the setup
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.
The Setup might include when and where it took place, who was involved, and maybe a relevant emotional detail.
For example, “It was 2012 and my friend Regan and I were in the foothills of Barcelona, completely lost.”
If you need to include some relevant details about the foothills or your friend, you can, but keep it as minimal as you can. There isn’t any tension or drama in the Setup to keep people interested. You’re just using the Setup to get them into the story.
The Buildup
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. Tell the story so that they have to constantly be guessing what happens next, but be hit by surprises.
If they’re bored or not really engaged, keep the Buildup short.
" … so we decided to follow the old man and see if we could help. But we had this suspicious feeling that he was leading us into danger."
At this point, you could add more details that you wouldn’t want to bore them with in the Setup, because you’ve created tension and the details actually prolong the drama. Make sure the details are relevant.
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