#75 - How to Tell Stories That People Will Listen To

Welcome to the Talk To People Podcast.

This is your host, Chris Miller.

If you've never been here before, first off, it is incredible to have you.

The purpose of this podcast is for us to be better at talking to those around us.

We believe that life is better when you talk to people, and there's no better time to start than now.

Whenever we talk to people, one of the biggest ways that we can connect to one another is through story.

Humans are storytelling creatures, and this has been true from the morning I woke up to all the way thousands and thousands of years ago.

The idea of a narrative is very compelling because we reason and we process through our world experientially and from beginning, middle, end.

Stories are also one of the biggest ways for us to understand that we have commonality with those around us.

If you can tell a great story, if you can mix in a high, if you can mix in a low, if you can mix in some sort of suspense or something that someone would have never expected, then more than likely, you would have won somebody over or you would have created a friendship or made a relationship even more strong.

So I'm going to tell you a little something that'll help you share better stories.

This is going to be short, but my goal is to give you this tool and then tell you a story that I told once that I think really helped me.

Typically, whenever you're telling a good story, you have to set the scene.

I'm watching this Netflix documentary about the TikTok dancing cults.

Annie and I, one day, we didn't know what to watch, so we were looking around and we're like, you know what, let's give it a shot.

And they set the scene really well.

Trailers for Netflix videos do this.

The first 30 seconds of YouTube videos do this.

The first minute and a half of podcasts do this.

The foreword of a book will do this.

It essentially puts your mind in a proper state to be able to experience what you are about to say.

But how do you do this when you're telling a story?

Whenever you're thinking about building or setting up a story, you want to think about the five senses.

You may not be able to get all five of them in there, but really, your goal should be to try.

Now, we have feel, taste, sound, sight, and smell.

This is easy for some, but it can be difficult for others.

I know that there are people who are really good at saying, right, I remember it tasted metallic or salty, or the taste was actually nostalgic, and it made me think of something back in the day.

Or there was a timid yet sharp noise with a booming colorful pastel gray scale, right?

There's all of these different words.

But the more words that we can give to appeal to, the five senses, the better.

I am of the certain belief lately that the experiences that we have that address the certain senses are going to be more, we're going to recall them more in the future, but they're also going to be more pivotal in our current moment.

And I do think that this is why interpersonal face to face communication is typically better and it's going to have more of an impact than digital communication, because we are appealing to more of the senses.

When we meet in person, we can actually give each other a handshake.

We can give each other a hug.

We can pat each other on the back.

We can squeeze one another's thighs.

That's the feel.

We can sit down and actually have a salad or a pizza or drink a coffee and appeal to taste.

We can be FaceTime and phone calls allow us to appeal to sound and sight, but not smell, right?

Like going to church and smelling the fresh coffee or going to a bakery and being able to smell the croissants.

If you can appeal to all five senses, but do it with the people around you, that's something that you can all bond over.

So in storytelling, there are a lot of ways that we could say this, like for instance, visual, rather than being like, it was a person who looked like someone from high school.

You could say, this person looked like an alien from outer space who just bought an outfit from Abercrombie and Fitch, or she sounded like a cicada on the microphone.

And if you touch things that people wouldn't normally think of, that is a great way to get people out of the social script, right?

So instead of talking about just the color or the design of a rug, you could say the edges of the rug were warped and frayed.

Or maybe someone had spilled the soup in the kitchen.

And rather than saying that the soup had been spilled, you're saying that the soup was everywhere.

It was on the floor, it was on the walls, the table, even.

Even behind the fridge.

Now people are thinking, it's really difficult to have to clean up soup that goes behind the fridge.

Doing things like this aren't exactly going to break your back.

Rather, it's going to elevate the listener's experience.

And when we set the scene up well, then we get the opportunity to introduce well-rounded characters.

And characters are huge for a great story, right?

That's typically the reason why we stay around for a good story, is who are the people and what's their development.

We've been watching Suits lately.

And Suits, well, I've been watching it kind of, let's say like I'm sitting three rows back, like every now and then, I will tune into an episode, and I've sat down to watch some of them.

But I'm married to a woman who really loves TV, and I love TV as well, but not nearly as much.

But the protagonist in Suits, you get to see the character development.

You get to see how it seems like this person is quite brash, and it seems like this person is demanding and won't take no for an answer.

But then there are downsides of it.

It seems like the person is not as emotionally intelligent or sensitive to those around them.

And if you actually think about teamwork, and teamwork makes the dream work, that this person has a vulnerability there because they're not the best at working with those around them.

But with the input of therapy, and with the input of romance, and the input of a budding friendship, then this protagonist begins to change.

We love character development.

And in story, one of the best ways to communicate this is not only when you're appealing to these five senses, but to think about the time framing.

If you can say, at this point, I was like this, or at this point, here was the situation.

And as we progressed, it went to this, and ultimately it became this.

Your goal is by the end of the conversation to have, or by the end of the story, this is for storytelling.

Storytelling doesn't exactly have to be like talking to someone in person.

I think that's ultimately the goal, but I'm just talking about storytelling in general right now.

Your goal is to have your audience say at the end of the story, well, I wasn't expecting, or that was what I was hoping for, but I didn't think it was actually going to happen.

The certain result that matches the time frame and contrasts what it was like at the beginning.

There are very big protagonists that we all know and love, be it Sherlock Holmes or be it someone like Batman, and all of these protagonists, their experiences, their emotions, their moral convictions will shape the way the story is ran.

At Sherlock Holmes, he has this, he's very intellectual, he's very observational, he's very logical.

