Isaak Gelbinovich

One of the important elements of a good story is a conflict, a struggle, a problem that needs resolution. If we do not introduce the conflict early on in our story it may become drugged out and boring. Use the escalator approach to introduce and then develop the conflict. What I mean by that is don’t immediately go from introduction to the peak. Take a little time to build up the problem. Describe why it is a problem, how it affects our character’s lives and/or relationships. Invite your audience to reflect and relate that problem to their own issues and problems. It’s OK if talking about this conflict brings a little pain or discomfort. Sometimes it is necessary to introduce a little pain to get a desired result. Finally after we introduced, developed and peaked our conflict or problem or struggle we can introduce a resolution. Introducing the resolution or solution will be our next discussion. My suggestion will be to review your stories for the conflict and if you found it already you can develop it more and if you did not find it yet keep looking, it’s there.
Now go ahead and tell your story. The world needs to hear it.

Let’s continue with our discussion about stories in our presentations.
We have covered characters. The next element I would like to touch on is conversation and/or dialog.
If we only use narration in our stories they become dry and sound like the news report. It looks like we are standing on the sidelines looking in. We are passive observers we are not in the story. What can bring us into the story is a conversation or dialog between characters. There is something to consider. If we use too much narration it becomes a report however if use too much dialog it becomes a play. Neither one is desirable. There should be a healthy mix of both elements. The narration is a very good setup and then comes dialog. There may be many variation of a dialog in your stories. The most common, probably, will be a dialog between the characters in the story, another type maybe the inner dialog when you or any other character opens up his/her thoughts for the audience to hear and hopefully see. A hidden benefit of using dialog is humor. Very often in our stories the laughter comes because one of the characters said something funny, the conversation is a perfect way to introduce that humorous situation.
Now go ahead and tell your story. The world needs to hear it.

Let’s continue with our discussion about stories in our presentations.
A good story has the elements of a play. Every play has characters, so does every good story. The characters are the movers and shakers of any story. Our job is to make sure that our audience will meet and get to know the characters.
How do we do that? There are simple steps to accomplish this task. We need to describe the characters. We can give a short description, give them a name and give them emotions. The description may be a facial feature, clothing, height, weight. The name may be real or made up; it does not really mater. The emotion is not a requirement, but it will make our characters multidimensional.
A good idea is to show or relive the emotion instead of describing it. When we describe our characters and relive their emotions, we bring them to life. We help our audience see them. The characters in the story may be humans or animals, or they can be elements of nature or something man-made. Let your audience see, hear and feel your characters. Include narration and dialog into your stories.
When your audience has a chance to see, hear and feel your characters, they will relate and connect with those characters and with you. The members of your audience will understand your point faster and better, and will recognize their challenges in the challenges of your characters.

I have said it before and I will say it again.
Everybody has a story and world need to hear your story.
Imagine that you are just chatting with your friends and family and are telling your stories. In that case they may be messy and unstructured and it’s OK. You simply entertaining and/or informing someone in a casual conversation. Transfer the same story to a platform and suddenly messy and unstructured does not work. In a presentation stories serve a very specific and very important function. Stories are anchors to our points they are best way to make a point “stick” and be remembered. The question is how to create and deliver a good story?
A good story should have following:
• Characters (living and/or not)
• Dialog (there are different types of dialog)
• Conflict (what is the struggle?)
• Resolution (how we overcame the struggle)
• Take away message (the point of wisdom)
• Emotions (relieve the story don’t just retell it)
We will discuss each of these elements in my future blogs.
Everybody has a story. Enjoy telling your.

I would like to share with you some of my favorite quotes about storytelling.

Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
~ Indian Proverb

The healing that can grow out of the simple act of telling our stories is often quite remarkable.
~ Susan Wittig Albert

Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything we need only listen.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
~ Ursula Le Guin

What kind of people we become depends crucially on the stories we are nurtured on.
~ Chinweizu, Nigeria

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.
~ Maya Angelou

Great stories teach you something. That’s one reason I haven’t slipped into some sort of retirement: I always feel like I’m learning something new.
~ Clint Eastwood

People identify with stories. They may not remember the point but they will remember the story. I often hear the remark, “I do not have a story. I have a normal, ordinary life.” So do most people. We do not climb Mt. Everest or compete in the Olympics. We identify with normal, everyday stories that describe normal, everyday problems and normal, everyday solutions. We do not have all the experiences in the world, which is why it is OK to borrow a story and tell it in a conversation, giving proper credit to the source.
I never jumped from an airplane, but I have a friend that did and he shared his experience with me. I never dived, but I have a friend that did and she shared her experience with me. Now I can share these experiences in my conversations. I always ask for permission to use someone’s story, if I intend to use it in my presentations, and I always credit the story and the experience to the source.

Everything in our lives is a story. Every story has a point.
I understand that these are bold statements but I strongly believe that they are true. Any event in our lives, “big” or “small”, is a story, and every story has a lesson or a point. You may disagree with me and that’s OK. However, consider this: The point or lesson is not always obvious; it may not be life changing or even profound. The beauty of storytelling is that the point does not always have to be profound. Sometimes we need to make a simple, practical point and our story may serve as an anchor or a colorful wrapping paper to our point.
A good question may be what comes first, the point or the story? It all depends on the situation. Sometimes we need to make a point and are in search for a good anchor to support it. Sometimes we have a wonderful story and want to tell it everywhere to everybody, but what point does it make? To uncover the point, we need to work on our stories.
One way is to actually tell our story and ask the audience what they learned from it. I don’t mean a paying audience, unless the purpose of the workshop is to demonstrate this particular technique.
Another option is to record the story and then listen to the playback. This method may reveal some hidden jewels in our story.
A third option is to record our presentations in full and then listen to the audience’s reaction.
All these techniques require consistency. Do not be surprised if you discover more than one point and/or lesson in your stories. When you find stories that you like and enjoy telling, clean them up. By that I mean remove unnecessary and dull details. We will discuss helpful technique to do that in future posts.
When you tell your story, do not just retell it; rather, relive it. If you can do that, your audience will always enjoy hearing it, and you will always enjoy telling it. Tell your story and enjoy doing it. Have fun!

Recently I was at a very powerful workshop where I presented a short session on storytelling. After my presentation, the response was overwhelming. The participants said that it was liberating, very informative, entertaining, helpful and very well delivered. However, what surprised me was that more than one person said to me that storytelling is a dying art.
To me it was strange because I grew up in a culture and family that was very rich in storytelling. That is how I knew my parents and grandparents and on top of it all, it was simply great entertainment. I can assure you that a good story could compete with TV anytime.
Storytelling is as old as the world itself. Humans started telling stories as soon as they could speak. How could they not?! The spoken word came much earlier than the written one, and people had to preserve and pass along information, knowledge, wisdom and entertainment.
So, do stories have a place in a business environment? If I asked you, are you a good storyteller? Would you say YES or NO? What are the characteristics of a good storyteller? What are the ingredients of a good story? Where do you find stories? How do we connect through our stories? How should you structure masterful stories? We will discuss these and other questions in the upcoming postings. Keep telling your stories, because only you can.