Welcome to today’s entry on social skills dear reader! See, being able to tell a good story makes an evening with friends more memorable, a date more riveting, and your ideas easier to remember. It helps people understand you and gives them something to enjoy in your company. It’s a skill worth learning- and that’s what we’ll look at below. If you missed the last edition on Get People To Listen To You, you can catch up right here.
“Poetry wants to instruct or else to delight;
Or, better still, to delight and instruct at once.”
— Horace, Ars Poetica
A crow was about to die of thirst when he found a pitcher of water. He pushed his beak inside, trying to drink, but the water was too low and the neck too narrow. He kept trying until, exhausted, he gave up.
Then a thought came to him.
He picked up a pebble and dropped it into the pitcher. Then he did so with another. Alas! The water began to rise. He kept adding pebbles until, finally, he reached it and drunk.
That’s Aesop’s fable The Crow and the Pitcher. In a few sentences, we’ve followed desperation, the prospect of relief, disappointment, and a solution. We get the visceral feeling that each development is essential because the crow’s life hinges on it.
I admire people who can do this. My girlfriend is one of the best storytellers I know. She can make any boring experience quite interesting, leaving you in awe and surprise at the juiciness of what just happened. She keeps me captivated through and through, and that’s something I admire and envy about her.
The infuriating thing is that she’s a natural. She has never taken a storytelling class. And neither does she write.
She tells me stories of how she used to get in trouble in high-school because everyone wanted to hear her crazy stories- didn’t matter if they were fabricated or true. I get it. Being around someone who tells stories well makes life more fun and riveting. Any ordinary evening becomes memorable, and you leave feeling you know each other better.
unleash the drama
What pulls me into a story is when someone starts with something dramatic.
I’m not a big fan of slow build-ups. Stakes, surprises, and uncertainty give me the most visceral effect. It also helps to have a little background information, especially when it helps me understand what someone stands to lose or gives me a peak into their psyche.
Sometimes the background isn’t important. Aesop gives us what we need almost immediately. The crow is thirsty, the water is beyond its reach, and its first attempts to drink it fail. The obstacles it faces determine what happens next. And we have just enough information to follow the plot without knowing where it hatched or what it did that morning.
That’s the structure I like to return to when telling a story. I take a character through a series of ups and downs. They encounter obstacles, feel like they’re winning through a certain solution, then it doesn’t work or another problem arises. They feel bad. Then they try to resolve the problem using another solution, on and on until they get a breakthrough.
Each attempt changes the situation. We begin to hope with them, and we also descend into their disappointment when it doesn’t work.
People often fall into the trap of lacking structure. They say whatever comes into their minds in a haphazard way, which leaves everyone confused, wondering what the story is even about. The listener has to work out which details matter while trying to remember them all.
A good storyteller makes that work easier. We know what someone wants, what’s getting in their way, and why they’ve decided to do something about it. Even a small social predicament becomes interesting when we understand what it means to the person experiencing it.
don’t forget the details
Now that you understand the importance of drama first, the next details deserving your attention are a character’s response to an event- their thoughts, emotions, body language, and finally their actions as they try to rectify the situation.
In Dostoyevsky’s White Nights, a young man sees the love of his life run into another man while he’s holding her hand.
Her hand trembles in his, and she presses closer to him. His heart begins to race. He asks who it is.
It’s the man she has been waiting for.
Only moments before, they had been imagining a future together. They were laughing, talking about where they would live, making the plans you do when you both want each other forever. Finally, for a young man who had spent so much of his life alone, there was now somewhere beautiful for all that longing to go.
Now he could barely stand.
The other man calls her name. Nastenka cries out and rushes into his arms. The narrator stays where he is, watching the future they had just imagined vanish into thin air.
Then she comes back.
And before he can even process what’s happening, she puts her arms around his neck and gives him a warm, tender kiss. She looks him in the eye and says nothing. A moment later, she returns to the other man, takes his hand, and leaves with him.
The narrator watches this until they disappear.
That final kiss makes the scene feel painful. There’s affection in it, enough for us to understand why he had hoped. She cares about him but she still leaves. We can feel how difficult it would be to make sense of it while it was happening.
That’s why I admire Dostoyevsky. He paints people as they are, with an understanding of human nature which makes his characters relatable. Through the depth of his description, we’re able to see and appreciate them as people.
You know what it feels like to want someone’s attention while trying to appear indifferent. You’ve felt your confidence dwindle halfway through a sentence. You’ve made a situation worse because admitting a mistake seemed unbearable. A character’s responses makes the story realer and you give your reader or listener a chance to empathize.
I once wrote about how I met and loved someone at university. It seemed ordinary to me. Boy meets girl, and the rest is history. But I included the pressure I was under, my hesitation, my desire, and how being with her changed what mattered to me. The story spread across school. People remembered me for it and wanted a part two.
That was so much attention. It was crazy.
It’s good to reveal enough for someone to relate or feel something. Our embarrassment, fear, mistakes, and less admirable motives can explain the decisions that follow. But if we remove them all, people may struggle to understand why the experience mattered.
That said, irrelevant details can become extraneous and tiring, however intimate they are. It’s wise to stick to the plot.
you must be enthusiastic about your story
All this becomes even better when the person giving the story is energetic and animated, willing to share the nitty-gritties.
An expression can show us how offended someone was. A sudden pause can give us time to anticipate the answer. The way you repeat what someone said can help us understand why you found it so funny or infuriating.
We get to experience a little of what it was like to be there.
This requires a willingness to look foolish. Sometimes the best part is the confidence with which you made a terrible decision, or the elaborate explanation you offered when everyone already knew you were lying. Trying to preserve too much dignity can deprive your friends of a very good evening.
Remember the enjoyment is shared. You’re paying attention to their reactions, giving an interesting moment room to grow, and noticing when they’re ready for you to move on. Their curiosity becomes part of the pleasure of telling it.
sometimes let people learn something
Robert Greene, the author of The 48 Laws of Power, appends stories in his books which are so good that even if you forget the lesson, you remember the story. It can go on to influence and entertain you later, especially when you need it most.
That’s a powerful ability. We can pass on moral lessons to our children, give cautionary tales to family members, and help friends consider a decision without making the conversation feel like a lecture. Even a moral becomes more palatable if the story was entertaining from the outset.
A story also gives us someone’s judgment to examine. We see what they feared, what they wanted, and what they did in response. Their choices give us a way to consider our own.
Yet people sabotage themselves by deciding either they’re naturals at story-telling or not. They don’t like practicing, so they rarely give themselves a chance to improve.
So the next time something surprises, embarrasses, or delights you, remember how it unfolded and what went through your mind. There may be someone at dinner who would love to hear it.
For more on social skills, click here.
‘Til next time. Have a good week ahead!
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Antonius Veritas, M.D
This essay is my first return to writing directly in months, in a format I haven’t practiced before. Your “Each attempt changes the situation.” is true of the telling as much as of the crow.
Instructive (and entertaining!). Help me connect it to a principle of Stoicism. Thx!