It’s easy to think you’re a good storyteller until you meet someone who is actually a good storyteller and you realize they can just hold court to basically any group of people at the drop of a hat.
Politicians are like that. I once spent 2 hours in a train with a fairly well known politician who I generally perceived as an asshole. It was 3 of us sitting with that guy. He kept us entertained the whole time. Funny, interesting, came across as super reasonable and insightful. A few days later I saw him on TV and he was an asshole again
When I lived in DC, people told me that Clinton could make you feel like you are the most important person while you were chatting with him.
Somebody told me a story about Bush. Bush supposedly would chat with a voter during a campaign stop. A year later he would meet that person again and remember the person, what they had talked about and could ask how the kids or spouse are doing. I heard a similar thing about Steve Ballmer from his Microsoft days. He would remember every meeting, who said what, what people were wearing.
Man, I have a great memory but I feel like if I remember something small about the person they're more likely to just think I'm a weirdo... maybe I should try it.
People are always surprised how much I remember about what they said or did. Unfortunately I have zero charisma or understanding of people, so no doubt it comes across weird like everything else about me. So, yeah, without the savvy it can be a good way to develop some extra awkwardness.
Last Podcast on the Left mentioned they learned the classic psychopath with zero inner feelings are very good at detecting and manipulating others' feelings. It's a hunch but maybe since they don't have their own they can more easily detect other people's emotions
There are people who are attractive enough that others will simply give them things, including votes. There does not have to be intelligence.
Again, you need intelligence to boost it, but there are people who are quite unintelligent who win elections. It's not the norm, but it definitely happens.
Trump has attributes that appeal to some people. He isn't intelligent no matter how hard you try to stretch the word. Not street smart. Not smart at all. Actively stupid as fuck.
This isn't quite right. Social intelligence is intelligence. There are aspects of charisma that are 100% based on types of intelligence. There are also aspects that are based on your body.
And you can loathe Trump all you want (I encourage it!), but the dude had a long career in various areas. He's old now, but calling him actively stupid is like when people called Bush actively stupid. It's just not true.
yeah exactly, to know what appeals to others, to know how to use, manage, and direct publicity (i.e. why some people who do the same offense are forgiven, while others have it career-ending), how to utilize the attention economy, how to avoid implicating yourself, etc. It does also take having the "right" environment on a societal level vis-a-vis your personality and marketing yourself with that. it also comes down to timing a lot of the time. Mamdani, for example, would likely not have won given many other scenarios, including if more people just showed up to the primaries who thought that their choice would win, different previous (democratic) mayors (even just Adams not committing fraud), not having trump in office, not far enough away from 9/11, Cuomo not being accused, people not having faith in ability for changes to be made that were promised like free buses, etc.
Oh yeah, the one time I met an actual politician face to face, it was immediately clear how he did his thing. He remembered my name, made you feel like you were the only person in the room, and also commanded authority. And this in the body of a short dumpy little fat man.
I remember an askreddit thread when he first got elected. It asked people who’ve met him how he was in real life. And the comments were all the same: he’s very charismatic and funny in person, makes you feel great, complements you all the time
Charisma really is the most powerful skill to max out man
One of my friends talked about how he interacted with the same politician twice over the span of like 5 years or something. Second time the guy remembered my friend’s name and what they talked about during the first meeting, like they’re old friends catching up.
It's also unfortunately true that a lot of the politicians who get on TV and act like that are acting and probably aren't that miserable in normal interactions. It's doesn't absolve them of what they peddle, but it explains how they can be friends across the aisle even though the public performance is that they hate each other.
To be a politician who is successful in Western politics you have to be an actor, your role is to tow the line and be somewhat populist.
This is why the Left wing fails so hard they have these varying moral values, and as soon at it comes to an election to come together and win, they are all bickering amongst themselves about often largely nonsense while missing the bigger picture that you can't do anything unless you win. All while the Right wing is there standing behind whatever corrupt arsehole because they know if they win they get to steal the countries money.
Where are the economically centre left liberal politicians? I have no idea, because that is how you can run a country.
I'm paraphrasing heavily, but someone who worked with Bill Clinton gave an interview. They basically said: "picture the most charismatic person you've ever met. Now picture the smartest person you've ever met. Clinton is both of those people."
