2 Storytelling Secrets to Connect You with Your Audience

The 2 storytelling secrets below will not only connect you with your audience, but they will deepen that connection and oftentimes uncover some laughs too.

Secret 1: Condense to connect. When you deliver a scene with characters having dialogue, don’t tell us everything, just tell us the main thing. Try not to go back and forth between characters more than a few times, because your audience will grow tired.

Instead, put the important statements in those few lines of dialogue. For example, in one of my stories, my professor gave me lots of advice. However, the only part of that advice that I share with my audience is when he said, “You’re always too something to someone.”  

Secret 2: Come out of your story and check-in with your audience members. Remember, you’re not doing a stage-play. You’re having a conversation with your audience. When you get into a story, you don’t have to lose that conversation. For example, I may say…

You should have been with my wife and me 15 years ago when we took our 6-month-old daughter, Tori, to the doctors. Raise your hand if you have kids? Great, then you know the doctor is going to measure her length and…?” They yell out, “Her weight!”

On a side note, I often hear someone answer, “Her height!” At that point I say, “You do know that the length, when you turn her upright, becomes the height, right?” After this, I get right back into the story with “The doc walks in with his white coat and glasses…”