I am a very bad storyteller. I don’t usually have stories that I find interesting to share with others, and when I do, I never tell them in an interesting way. I admire people who can tell a good story at a dinner table and engage everyone, making them laugh, think, and feel with the story.

In an effort to be less boring, I picked up the book Storyworthy to try to learn a bit more about storytelling and become a little more interesting. I first heard about the book on an episode of The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish, which I listen to a lot.

Now, let’s explore Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling.

Learnings from the book Storyworthy

Storyworthy book

Storyworthy book

The book is a great resource for people wanting to be better storytellers. It provides very useful and practical tips on how to identify, craft, and tell a good story. I learned a lot from it and would like to share my top five takeaways.

Keep a list of daily possible stories

I already keep a journal where I reflect on the day and list things I did or paid attention to, but the author suggests a slightly different approach called Homework for Life. The idea is to write down one sentence every day about something from your day that could potentially be a story. The goal is to track the most emotional parts of your day, which you can later revisit to find meaningful stories.

The author keeps a spreadsheet with a one-liner for each day. I do it a bit differently by using an Obsidian document for each year. No matter the method, the point is to keep a list of moments that could become stories so you can easily revisit them.

A story is not just an account of events

I learned that telling a story is not just describing what happened step by step. A story must connect. It should make people feel what you felt, whether that’s laughter, sadness, anger, or joy.

Think about your story like a movie

The author gives a great analogy: when you create a story, imagine you’re creating a movie in people’s heads. The goal is for your audience to forget where they are and what they’re doing, fully immersing themselves in the mental movie you’re creating with your words.

One tip from the book is to always include a location to make it easier for people to picture the scene. You don’t need to describe the place in detail; simply naming it helps the audience visualize the story more easily.

Negative is almost always better

Another interesting takeaway is that negative descriptions are often better than positive ones in storytelling. Saying what something or someone is not tends to be more engaging than saying what they are.

For example, instead of saying “I am dumb, ugly, and unpopular” you could say “I’m not smart, I’m not at all good-looking, and no one likes me.” The second version is more effective because it suggests possibilities (I could be smart or good-looking) while the first version only labels things.

Be entertaining

The final learning I want to share is one I fully agree with: when people are listening to your story, they are giving you their time and attention. Nothing is more important than that. If they are willing to listen, you owe it to them to be entertaining.

As the book points out, ”When you are entertaining, people learn better. You convey information more effectively. You will become a better teacher, presenter, coach, salesperson, trainer, CEO, professor, parent, and dinner companion.”

Favorite quotes

These are my 5 favorite quotes from the book.

  • ”Telling stories about your life lets people know they’re not alone; and it lets some of the people closest to you — like family and loved ones — see your life apart from the context of family and without the kind of revisionist hindsight we can sometimes fall into concerning the ones we love most.”
  • ”We all have stories. You may not believe this yet, but you will.”
  • ”We tell stories to express our hardest, best, most authentic truths. This is what brings thousands of people to hear stories at theaters and bars every night in cities all over the world.”
  • ”Tell a story about a real moment of meaning from your life — a five-second moment — and people will want to hear more.”
  • ”When it comes to storytelling, I believe that surprise is the only way to elicit an emotional reaction from your audience.”

Other resources

This section adds extra insights, incorporating content from other sources that align with the themes of the book.

These are my learnings from the book Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling by Matthew Dicks. A special thanks to Vancouver Public Library (VPL) for allowing free access to the book.

Cheers.