My first day ever working as teenager in the late 2000's had me manning a keg + tap beer station at a young liberals event. My station was just outside the function hall where John Howard was the key speaker.
I didn't know how to pour beer and I was handing out 75% foam all afternoon, no one told me you had to open the tap fully, I was trying to feather it.
Anyway J.H. finishes his speech and comes bounding out of the function room & asks for a schooner of draft. I handed him the monstrosity and apologised saying the keg was acting up, he slapped me on the shoulder, looked me in the eyes and said "Son, there's nothing wrong with a little head" and just walked off.
I watched AOC play Among Us on Twitch with some of her co-workers, and I observed two things:
1. I was much better at the game mechanics then they were
2. They would destroy me at the discussion.
You'd watch one of them murder someone on-screen and then in the discussion be like "yea, they have some good points, they're probably not the imposter."
Had this exact experience with Gavin Newsom. I am much further left than he is so he has never been my favorite, but he gave a speech and he was so magnetic that I kind of started believing what he was saying lol saw him doing some shit in tv like a week later and was like ugh be still sucks
As a reporter I met a politician at a totally non-political event and I interviewed him solely on the topic of that event.
I already despised him and his political ideas (later he did even worse and now he's in prison) but I was nonetheless completely GLUED to his lips. His way of speaking and talking, both 1 to 1 and 1 to many, were perfectly researched and manufactured to basically force everyone's brain to listen.
Yeah too many people thinking charisma means you're a nice person. It's a skill, not a personality. I'm sure that all world leaders are terribly charming in person, but that doesn't make them likeable people. It's an act.
There are voting systems that massively reward being likeable and charming.
In a transferable-vote system, especially with multi-seat constituencies, if you're charming and friendly and talk to lots of voters, you basically have to be politically radioactive not to win a seat. Being everyone's second or third choice is incredibly rewarding.
There's also, for some reason, a pronounced tendency among British conservatives to be very personally charming, something that doesn't seem to hold true across the pond. People like Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg (and Boris Johnson, the exemplar of the type) are able to come across as very charming people - you can watch them on something like Have I Got News For You, and they're able to defuse pointed criticism and make the audience feel like they're not really monsters, it's just a game they have to play. It's quite a skill, and one that left-wing politicians sadly don't often possess.
I watched a video where they followed him for a while. He had to address some convention where he knew nothing about the topic. His assistant gave him a few talking points which took maybe a minute. He then delivered a perfect 20 minute keynote that made everyone happy.
Once a work conference I went to had a guest speaker (can’t remember his name) but he was a fantastic orator, and I was kept engaged and interested for the entire 90 mins he was speaking. I’ve never been that engaged when listening to someone speak, even at a theater
I’m a soon to be dad and many of my peers fathers tell me about how they didn’t read to their children because they just would make up stories every night.
How?! I couldn’t put together a short story if I had a gun to my head.
My father just told me the tale of the lord of the string. It started with a short man man named Bill Bo who had a magic string that would turn him invisible if he wrapped it around his finger.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that Tolkien stole my dad’s story and made it about Bilbo and his magic ring.
You just make up stories about the challenges and happy times that your children have. You make up names and fake scenarios that appreciate kindness and explain how challenges make people better.
My suggestion, makes them up silently in your head when you're going to sleep. Practice it in your thoughts for a while. It'll help you sleep and make you a better story teller.
Also, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
My dad would always make up stories or tell us stories that are somewhat based on reality (like how he met my mom). He’d also add in his own stuff to our bedtime storybooks. For example, there was an old Christmas book about a Christmas tree that grew so large they had to cut holes through the apartment floors. My dads version was that they all peed on it and that’s why it grew so tall lol
If i only had memories of my kids when they were little, they are only 13 now but i was so much in survival mode i hardly have memory of what should have been some of the best years of my life
Dang I used to do that with video games. Like imagine I'm a historian recoutning events in the game, even trying to do it as a secondary source (as in if we interviewed the main protag), or if I was like a drill sergeant explaining sci fi weapons or tech to recruits.
Need to start doing that again. Got really good sleep doing that in bed haha
I just saved your comment haha. I try to do this in general, but seeing words to the method and reminders of the good characteristics is really worth remembering. Thanks!
