Learn How to master the ART of story telling

Giving yourself time to craft a masterpiece is a lesson worth learning. It is not solely reserved for those certain creative members of society.

1. Know and engage your audience:

• Storytelling is a good medium often chosen to inspire and engage. It offers you the ability to spread your message and be heard by wider audiences while providing actionable takeaways for your audience. However, succeeding is not always as easy as it seems. The only way to get PR exposure through story-telling is understanding and engaging with your target audience. They should remain at the forefront of your mind. Ask yourself whether your content is interesting or not. Will it engage and inspire? Will it help people recognise and reframe their limiting beliefs? Including questions will engage your listeners and produce good results as well as inspire and empower your audience, increasing your likability among others.
• Supporting your story with images and videos will paint a picture for your audience and engage them even further as most people are visual learners. It is crucial to keep your story relevant to not only the audience but to the overall moral.
• While looking to engage your audience you must include relatable content in your work. Do not forget, telling a story is just like bringing your audience on a guided tour, you know the destination and it is up to you to bring the audience there.

2. Establishing a tone before you begin comes first and foremost:

• Before engaging with your audience, you must analyse them. Consider what particular aspects will resonate with the type of people you’re dealing with. What will achieve good results and keep them interested? You want them to care and empathise with the story you’re telling while the reason for its telling is still clear and understood.
• Providing the audience with sufficient detail is crucial for their understanding and clarity on the subject. Portraying each story in a way that will resonate with each listener and keep them on their toes is a successful storytelling technique used by many thriving entrepreneurs.

3. You must value the listener and their time: to maintain a mutually loyal relationship.

• Keep in mind that stories strongly influence the way in which we choose to see the world and interact with people around us.
• If applied correctly, it can be used to bring people together, increase your PR network, build and share knowledge as well as develop communal trust.

4. The moral of the story:

• Each and every story has a message, a purpose, a meaning, which needs to be clearly visible and understood by the end. This particular focus is the story’s intention and holds within it a desired outcome and reaction from its listeners. Before writing, you must ask yourself, what is my intended message? What am I writing about? Narrow down what your message is and what you want your audience to take from your story.
• Telling your tale in an authentic way while being discerning and selective in what you include will lead to the formation of a strong, solution-focused story. Not only do you want to impact lives with your words but transform your own PR campaign. Be creative and engaging in order to entertain your listeners but ensure your content is relevant when conveying your message.

5. Be present and active throughout the telling of your story:

• it will enhance the engagement of the audience. Keeping them alert to your story will release certain endorphins which increase long-term learning retention. When a listener fully engages themselves in a story, they begin to assume the role of its protagonist.
• In turn, this increases their relation to the experiences as they find themselves in the described situation. Ensuring the audience has closure at the end of the story is crucial. That they can pinpoint the lesson learned without hesitation or any unanswered questions hanging in the air.

6. Be honest:

• Honesty is a must have when reciting a story hoping to connect and resonate with your audience. Human interaction and personal experience speak a thousand times louder than any article, especially when told honestly. Providing your audience with context and creating images will go a long way in capturing their attention while engrossing them in your story. Having the confidence to tell your story and nobody else’s will sustain the audience’s attention, receive their respect as well as provide a clear motivated desire to help others.
• Expression and excitement come hand in hand with honesty and can engage your listeners from the beginning, holding their focus throughout. Adding comedic, emotional or inspiring elements is a tactic that will make your story-telling a more immersive experience for everyone involved. Being honest creates a meaningful connection between you and your listeners.
• Providing them with a positive, thought-provoking experience that acts as a powerful strategy used in building personal relationships with clients and potential clients. It even offers the possibility of triggering personal breakthroughs or epiphanies for those listening. You serve as a voice for those who share your experiences and emotions which in turn develop a good rapport and likability for you and your work.

Story-telling can have a great effect on people’s lives :

• how they live them and if done correctly can scale massive growth for you and your PR pursuits. Mastering this art can work wonders for your PR campaign, serving as a powerful marketing strategy. Keeping in mind that experimenting and failing is all part of the process to bring you to your desired destination.
• Practice and feedback should be welcomed when analysing areas of your story that need adjusting. Both in the business world and life, your success is linked to your ability to create and hold connections with people and build trust. Aim to inspire and your story will not fall short of the mark.
• Giving yourself time to craft a masterpiece is a lesson worth learning. It is not solely reserved for those certain creative members of society. Anyone can acquire the skills it takes to form and tell a good story, though it may seem daunting at first. That is why we have compiled three main methods we believe will help you take the plunge into storytelling and set you on the path towards becoming a Jedi storyteller.
• The title ‘Storyteller’ might seem very basic and people often think that anybody and everybody can do this, however, quite the contrary is true for successful storytellers. While it is certainly possible to tell a story to your friends and family, it is a completely different thing to be a professional storyteller, and you need to be prepared for it. People buy costly tickets just to hear the storyteller for a few hours or minutes. Hence, you need to be good enough to deserve their love, support, time, and money.

