Long Story Short

sometimes the best nights of our lives are not about fancy dining and evening gowns but good friends and a good spirit.

the stories you find yourself telling repeatedly in social situations are the one you should be exploring to develop more.

We are all selfish. Unless your story is also our story, we won’t give it a chance.

There’s no place like home. Everything you need, you already have; you just need to believe in yourself. Sometimes the people in charge have no idea what they’re doing.

the prospect of beginning something new is often scarier than sticking with something old and stale.

Start your story as if your audience is your best friend and you’re letting your BFF in on a little secret.

Starting a story with the word “so” makes me feel like I’m starting in the middle of a thought, like I’m midway through a casual conversation and I’m easing into the meat of a story I want to tell my friend. Feel free to try this yourself. A lot of my students

Start your story with a thesis statement about yourself and then tell a specific story that proves your thesis to be true.

a story is not a list, so I don’t want twelve short examples of how you’re afraid of commitment; I want one story in great detail that proves this.

Indifference is the enemy of storytelling. If you don’t feel strongly about what you are talking about, the audience won’t care about it either.

As listeners, we often care more about how you felt about what happened than what actually happened.

No one likes being told how to feel. We feel things organically, or we don’t.

With the last prompt, challenge yourself to tell a story in one sentence. Hands down, the best answer I ever got to this prompt was from the shyest student in the world. She stood up and quietly said in front of the entire class, “Anal sex is how I learned I hated anal sex.” And then the entire class erupted into laughter—a loud belly laugh that went on for minutes. She told the whole story in ten words.

Pete has many adventures while learning to be chill and not get upset over the little problems in life,

Your point, or moral, or deeper message, should be known to you, to drive the writing and telling of your tale, but in my opinion, you should keep it to yourself.

Trick your audience into hearing your bigger message by layering it into your story. Don’t beat us over the head with it.

it’s not crucial that your audience gets your point, just that they get a point.

You can’t control whether or not someone will get your point or find something funny.

Let go of the desire to control the audience.

the darker a situation, the better story it will eventually make.