Hahaha my son has never credited me like that but he does often has this confused look on his face when a song comes on in the car or wherever, and it’s the proper version of one of the dozens of rock/grunge songs I ‘lullabied’ to him sleep to.
‘Hey I know this song, wait no I don’t, wait I think I do, but it’s DIFFERENT. Dad, DO I KNOW THIS SONG?!’
I tell my kids stories from all their favorite Disney princess movies with different character names. Been doing it for over a year and they've yet to catch on. 4 and 6 now.
My dad told me a story about the Japanese-American Yaki family. Mr. Yaki’s daughter Teri did not like the taste of soy sauce, so Mr. Yaki set out to invent a new sauce, which he named after his beloved daughter. And that’s how we got teriyaki sauce. 🤣🤣
My aunt did that! She is an avid Stephen King fan but changed the stories to have happy endings. IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when Cujo was actually not great, or that the mist didn’t suddenly go away.
Just start with something you half remember having read or seen, and change it how you would've liked it to go.
There was this little caterpillar, and he was so hungry! He live on this rose bush and loved eating the leaves. But one day he ate all the leaves, and the roses too! But he was still hungry so he ate the stems, and then the branches! And yet he was still hungry! So when he got to the soil, he decided he was gooing to keep eating. And so he ate a hole going down and down and down. When he got to stone he thought there was no way he could ate stone! But he tasted it and he loved it! So he kept eating down into his tunnel. When he got to lava he thought, surely that's too hot! But he tasted it too and would you believe it? He he found it hot and delicious! So he drank all the lava! The caterpillar kept going and eating, until he was eating his tunnel upwards! He had gone so deep down, he was now deep up! Can you imagine? But he had gotten so strong from all he had eaten, he kept going up, because besides being hungry he was now having so much fun! The caterpillar ate and ate his way up until he found the roots of a cherry blossom tree, and he ate that too. And he finally emerged on the other side of the world, and to his surprise he could fly! So he flew up into the sky and, believe it or not, he had become a Chinese dragon! That caterpillar was the first of the dragons who flew the skies of the world many years ago.
I would create a whole evenings adventure straight off the cuff when I was in my teens. It didn't occur to me that I was story telling until college at 30. Been published twice for fiction since.
I genuinely love this for you. Whenever I see a stand up comedian or go to an open mic night, my rule is that I’ll always applaud the performer even if I didn’t think it was a good set. Even if it wasn’t my kind of humor, I respect anyone who puts themselves out there and I applaud their courage.
Sometimes I feel like I have the kernel of an idea for a short story or an interesting character but I don’t know how to get started writing about them. Other than just sitting down and putting pen to paper, I guess. The hardest part.
As a Dad that used to read and make up stories for my son, I have to say that my lad being a D&D DM for several online international clubs and ran his School D&D group makes me proud.
My friend started DMing DnD for a group of us and I am constantly in awe of her ability to come up with things on the spot. We tend to be absolute chaos demons and she often says after the session she didn't expect us to do a certain thing, but I never would have suspected that based on how well she deals with it.
My players be like: “it’s so cool that you had that whole encounter with the wizard and the troll planned out, how could you even have known we would press that button”
And I’m sitting there having improved the whole session like: “yeah, you know sometimes a DM just gets lucky”
I started DMing at 16, nowadays sometimes me and my gf are bored and I simply go "ok, you're a witch, it's the 1800s, what are you wearing?" and we just roleplay for 2 hours.
Everyone I know who don't play ttrpg think it's crazy how I can create a character with three random words, or just make up a story if they give me a topic, or no topic at all.
I started playing "the game of the dungeon" with my son when he was about 4 where he was Harry Potter having to navigate a maze to retrieve Dumbledore's glasses. He's 6 now and has been hooked ever since and we do one about every week based on the theme of whatever he's interested in at the time, for example he's Hiccup trying to find Toothless or Mario going through the sewers.
If you don’t want to read from a book, memorize the bones of a story. I took a storytelling class in elementary school and they taught us to learn the bones because you can fill everything else in.
You tell the story of their own day with embellishments.
"There was a little boy who had brown hair and liked to wear dinosaur shirts, his name was (make up a name that rhymes with their name. i.e. if your kid's name is Steven, you say the character's name is Deeven). Jeevan had a room with toys like (name a few of their toys). He went to the store with his mom and day that day and.... and so on and so on and do a review of the day.
