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Every story you tell should have a structure to it, a flow, a beginning, middle, and an end.

If you spend your time telling stories that are aimless and have no point, you’re going to end up boring your audience rather than captivating them.

In the larger scale of things, all stories can be broken down into two parts:

1. Build Up 2. Payoff

The first part of your story is the build up, the second part of your story is the payoff.

The build up is necessary to get people interested in hearing about the payoff, and the payoff is what will make your audience feel like the story was worth listening to.

Your story should also have a sense of linear flow and movement. For instance, if you were to make a graphical representation of your overall story, it might look something like this:

A --- B

In this case, you go from the beginning of your story (point A) to the end of your story (point B).

Of course, in between there, you can have a lot of stops on your road from A to B. For instance:

A – you wake up --- you meet a girl --- you two fall in love --- you get married – B

See? It’s not:

A – You fall in love --- you meet a girl --- you wake up --- you get married – B

The more abstract you get with how you tell a story, the harder it’s going to be for your audience to follow it. So always start at the beginning and work your way to the end, expressing events as they happen. You can sometimes stop to explain certain elements of your story, but you always want the sense that you’re building up to something relevant to your audience.

Characters

Every story you tell needs to have characters in it. It’s impossible to tell a story without characters. If you do, it’s not a story, it’s an explanation or an instruction. Remember, stories are meant to capture and lead the imagination of other people! And the way that happens is to have them identify with a character in your story so that they can

experience the emotions you want them to.

The characters in your story can be broken down like this:

1. Main Character 2. Supporting Characters

Every story needs a main character, something which the action of the story centers around. The best main character for your own stories is YOU.

Remember, people experience emotion and feelings vicariously through your main characters. When you are the main character in your story, they will associate all the feelings and emotions they experience TO you!

So you want to make sure those emotions are good ones. Don’t make yourself out to be stupid, or mean, or evil, because people will associate whatever you let them experience with you. If you want to make a point about someone being stupid or mean, use someone you don’t like as an example so those emotions and feelings are associated with them and not you.

The main character is the person the action centers around. They’ll be the ones who drive your story forward from point A to point B.

A main character must be ACTIVE in your story.

If you tell a story about how you witnessed a guy fight three men by himself, you’re not the main character of that story because you weren’t the one fighting! The guy who took on the three men is the main character, because it’s his actions the story is centering around.

Understand?

Supporting characters is everyone else that populates your story. They interact, support, hinder, or fight against the main character. They can be your friends, your enemies, your

lovers, or strangers you meet on the street. It doesn’t matter. If they’re not a main character, they’re supporting characters.

When you’re telling a story to someone, try to keep the number of supporting characters low, because you don’t want them to have to remember the names of everyone you’re talking about. Two to three supporting characters in a story is sufficient. Any more than that, and you may be pushing the limits of your audience’s memory.

Action

Stories are all about action. Now, I don’t mean that your characters have to run around shooting at people as things blow up. What I mean is, your characters actually have to DO something in your story to make it worth listening to.

Usually action can be broken up into these categories:

• Your Main Character wants something and actively goes after it

• Your Main Character learns a valuable lesson

• Your Main Character has a funny or unique experience

Every story you hear a person tell is a variation on one of these three pieces of action.

When you come up with your own stories, make sure at least one of these actions is present to keep things interesting.

These actions can be expressed numerous ways. For instance:

1. You want a pet so you go to the pet store

2. You didn’t think it was possible to fall in love until you met this one girl…

3. You went skydiving last weekend

4. A friend of yours had cancer and you were by his side at his deathbed 5. You had the best steak of your life at a restaurant in the most unlikely place

It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as your main character did or experienced something that is worth listening to, or you have a point to make by telling the story.

Always know what you are trying to communicate with your story, and that will help you determine how the action is drives the story forward.

Details

The devil is in the details. When you tell a story, you are creating a world within the imaginations of your audience. The best way to create worlds in people’s minds is to share specific details with them to help fill out the pictures they’re creating in their minds.

The more detailed you can be, the better.

For instance, let’s say you’re telling a story about a cat.

“I bought a cat today.”

Ask yourself, what kind of cat is it?

“I bought a Siamese cat today.”

What kind of Siamese cat?

“I bought a black and silver Siamese cat today.”

How would you describe the cat?

“I bought the most beautiful black and silver Siamese cat today.”

See the difference details make? When you do this within your stories, you can paint vivid pictures in your audience’s mind that will help them get sucked into the story you’re telling.

Just be careful you don’t get too wrapped up in details. After all, too much of a good thing can spoil what you’re trying to create! For instance, you wouldn’t want to say something like:

“I just paid $1200 at a pet store called “Cuddles” on 35^th and Vine that took me an hour to drive to for the most beautiful, cute, and cuddly black and silver Siamese cat with long whiskers, yellow eyes, and flowing snow-tipped tail that I named Fluffy.”

That falls under the category of “too much information.” Just give people what they need to create the picture you want them to see. If they want more information, they’ll ask you for it in the form of a question. That’s where you can fill in more details.

Obstacles

Never make anything easy for your characters. The best stories always have obstacles that the main character must overcome to get what he wants. Your stories should be no different.

If you’re telling a true story, try to think about all the obstacles that kept you from getting what you wanted.

For instance, let’s say you had to get to the video store before it closed to return a movie that you didn’t want to pay a late fee on. Here are some obstacles that might have hindered you from achieving your goal:

• You couldn’t find the video in your house

• It wasn’t rewound all the way

• Your watch was wrong, so you actually had less time than you thought

• You didn’t have enough gas in your car to drive to the video store

• There was a traffic jam on your way there

• They were getting ready to close the store just as you drove up

People love to hear about how others overcome obstacles. That’s what determines who is a hero and who isn’t. The hero’s of old overcame great obstacles, like monsters, natural disasters, and evil villains. In each case, it seemed like the obstacles were

insurmountable! But somehow, the hero found a way to overcome them.

By the same token, you can seem like a hero too if what you faced on your way to the video store seemed impossible to overcome. It might not be on the same epic scale as the heroes of old, but that doesn’t mean people won’t see you as a man of action!

When crafting your own stories, always be sure to include as many obstacles as you can in them. Nothing gets people more excited than when a main character seems to do the impossible.