How to Become a Good Storyteller

In the workplace, many people suffer from"speech phobia（演讲恐惧症"）. They either don't know what to say, or they just reason things out solely which makes people drowsy（昏昏欲睡的）. According to Dai Xiaoxue, a speech etiquette expert at Harvard University, if you want to be a good speaker, you must first learn to tell stories.

Why should we learn to tell stories? Social psychologists believe that if a person tells "stories" ,it will inspire another person to recall the relevant "stories", and that human communication is always conducted by reminding each other to tell "stories", thus making the  communication smoother. Nobel Prize winner George Akrov firstly applied "telling stories" and "listening to stories" into the field of economics. He reckoned that "stories" are the "constraints" （约束条件）for people who make decisions and make choices in the economic field, just like wealth and commodity prices. Consequently,  telling convincing stories is one of the best ways to promote business,especially for entrepreneurs.

How can we tell the story commendably（很好地）? Dai Xiaoxue puts forward three suggestions in an article on Fortune《财富》 in Chinese website.

First, there should be details. According to the American Press Institute（美国新闻业研究所）, good stories contains such characteristics: process is more important than topic, and the way they are told is more important than story itself. Compared with the abstract concept of the whole, concrete things are not only easier to arouse people's emotions, but also more provocative（煽动性）.

Second, You should be adept in（擅长） using dialogue. The use of large-scale character dialogue can make the characters in your story more lively. If you are accustomed to telling stories by "reporting（转述） them",  in approaching speeches, why not try to use character dialogue to promote the plot development.Only in this way will your story be full of interest and vivid .

Thirdly, the plot of the story should have a turning point. Generally speaking, storytelling involves five "W" ：what, where, who, when and why. In Dai Xiaoxue's opinion, there still needs to be a "W", and the trend of a good story should fluctuate （跌但起伏）like the shape of "W".

Wang Deshun, 82 years old, became popular owing to his show. Dai Xiaoxue once asked him if he had written the speech well in advance. Wang Deshun said that he never wrote a manuscript. He was just talking story after story. He thought about what to say one paragraph at a time, and then handle the subject（扣题） in the end.What Wang Deshun talks about is his own real experience, along the track of "failure - success - failure - success again", sharing his "W" twists and turns （迂回曲折）of life. The reason why people like to hear stories about successful people and entrepreneurs, especially those about "ordinary people's  counterattack"（逆袭） is that they want to know how the person in front of them can accomplish the transformation from ordinary to great.

When you initiate to focus on details, character dialogue and "W" in the process of telling a story, you will discover that you already know how to tell a story. I hope the above ideas will inspire you.