Kids LOVE this. Also fun to if you pick certain points and ask them what they think happened next.
I’m a soon to be dad and many of my peers fathers tell me about how they didn’t read to their children because they just would make up stories every night.
How?! I couldn’t put together a short story if I had a gun to my head.
I took it for granted that everyone could make up a bedtime story off the cuff, but apparently it's not universal. I made stories up for my little siblings when I was six or seven, and then did the same for my own kids, much to my wife's amazement.
My suspicion is that there's some amount of natural talent that's required to do it without having to practice. For example, I could say "Give me three random objects" and then tell a kid's fairy tale style story involving those three objects and come up with fifteen minutes of content on the spot.
It's definitely a skill I think almost everyone could do with practice though.
There's some basic elements:
Know your audience and what they find funny.
For example, kids love things involving farting, especially if you make funny fart sounds.
Kids are highly amused when serious people / authority figures experience a loss of dignity through farting.
Understand story progression - "The knight couldn't do X, then the knight did Y, and at the end, the knight was able to do X and all was well, the end."
Have a sympathetic main character that encounters a problem, and then undergoes difficulties in the quest to solve it.
Be ok with plot holes and inconsistencies for kid's bedtime stories. You don't have to be Agatha Christie and have an air-tight plot. If your kids call you on it, come up with something that solves it in an amusing fashion. As long as it's entertaining, they're unlikely to protest.
Weave in things that are at the top of your audience's minds.
Kids had a stressful day about X? Tell a story where X is fixed, yada yada.
My favorite to tell children is to start a story about that child (or their family member) in which they suddenly shrank in size, and how they have to navigate the kitchen counter/bathroom/living room and avoid pets/vaccuums/garbage disposals
I accidentally invented a character one night who my kids became obsessed with and then I had to keep making up stories. I just turned what we did every day into adventures through the eyes of a tiny dragon who did not understand what any human things were. And the kids were thrilled recognizing themselves in the story.
Just start talking, and when you draw a blank, ask your kid something: a detail, what happens next, who was there, etc.
Or "how do you think [the character] felt?"
When you run out of steam, just basically ask someone a question, and then you'll be able to bounce off of whatever they give you. The trick is pretending you have everything under control.
Edit: Actually scratch that, you don't have to pretend to have everything under control, your kid will like being in on the game of coming up with a story.
I teach storytelling skills for interviews (Samsung, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta) and for language acquisition.
The basic structure is "TCE." Give a time, some context, and then the event. "About six years ago (time), while I was working at Meta (context), a colleague and I had a conflict concerning blablabla (event).
Rinse and repeat with each new "scene" of the story.
I drill this with clients by using GPT-generated scenes of Aesop's fables, mythology, and their own narratives.
You have the basic outline above if that's something you'd like to work on solo. If it's something you'd like me to guide you through, get in touch.
I used to do this with my daughters. I made them give me 3 things and I would incorporate them in stories. Then I read that Stephen King did something similar and made his kids do it back at night, so I started that. Still waiting for my teens to become famous authors though.
I'm a little rusty, but to get back in practice I told a story to a group of dogs today using dog buzzwords(Bingo and Fluffy went for a WALK OUTSIDE etc).
"And then the prince and princesses realized that the best thing to do for the kingdom was to go straight to sleep when the king or queen told them to. The end."
I read every night to my kids but they ADORED it when I made up a story. It's for kids, it doesn't need to make sense. The one story I told was a young prince called Prince Gargleblood and his pet donkey Steven. Basically told a story that was, in all reality, a mash up of every kids movie or show about a neglected young kid. He got into all kinds of adventures with Steven the Donkey. I thought about writing a book but that's way harder than riffing with your kids in a darkened, cosy room.
With my oldest I would read to him endlessly and as he got older he wanted to learn D&D so I learned with him.
Fast forward some years and my youngest is a toddler who loves to read some books but then be told a made up story. It’s all just some basic improv where I’ll ask some prompt style questions before I start “who do you want in the story? Who do you want to be the bad guy?” and then just start telling a goofy kids story. You don’t need to make a masterpiece, the level of story telling that kids love is very basic.
yknow as someone who grew up thinking they were pretty shy and didn’t do much, but i did a surprising amount of silly stupid things, and some cool things that i had to do some searching for.
