This One Phrase Will Improve Your Storytelling

TL;DR:

We’ve all heard the importance of being able to tell a good story. For people applying to jobs, they need to wow the interviewer with stories of their prior heroics in their career. For meeting new people it helps build an instant connection and you become memorable. If you’re doing a presentation, it keeps your audience engaged and interested in what you have to say.

When I was in college, I had a number of stories in my back pocket that I could use when meeting people or in general social gatherings. I recently started a new job, and when I was talking to people I noticed their blank faces staring back at me. They weren’t interested in what I was saying.

How could this happen to me? I always had good stories prepared.

One of the days we went out for a team dinner, on particular team member was controlling all the attention with his stories. That’s when I realized I had lost it. I hadn’t been enough social situations anymore, so my stories were all rusty. I wasn’t even telling stories, I was narrating a sequence of events.

And its not just me, most people aren’t actually telling stories. They’re narrating a sequence of events.

In his book, Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks shares the one phrase that will make you a better storyteller. With this one phrase, you can turn any sequence of events into a story.

This is it. This one phrase - “and I realized…” will turn any sequence of events into a story.

You see, story requires transformation. If the main character isn’t changing in some way, then the audience doesn’t really care for the sequence of events. However, as soon as we can include a moment of reflection where our thinking changes or we change how we do something, that’s when we’ve effectively added a transformation into our story.

The way to make sure you always have a transformation in your story is to work backwards.

Let’s go through an example. Let’s say I went to the Miami heat game over the weekend and I want to share my experience with my coworkers on Monday.

Here’s a sequence of events: I went to the heat game and it was really close they won by one point. I was on the edge of my seat the whole game.

What we need to do now is to add the phrase “and I realized…” to turn this into a story.

Here’s the same sequence of events but now with the our secret phrase to turn it into a story: I went to the heat game and it was really close they won by one point. I was on the edge of my seat the whole game and I realized that what makes sports great is when you have really close competition.

Now this may not be an Oscar award winning story, but it sure beats the sequence of events. The sequence of events are now leading to a reflection point that gives the sequence closure, and also gives the audience a point that they can relate to. They probably have their own sequence of events that led them to the same realization - and this makes for good conversation.

Next time you’re hanging out with colleagues or friends, try it out. Add the magic phrase when you’re narrating what you did over the weekend and see the difference in how people respond.