Here are some of the most basic but necessary skills that a professional storyteller must have:

1. Very good communication skills - It is no secret that in order to be a good professional storyteller, you must have very good communication skills. The primary reason being that a major part of doing a job of a storyteller is to deliver the plot, idea and feel of the story to the audience. The audience first needs to understand each and every word coming from of you, then connect it with the plot of the story and get the essence of each character along with the plot. You need to have great mastery over voice modulation techniques in order to bring each character of the story to light. You also need to confirm the majority of the age group of your audience so that you can converse in a way that they don’t get bored. You need to check the mood of the audience in order to know the timing as to when to deliver what type of plot. Thus, in all, it can be said that the key to professional storytelling is communicating the idea of the story properly, with all other things being secondary.

2. Some amount of theatrical skills - Audiences in storytelling are often seated with the storyteller in closed spaces and watch the storyteller the whole time while listening in order to gather the expressions and grasp the feelings attached to each character and story in general. Hence, it is always good to have some theatrical skills along with adding a little bit of drama while telling a story in order to make the presence of the story more strong. It also helps in increasing the concentration of the audience towards the storyteller and can resonate with them more, such that they don't get bored and tired halfway through the story.

3. Selecting the suitable content to be delivered - While you may have great communications skills along with a substantial amount of theatrical skills, you can never be entirely sure that you will kill it. A good storyteller knows when to tell what type of story. Thus, before a performance, assess certain factors like the demography, the timing, the energy level, the kind of content that is trending the most, etc. The combination of these factors will help you select what type of content should be delivered so that your performance can be an exciting experience and leaves its mark on the audience

Key Responsibilities of Professional Storytellers Much like any other profession, a professional storyteller also has certain responsibilities.

Here are some of the key responsibilities that you must remember while making a career in storytelling:

1. While storytelling is an art and you have your freedom of expression, you still need to be careful such that you do not instill negative thoughts in the minds of your audience.

2. As a storyteller, you will have a lot of influencing power over your audience, you need to be sure that you don’t spread hate for any community, religion or individual so that panic and riot can be avoided.

3. While it is not necessary, it's always good to have a moral to the story so that people can always take back something from your story.

4. As a professional storyteller, you must help others in a way to go along the path and learn from you as much as possible.

5. While brand deals are lucrative and you must definitely consider them, you should always put your audience first, such that any product or service that you are advertising does no harm to your audience.

 Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can start your career as a professional storyteller.

1. Select the type of stories you want to deliver - It wouldn’t be wise to just start out with anything. Remember that first impression is very important. Before performing in front of a huge audience, you must experiment and try out several types and forms of stories and content. Then, make a priority list of what works and what doesn’t work out for you. After a series of trials and experiments, you should finally select what type of content you want to deliver and perform.
2. Start out with storytelling in some free / volunteer clubs – You cannot expect to earn a whole lot of money right at the start. Neither would you want to face the rage of people by not performing up to their standards and still taking their money. So, it’s always best to start in some free or volunteer clubs. Here you will meet different types of people, amateurs as well as professionals, who want to try out some new material. You can constantly discuss, learn, and improve alongside other fellow storytellers.
3. Read a lot - Reading is in general important for everybody but especially in the field of professional storytelling. When you read, you come across a lot of new ideas and scenarios, which can inspire you to write your own content. So, make reading your daily habit if you want to grow as a storyteller. 
4. Do some research and data analysis - It is not a hidden fact that data analytics in any field can help you get better results. Before doing anything, especially when you are paved the way through professional storytelling, you must always analyse everything before going for a new performance. There are several data analytics tools available online that can help you select the content, time and place of your performance.
5. Work on criticism and feedback - It's no good continuing with a career in storytelling if you are not improving daily. And improvement cannot take place effectively without taking in the criticism and feedback properly. It is necessary to segregate the genuine criticism and feedback from hate. But once you do come across any constructive feedback, take note of it and work efficiently to improve the content further for your audience.

Below listed are some alternative storytelling jobs that you can consider pursuing.

1. Videographer - You can make interesting videos and create amazing content merging it with the stories and writing. You will often need to be available at the filming sets in order to check if the expressions, cinematics, and sounds are portrayed in the manner that you had envisaged.

2. Editor/ Writer - If you are a good storyteller, you can also take up jobs that require good writing skills. A storyteller can write content that can be quite relatable to the audience and this might be very beneficial for articles and blogs that can be put up online or even in movies, drama theatres or news.

3. Blogger - This job is not much different than a storyteller, the little twist is that a career in blogging requires you to have extraordinary writing skills. The basic skill is the same, you have to describe or convey your feeling regarding certain topics to your audience. One extra element that adds up in blogging is sharing about your personal life. You need to be a little more extroverted and have to show more real-life happenings in order to be a successful blogger. While storytelling is about creativity, blogging is more about showing real-life happenings creatively.

4. Director - You can become the director of short films or even movies that make it to the cinema if you grow big enough. Story writing becomes a very essential part of it as movies and cinemas ultimately boil down to storytelling but in a more creative way.

5. Scriptwriter - How can we possibly forget scriptwriter when talking about movies and dramas? Whether it is a small advertisement featuring over FM or a big blockbuster movie that is yet to be released in the cinema halls, all such kind of content requires a good script. And who can write a better script than a storyteller? Hence, scriptwriter, screenplay writer or scenarist is among the best storytelling jobs out there.