I’ve been a bartender for over a year and even what you think is random and no one wants to hear it… it still might be interesting just not to you.
one of my stories has a bit of context to set up. so my middle name is Digweed and if there are any old electronic heads in here you know the DJ.
John Digweed was my dads favourite, so much so that my dad should refrain from naming anyone in the future haha (i tell that one as a joke, i think it’s pretty cool but my mom didn’t let me know because she thought i’d be bullied).
anyways, my mom and dad both go to his set one night, and they bug the security until John sees them and invites them back.
Mind you they “didn’t have anything” to get a signature from him.. except one piece of paper. my birth certificate was on them for some reason. so they handed it to him. lo and behold… he signed it. now i have an edited piece of government documents with a cool story attached to it :)
oh and like 15 years later he remembered my mom and i inviting us for free VIP tickets where we can go back stage and chat with him (not apart of the tickets just his own inv)
(With a gun pointed straight at his head from the shadowy figure behind the closet doors, he read to his unsuspecting son in a trembling voice, wondering if the boy could tell something was wrong).....
That’s my favorite, my kids and I make up stories together and the character names are always their names backwards. My daughter finds it hilarious, my son not so much
It helps to start the story with the same structure every time. It effectively allows you to start up the engine without putting the car into gear. And the younger the kids are the less you have to tell to amaze them so start young and you'll grow into it.
I tell my kids stories about queequeg and cherry. They live on an island in a treehouse with a slide.
Every story starts in the same way. Q&c wake up in the morning and make breakfast of (insert delicious breakfast here) and while they are eating breakfast there's a knock on the door (actually knock on whatever is around you). For very little kids all you'll need to do is get to this point and it's already a great story. If a character shows up then all the better. As the kids get older you can create some regular characters and take them on adventures around the island.
Good luck. It's not as hard as you might think if you have a system.
I used to make up stories for the kids I babysat. At first I was just repeating stories my mom told me when I was little, but then I ran out of ones I had memorized, so I had to start making up bits to fill out what I had forgotten, and then I just started making them up from scratch.
Basically you just need to pick a thing kids find interesting, or funny. The beginning of the story is how your characters start on the path to that thing. The middle is that thing happening, the climax is what happens as a result of the thing happening, and the ending is the consequences.
You can literally scan the room to figure out what the thing is. Like the first thing I just saw when I looked up from my phone was a laundry basket. So the thing is sliding down the stairs in a laundry basket.
Someone is doing laundry, someone else decides to play in the laundry basket, this results in attempting to slide down the stairs. It goes on from there.
kids don't know about the hero's journey, 3 act structure, themes, tropes or anything that makes a story good and feel fresh, everything is new to them, just start saying stuff and read their face.
My kid usually throws a bunch of elements at me and tells me to make it into a story. I try to make it as good as I can, but he just giggles whenever I mention something he asked me to.
Part of the secret is that when you start doing it, you don't need to be good at it to have the desired effect on the kid.
A kid was walking down the street and a big scary monster jumped out at him but the kid tickled the monster until he was laughing so hard he couldn't fight. Pad that out with as many pointless details as you need to make it the desired length. Throw in as many fart jokes as you can or whatever makes your kid laugh.
Once upon a time everything was ok, then one day something happened and there was a problem, they tried to fix it but it didn’t help, they tried a different way but it didn’t help, then they tried the right way. Finally everything was okay again.
Ordinary -> incident -> escalation -> resolution -> new ordinary.
There are a few forms like this one that can easily be transposed into just about any flavor of story you’d like to tell.
Its definitely a learned skill. My daughter wants a daddy story every night after we read books, and I was terrible at first. Im getting a lot better now. I usually just pick a thing that happened in my life and make up the details for a 4 year olds imagination to make it fun
I had a professor in law school whose lectures were so captivating I couldn’t wait until the next “episode” of his life experience. Every one of his stories was an enthralling, humorous drama that touched upon American history. Fascinating.
I used to be this way. I could make any mundane experience sound exciting and funny. Then I got covid twice. It did something to my brain and now I feel like I can hardly string a sentence together. I feel like part of me died.
