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This won’t interest the majority of people who read it today.

But I don’t share it for them.

I share it for you.

It’s an interview with author Matthew Dicks on the Farnum Street Knowledge Project Podcast. It’s about learning to be a good story-teller.

“I think we can start by thinking about what a story is and isn’t because most people don’t tell stories. Most people think of a story as ‘Some stuff happened over the course of time, and now I’m going to tell you about that,’ usually chronologically, and that will amount to a story.

That really is just reporting on your life, and no one actually wants you to report on your life, other than maybe your mother and your spouse might be required to listen. It’s just a simple accounting of your day or your week or your month, and that’s not interesting, and it’s not a story.”

“So a story is about change over time. Usually, it’s a realization like ‘used to think one thing, and now I think another thing.’ That’s most stories. Sometimes they’re transformational—meaning, I once was one kind of person, then some stuff happened, and now I’m actually an authentically different kind of person. If you’re just doing that, you’re better than most people. That is the difference between a bad story and a good story; [it’s knowing,] what is a story, and what is not a story?”

Now for the key insight:

“Once we get to the difference between a well-told or well-crafted story and one that is not as well crafted, we get into things like the acknowledgement that no one wants to hear anything you ever have to say unless you give them a reason to listen.”

“There are people who tell stories who don’t have that fundamental belief as part of their bone marrow, and the more you believe that—the more you believe that ‘I must entertain while speaking, delivering content, showing data, delivering a keynote, the more you believe that ‘No one wants to hear anything I have to say unless I’m relentlessly giving them a reason to listen’—that’s really the difference between someone who is going to be appreciated and remembered and impactful and someone who will get lost in the crowd.”

“…the best performers know what they’re going to say, but not exactly how. You can always tell that.

You can tell it because their talk feels like it’s just for you because you can look at someone and you can riff on what is happening in the room.“

“A story, ideally, is the kind of thing that when I tell it to you, you’re thinking about it for days, weeks, months, or maybe the rest of your life. Ideally, touching their hearts and their minds.

If I tell you an anecdote about my son, we’re going to laugh. We’re going to understand his humanity even a little bit. You might even reflect on my humanity, but you’re not going to be thinking about it later on because I’m not looking to land something in your heart and mind.

I’m not looking to connect to your life experiences.

When I tell a story, I’m not hoping that you are thinking, ‘That once happened to me.’ What I’m hoping is you’re thinking, “I once felt that way, I once thought that way,” or “Maybe someday I could feel or think that way.” That’s the goal.“

“…the better we are at telling stories about ourselves, the people we love, the products we make, the services we offer, all of those things, the more we are able to tell excellent stories about those things, the more we’re able to infuse those things with whatever we want them to be infused with…”

“People often think of stories as an attempt to describe something when actually, nobody ever wants to know what anything looked like unless it’s relevant to a story.

What people really want is to know what you felt, what you said, and what you did.”

“So when people say to me, ‘How do you make the stories seem so real to me?’ I tell them, ‘I don’t describe anything. Instead, I choose words that I know already exist in your mind.”

If you’re content reading liners or winging anecdotes that only your buddies will listen to, you can stop reading now.

If you want to be the kind of air talent your listeners remember all their lives, THIS DISCUSSION about the actual ways to do that is something worth your time.

It is the most practical, actionable truth you can learn in your task to give your listeners a reason to listen every time you speak!

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