For me, stories are all about expectation and pacing.
They’re the only things I think about, really. I mean, they’re kind of the same one thing, looked at from different angles. Yes.
The story starts with your audience’s first impression. It could be the title of your book or your talk, or perhaps the blurb or the abstract. And by the way, this guide— I mean, this description— In this description— Yes.
The story starts with your audience’s first impression. It could be the title, or the blurb, the abstract or the cover or the thumbnail or the poster (…) or just about any piece of context around your story. Like, if you think about it, most of that context is outside of your control. It’s more about time and place and luck than direct— Where are you telling your story? What happened today? Does it relate to what happens in your story or does it contrast? What does it guide your audience towards expecting? What can we even— What should we expect?
At the start of a story, I like to stick to the expected genre pretty hard because it reaffirms the surrounding context that my story has, and it gives me a stronger starting point to springboard off off— of off— off of.
If the audience is expecting a YouTube video tutorial, I’ll start by leaning into that. This sets me up for later: It gives me a baseline to contrast off fof— off offffff— It gives me a baseline to bounce— from which I can bounce.
When you’re telling a story—
When you’re listening to a story, the nicest feeling is when you’re able to relax and fully let go
fully let yourself engage with and go along with the story.
You don’t want to have to force it. You don’t want to have to put in the effort to maintain your effort or energy or attention or anything.
But to be able to do this (to relax), you need to know that you can trust the storyteller. They need to prove to you in those first few seconds that you can trust them / that they’re worth trusting.
This is what keeps them going through the boring long bits of your story. If you gain their trust in the first few seconds, you can get them over the hump in the middle.
When you tell a story, there’s an agreement between you and the audience. As a storyteller, you need to be able to show them:
Otherwise why would anyone listen?
Don’t let it scare you. You don’t have to be “good”. Your story may or may not be to the audience’s taste, but it might still be worth their time and attention.
Don’t misunderstand point 2. “You need to know what you’re doing” can sound off-putting, but it’s not about being good or skilled: It’s about being intentional:
Think about all the choices that go into creating a story.
What will you choose for your story to makes it yours and not anyone else’s?
What makes it yours and not anyone else’s? An AI model won’t help you with that. Following best practices won’t help you either. You don’t need to follow any of these rules. They’re just something I made up to tell yet another stupid story. Always end abruptly.