Unfortunately, it's my verbal storytelling that suffered. My writing is as boring and straightforward as it has always been. I'm a little less concerned about perfect grammar these days, but that's because it sets me apart from AI.
I know that feeling. I have long covid and brain fog is a severe symptom of it. Are you in treatment? It became a little better for me with pacing because if I take enough breaks (without any visual or auditiv input) it helps me to think clearer. Still struggling to find words as fast as before, so there's a lot of fillers like "ehm".
The struggle is rea 😅
I (fortunately) don't have any lingering physical symptoms anymore and it's sorta hard to explain how my mind was affected, so I honestly don't even know where to start or where to look for treatment. Even with the covid issues I managed to graduate from law school and pass the bar. I'm afraid any doctor will look at that and insist that I'm fine, even though I feel like I lost IQ, my memory is worse, and my verbal communication skills have tanked.
So proud of you! I can only imagine the hard work you needed to put in!
Neuropsychologists/ ergotherapy can adress cognitive symptoms. And i use some technics of language therapy with stroke caused symptoms, maybe you can ask a speech language pathologist/ logopedia. Must be someone working in a hospital though.
This kills me. I used to have such a quick wit. I'd always be able to pull some funny quip out of thin air. I literally did freestyle rap battles live on national television - I could be funny and string improvised rhymes together (on beat, under pressure) for an audience's entertainment.
Since getting COVID, I'll be talking, then get to the end of a sentence and just say the wrong word. I'll know what word I meant to say, and the word I said will be close to it, semantically, but for some reason the word in my head isn't the word that comes out of my mouth, even though I'm able to correct the slip right after, because the word I meant to say was right there in my mind.
I now struggle to remember names after a new introduction, and that used to be second nature for me. I've even introduced myself to a "new" person, only for them to tell me "oh yeah, we met last week, remember?" It's so embarrassing and deeply frustrating.
This will sound strange, but I swear I can feel the part of my mind that is missing. I don't know how to explain that at all, but when I focus on the feeling of "my mind," it feels like there's this border to a missing region that used to be there. It's on the left, in the middle.
I can still be funny and charming at times, but I used to feel like a social magician, and now I'm merely a nice enough person to chat with.
I'm super sure you're still a very funny person people love to chat with. Just ...slower maybe?
What you're talking about (changing words into something semanticly close) is called semantic paraphasia. It can be caused by stroke for example. My ergotherapist told me that our brains need to learn new pathways just as the brains of a patient with stroke does. Maybe she used this analogy because i used to work with that as a speech language pathologist. But it helps me be kind to myself and not get frustrated. Because eventually the brain recovers - if it does from stroke, so it will from covid.
Your story is deeply fascinating. I sit in on the seminars where other scientists at Hopkins discuss the current studies on long Covid: the current theory is that long Covid causes immune dysfunction.
My own pet theory is that it’s more than that; I think it actually damages the brain somehow. More like: long Covid causes immune dysfunction -> the immune dysfunction is like an autoimmune disease -> the autoimmunity specifically targets some aspect of our body’s communication (nerves, the gut, the brain? It’s unclear).
I’ve also suffered for 5 years with depression and anxiety. I FELT the anxiety “spreading” in my brain to new topics. I could “feel” when a group of neurons (a topic) got hypersensitive, and I had to carefully avoid that area or I would be in severe mental pain. I’ve been able to consciously work on that anxiety due to feeling exactly what topics caused it. I also can “feel” the organization of information in my head. I can “feel” when I’m trying to remember something, and my neurons keep reaching, reaching for the group of them encoded with the information I want. So yes, I believe you when you say you “feel” an area in your brain is missing.
My advice, unsolicited: keep reaching. Keep poking, mentally, at that damaged area. The neurons are still there; the connections are damaged. You can heal them. You got this.
I'm sorry you're experiencing this. It's kinda nice to know I'm not alone, but it's not something I'd wish on most people. I used to have a vocabulary with such breadth and depth, but now it's like someone scooped a bunch of words and wit out of my brain.
It's a learnable skill but damn is it frustrating to be bad at. I would not be able to make the most interesting thing that ever happened to me sound engaging.
I used to be a decent storytelling but over the years, I just lost the spice and delivery. I’m not bad per se but nothing like college or the years after. My friends used to ask me to tell stories. I think part of it is the energy and sustain it takes.