And that sets up this certain car or vehicle that we can all get in that guide the viewer or the reader through mysteries and investigations.

And that's what forms the core of the narrative is, since our protagonist is this way, then we're going to start by having a unsolved problem.

We're going to go through and observe, do some logical deduction and induction, and piece it all together and get to the end, right?

Like, it's been done before with Scooby Doo.

It's like Sherlock Holmes, but different, because Scooby Doo is more about friendship and how they can come together as friends.

But then the other side of the house is the antagonist, right?

Like, there needs to be character development for both sides, and oftentimes people will overlook the character development for the antagonist.

I'm thinking of Jared Adjimudi right now, who I hope to be reading his book soon, because I need to read some more fiction.

But he just spent a ton of time writing a book.

Let's give him a shout out here.

This book is Mountains and Seas, Wisdom's Death.

Wisdom's Death.

He's already raised, like, over five grand, got the thing published.

So I'm super excited there.

But he spent years building the world that his story was going to take place in, building the characters, building the narratives, the protagonist, the antagonist, what either side struggle with.

There are so many different characters you can look at, because there's the love interest, there's the foil, there's dynamic characters and static characters, characters that are flat, that don't change at all.

The hero, the innocent character, the mentor, the villain, the caregiver, the outlaw, I'm just reading the archetypes of usual characters.

Once you are able to set the scene and you have your characters, then you have to somehow present the action, get something moving.

If we are talking to someone, I think a lot of great conversations or a lot of great story and conversations typically begin like blank by time framing, okay, back in high school, and then setting the scene with a lot of descriptive language.

I went to this huge school.

I had to walk to school, or in high school, I didn't walk.

So back in high school, I went to this huge school.

My graduating class was over 1145.

It was like a mini university.

I remember, we would, the first period, as soon as it ended, it was like walking through the DFW Airport, trying to get to your next class.

Right?

So you're using this descriptive language to be able to say what happened at a certain point in time.

And then you say, but my second period was weightlifting.

And I remember feeling a bit unsure about weightlifting, because I was a soccer player.

I still valued exercise, but I definitely wasn't known to be a weightlifter.

Yet that weightlifting class actually ended up changing my life in a way I would have never expected.

And that's like previewing the end, right?

Descriptive language, setting the characters, and then somehow letting people know that something's coming at the end.

And you get to plug and play on what exactly the punch or the main result of this story is.

But I do think it's very important to have, like we were saying previously, an ending that either really brings harmony to the story, something your audience was really hoping for or the person was really hoping for, or something that's unexpected, a twist.

I've thought a lot about the story lately because humans, one of the biggest things we experience is pain.

And I think that if we can get to the point where we're able to tell a story out of our pain, then we are using the pain in one of the best ways it could possibly be used.

Because the other people who are experiencing that pain, which there are a ton of them, they need to hear your story because they need to know that they're not alone.

They need to find people who they can take solidarity with and people who have a few steps, a few years, a few months, a few emotional stepping blocks complete compared to they are.

Another side of this is love, like the things we experience the most.

I remember in podcasting, one of the tips that I would see would be if you're having a hard time getting people going on the mic and feeling comfortable, ask them about people they love.

Ask them about their family, ask them about their parents or their kids or their siblings that they grew up with.

Because when we start to think about, like if you were to ask me, well, what's your favorite thing about your wife Annie?

Then I'd be like, oh, wow, right, there's a ton.

And more than likely, I'd smile thinking about that, and I'd start talking.

So whenever we are able to make story about pain, but then we're also able to make story about love, we will not have a hard time relating to other people.

Those are two of the most core human experiences, the really bad and the really good.

And the reason why it's so important to tell a story is to offer solidarity, but also to offer inspiration so that people know that they can get there and that you are not much different than them.

But there is just a story that happened in between you and them.

And here's what that story is.

I'm curious about who are your favorite storytellers.

Some of my favorite storytellers are people I listen to on podcasts.

I remember I read this book, this whole series back in the day called The Ranger's Apprentice.

Did you all ever read that?

It is by John Flanagan.

I remember going to the bookstore, Steve's Bookshop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hoping to get the next one.

I remember going to Borders hoping to get the next one.

Barnes and Noble hoping to get the next one.

And finally, when I discovered the library, I was able to get them to get the next one.

But this book series began as an author writing something for his son, a whole bunch of short stories.

And it turned into these books.

And he decided to write it because his son really enjoyed them, and it got his son interested in reading.

Ten years later, he found the stories again, he turned them into a book, and that book did pretty well.

So then he released 11 other books, all about this story, this young man who is a kid during a time when the world is a wasteland, because there's an individual who's taking revenge on the whole entire government that he lives in, and this young man just happens to be paired up with a ranger, and the ranger is like the biggest position societally.

People really respect that job, and it's a really cool job.

It's kind of like the share for the marshal back in the day.

And he learns how to become a ranger.

It's sold millions and millions of copies, well praised by critics, but that story stuck out to me, and I still remember it to this day.

It's one of my favorite fiction stories I've ever read.

And I hope we tell more stories.

I hope that we feel a bit more confident about sharing stories, because if you are very good at storytelling, you're going to be very good at relating to those around you.

And we know that's important.

Why do we know that's important?

Because life is better when you talk to people.

This is the first time I've ever recorded a podcast in the morning.

I imagine it may sound a bit different.

Maybe I have a different tonality, or maybe the semblances, the Ss and the Ps may stick around a little longer, just because I haven't done any vocal warmups.

But hey, we're going for it, and we'll continue to do that.

I hope you have a great day, and as always, keep being in conversation with those around you because life is better when you talk to people.

I'll see you on Monday.