Today’s Email

• How to Tell Better Stories

• HIT & MISS of the Week

• How to be featured in future Newsletters

Storytelling Tactics

To become a better storyteller, you need to study the best. Or, you can do what I do: study people who have already studied the best storytellers and learn from their work. I’ve distilled 5 of the most powerful storytelling tips for you here…

Intention & Obstacle - The foundation for any good story is Intention and Obstacle. At any point in the story, you should be able to pause, and it should be obvious the main character's intention/desire and the obstacles in their way. If this isn’t obvious, you need to work on your delivery. Try this for any of your favorite movies, stories or shows. Pause at any point, and it will be obvious what the intention and obstacle(s) are.

Set Stakes - To capture an audience, they have to care. But you don’t need a high-stakes story to make people care. Most of the best stories are very low stakes in the grand scheme, but the storyteller gets the audience hooked by creating stakes in their story. For this to be believable, the audience has to truly believe that you want your intention and the threat of not getting it would be a truly negative situation. As long as you achieve this, people will be far more invested.

But & Therefore, never “And Then” - The creators of Southpark gave some valuable storytelling advice that is also stupidly simple. When writing your story, as you progress along each event, “Therefore” or “But” should fit between bits, & never “& then”. We have all listened to a kid tell a story, its “& then” after “& then” which makes it hard to keep interest. Adults do this all the time too and it makes for boring stories. The audience needs twists and turns and the But & Therefore rule ensures these are included and easy to understand.

Frames, not Hooks - Everyone is obsessed with “hooks.” Shaan Puri of My First Million believes we should focus on “Frames” instead. The Hook is the words that you say, but a frame is the bigger idea and how you are going to make it relevant and connect two unrelated things to build intrigue. Here’s an example of bad vs. good framing…

Bad - Here’s what public speaking expert X did at the beginning of his presentation.

Good - Here is what you can learn about public speaking from one of the best public speakers in the world 

It's essentially the same idea, but the framing of the idea in the second sets up a story & makes the concept way more interesting.

Study the Tape - YouTube gives you in-depth analytics for retention data within analytics on a video. Practice telling stories using the tips above and study your retention charts to see where you lose people. Take note of what you did that made people drop off, and improve that the next time you tell a story.

Many of these tips came from an interview featuring Shaan Puri, that I strongly recommend checking out (linked below).

Storytelling is the most powerful skill a podcaster can have so we will continue giving you tips in future instalments, but today we will cap it at 5!

HIT & MISS of the Week

HIT

Why it HIT

• The concept is universally interesting. People are more motivated by fear than they are positive things, and the threat of a nuclear attack is something discussed all the time but people know very little about the specifics of what it would look like (high curiosity).

• The image of the guest has a great expression for the video's context. It communicates concern and conviction, which builds credibility.

• The title is easy to understand, creates curiosity and also opens up a story in the viewer’s mind that can only be finished by watching the content (Strong open loop).

This video performed 6.7x as well as their typical clip because they nailed the triad of great YouTube packaging: Concept → Thumbnail → Title.

MISS

Why it MISSED

• The packaging on this clip doesn’t create an open loop. In the image, it's fairly obvious that it's a water bottle, but it’s slightly blurred out. If the goal was to create curiosity through the image in the box, it shouldn’t be so obvious what it is. In its current state, it looks like an error.

• You always want to consider the potential viewer’s experience and work backward from that to motivate the click. A potential viewer who sees this would likely think, “Plastic water bottles are causing a drop in sperm count,” and go on with their day. They are unlikely to be compelled to give their time when they believe they can assume what the content will be from the packaging alone.

• The use of “male fertility expert” is an effective way to gain credibility for the content, but It’s so late in the title that it will be cut off in many areas of YouTube, defeating its intended purpose.

Steven Bartlett and the Diary of a CEO team do a great job, but when posting as much content as they do, you are bound to miss the mark occasionally. They are huge advocates for making adjustments to packaging and conducting tests, so don’t be shocked if this packaging gets changed based on its lower performance.

Also, if you would like us to monitor your content and potentially give you feedback in the HIT & MISS of the week, reply with the name of your show and the link to it on YouTube! Also, send over any of your favorite shows you consume so we can break down their content!

Happy Podcasting.

See you next week.

-Ben