True. But the Uno reverse card is my friend who is the worst storyteller I’ve ever met, and I’d put money on him. He can tell a 20 minute story with no punchline to an entire audience and not break a sweat doing it.
A mutual coworker pulled me aside once and asked me if his stories ever have a point. I informed her that his stories are more like recounting of events in chronological order and painful, excruciatingly bland, yet vivid detail.
I don't think I'm an amazing storyteller by any means, but boy there are some really bad ones out there. Out of order, lack of context, skipping details, non sequiturs, tangents, lack of punchline.
I'm a professional screenwriter and thus tell stories for a living. I'm also very good at telling them verbally. One of the saddest things I've seen among quite a few Gen Z coworkers is due to their fried attention spans, they get almost psychotically impatient and basically constantly interrupt any story to demand you get to the end as fast as humanly possible.
Twists, turns, characters, world building, humor, detail, colorful flourishes mean nothing to them. They just want immediate gratification, as if not getting it is almost physically painful. Super depressing.
It's like those 'book-tokers' who say they "only read the dialogue" in a book. What?! It hurt my soul to hear that. The best part of a book is that you can read the inner monologue of a character, which is not easily available in most other mediums (I mean you could have a voiceover in a movie, but I think it gets clunky to rely on that).
I don't use TikTok, thankfully it never appealed to me, but every once in a while I see some "BookTok" content and it seems like that whole niche is both psychotic and fundamentally misunderstands/defeats the purpose of reading.
Also, some of the stuff that is popular absolutely makes me want to quit writing.
I do not use it either, but it's something I've heard from friends who do.
I console myself with the thought that bad writing has always been popular, but we only remember the good stuff from the past. Some of the best-selling pulp authors of their time are completely unknown to us nowadays... though I'd still be kind of scared to compare the bad writing from the past to the bad writing of today. :')
I have an English degree, studied the great works of literature, along with creative writing and am technically myself a published writer.
Obviously, I know that all of this stuff is subjective etc, but some of the poetry in particular that I see is popular is some straight garbage and I have to believe that it's popular mainly due to the visual element of BookTok, in that the authors of this trash are always very attractive/photogenic people.
To use the parlance of our times, Emily Dickinson would be absolutely cooked today.
It's the antithesis of traditional southern US storytelling, where twists and turns, personality quirks, and humor is the entire point. A lot of these stories end in a joke or a pun.
Pacing and payoff are super important. I teach so lots of yapping and it’s definitely something you can practice but it’s something else to see a natural master do it. I’ve seen it both in my professional capacity from other teachers but also just like, a guy at a party or some girl at a concert.
Thats where I'm at. I can tell a good story, but I'm not like Moth levels of polished about it. But the flipside is people just opening their mouths and letting words fall out. No point, no cadence, no engagement with the listeners.
I love my wife to death but it's painful listening to her try to tell a story. When she's telling one to someone else when I'm around it's a constant battle with myself to not take over.
Omg these people infuriate me, it’s like they don’t understand what a climax of a story is, meander, don’t give detail, there is no point or joke and it all builds to absolutely no pay off
Larp camp with him was pretty amazing, but honestly out of all the people there Ben Schwartz was probably the best straight up story teller. Might not have been as good at improv or comedy as Brennan but the way he told stories was magical brought you right into it like you were living his memories it was captivating. Never really thought I was a great story teller but the few times I tried to emulate them really did make me realize just how absolutely outclassed I was
The real divide is knowing what details to leave out.
A mediocre storyteller gets bogged down in pointless trivia: "So we went to the diner on Tuesday... wait, no, it was Wednesday because Mike had his green jacket on, anyway..."
A truly great storyteller can take something as mundane as buying windshield wiper fluid and have an entire table leaning in like it's a thriller novel.
Yes! Going off on pointless side-tangents is my flaw as well. But I think I'm getting better at nipping that in the bud. It's also the thing I'm most impatient about when hearing other people's stories.
I have a friend who basically ruined one of my favourite stories because he told it so well, I can never beat it. My husband loves to remind me when I tell new people the story.
My friend is like this, he just oozes aura. When he tells a story, you are there. It's sounding how easily he can walk into any room and just hold everyone's attention.
