The only way to get good at something is by doing it. Not by reading about it, thinking about it, talking about it. By doing. You’ll suck at it at first. That’s OK. Embrace the suck. Start small. Start with the least hard version of it. Tell a story to someone you know and trust. Someone who has your back. Someone who will encourage you and give you some helpful feedback.

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When you tell a story, don’t do it to impress or pass the time. Do it to convey something noteworthy about yourself in a way that is enjoyable for the other person or people. Who are you, and how do you fit into the world? Answer the questions through the details of the story — not the main arc of the story. For example, if you went on a cool trip through Iceland, that’s one thing — but how did you handle it?

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There are 3 main parts of a story: The Setup The Buildup The Payoff Practice telling every story with this format so that it becomes ingrained as a pattern for you. Only once you’ve mastered that should you consider changing the structure. The Setup Keep the Setup short. Give only the details needed to make the story make sense — most people make the mistake of trying to give all of the context or back story.

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The next part is the variable part of the story — you want the Setup & Payoff to be short, but the Buildup can be long or short. The Buildup tells the facts of the story, while building tension and keeping the listener engaged. Tynan: It should be a constantly escalating journey that you take your listener on. You should base the Buildup on the reaction of your listeners — if they’re hanging on your every work, draw out the story, increasing the tension.

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The Payoff resolves the story, and might ideally have some kind of revelation. In the story about following a suspicious old man in the foothills of Barcelona, you might find out he’s the most generous person you’d ever met, and have a fantastic time with his family in a rustic Spanish farmhouse. The Payoff is the big moment, and resolves the tension. It’s the high point. When you hit the high point, stop talking … the more you talk after this, the less of an impact you’ll have.

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It’s a really valuable thing to have a lot of stories you can practice and hold in reserve, so you don’t have to worry about whether you’ll run out of things to say when you’re talking to people. A great exercise that Tynan has is to make an alphabetical list of your stories — one for the letter A (“Alask motorcycle trip”), one for the letter B (“Bob your high school track coach”), all the way to Z.

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