My storytelling is often remarked upon, and I consider it a rare and honorable compliment. I pride myself on good storytelling, because I have so many to tell, it's only polite to my listeners to do it damn well.
My dad is phenomenal at this. He's dyslexic, can't read or write (he would just make up stories at bedtime), but can hold a room better than anyone. I got a little bit of it from him. I've always been good at conversation and could just walk up and talk to anyone, but my dad is on another level.
Of all the skills, I envy this one the most. I live in a house of ADD people (I am one too), and I can't get through a story if my life depended on it.
I used to think this was a desirable skill, until I realized I was talking too much and people, while enjoying the stories, were being polite after a while.
Parents - teach your kids to express themselves, but also to be curious when others do too.
I worked with a professor who was like this. Every other presentation I’d seen the presenter stood and the front and talked through their slides and some attendees drifted or were disengaged. This guy used one title slide and then talked to the audience and walked along the aisle (only a small room). Everyone was engaged. It really stuck with me.
A good friend of mine was an amazing story teller. He would tell a story about something we were both involved in, and I would be on the edge of my seat even though I had already lived through the experience. Seeing anything through his eyes and mind was just better. Now THAT'S story telling!
I've had the pleasure of meeting Andy Offutt Irwin and getting to hear him tell stories in person. And you're absolutely right. People who are top-notch raconteurs are on a different plane from the rest of us. The heirs of ancient bards.
I am beginning to realize the difference between these people and the ones who, once they run out of material, they push or force the storytelling on to someone else in the group, as if someone else dropped the ball.
I'm an excellent storyteller, but I can't write worth a shit which is frustrating. I've had friends tell me I could have a potential future as a cult leader because I can just enrapture complete strangers if I bother to turn on the charm.
I was at a conference where one of the speakers was saying storytelling is the most important skill you can have. They're right.
Pretty much anything where you interact with someone are different types of storytelling. You want to sell someone on a our world that benefits you. Whether that be agreeing to a contract or that being in a relationship would be beneficial.
Poets. I listen to a podcast (the reride podcast) Australian country lads having a chat about life. Theunhave poems regularly and its great. Cowboy/country themed usually but theres heaps of different subjects.
My wife has ADHD so she can't sort the relevant details from the unnecessary fluff. She may want to tell me about a new project at work but first i gotta hear about what her coworker had for breakfast for absolutely no reason.
She also can't summarize anything. She has to give the play by play for the entire scene. "I said X, then she said Y, then I said Oh what about Z, and she said...". Me, five minutes later, to myself "just say we decided not to move forward with this client, I don't need to see the entire conversation you had."
I remember when I was at one of my friend's birthday party and they got this book as a gift. It was meant to be like a creative storyteller book, with loads of scenes, items situations and phrases on flaps you could turn over. We did it in a way that one of us turned one of those over, and tried to incorporate what was written on it into a story that the other person would have to continue with what they got. My friend and another girl that was there flipped, said like five sentences and admitted defeat in not knowing what to add and gave me the book.
I turned, got something (I can't remember) and started telling a complete story without much of a hitch. Yeah, after that they didn't even try and just flipped over the flaps randomly to see if I could still continue the story and I always managed to in a fun and entertaining way because the next time we were all over there, the book was opened again and I had to make up another chaotic story for them to enjoy.
To me this happens with someone bad at it. I used to think I was a good story teller, but I have some in-laws that are terrible at it. They draw 4-5 minute stories out for 30 mins, etc. It's like listening to someone talk about a dream with the exception that there might be a chance that the ending is interesting.
While I've never been long-winded, any time I tell a story I fear the person listening might feel like I do listening to a drawn out story, so I speed through them and barely hit the highlights these days.
Never have to worry about that with my Mum. I love her to bits, but she cannot tell a story. I don't know what's worse - you don't know the story so you have to just hold on till the end. Or you do know it, and you have to spend the time either willing the story to her via telepathy, or trying to not jump in and take over.
I wonder if it's related to cutting people's heads off in photos, because that happens a fair bit as well 😅
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u/zyrkseas97 1d ago
It’s easy to think you’re a good storyteller until you meet someone who is actually a good storyteller and you realize they can just hold court to basically any group of people at the drop of a hat.