Telling personal stories is hard, but it’s what makes you a writer.
When you share your stories, two things happen:
– You conquer your fear of vulnerability.
– You become better at storytelling.
Often the hardest thing is the first sentence.
Below are seven sentence openers for storytelling.
Focus on crafting a good first sentence.
The rest of the story will flow by itself.
Last week I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feeds while sipping the steaming hot tea on a chilly winter morning when a story caught my eye.
It was captivating and well-written, but what really intrigued me was the footnote. The author mentioned that she developed the story with the help of a story coach, and if anyone wanted to develop their story, they should DM (direct message) him.
Now, if there is one thing that I have been struggling with for the past three years, is telling stories from everyday life. I am very good at telling other people’s stories. But when it comes to telling stories from my own life, I feel inhibited.
So, I sent him a contact request. He immediately accepted it, and sent me a welcome note.
I was impressed.
I wrote back, telling him that I wanted to improve my storytelling skills. What would he suggest I should do?
He sent me a link to a TED Talk.
I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up.
I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”
“Then consider it official,” he wrote back.
As soon as I got his response, I said to myself, “OMG! What have I done? Am I even equipped to pull it through? In two weeks, I will be traveling. There is no way I could meet the challenge.”
I can go back and tell him that it was a mistake.
Or don’t go back at all. I don’t owe him anything.
But hang on, what will be the price of pulling myself out?
I will not learn storytelling. What’s the big deal?
Hang on. It is a big deal. I want to get better at storytelling. This is my chance. Why not give it a go? Write as many days as I can. Learn as much as I could. I have nothing to lose. Only to gain.
So, this was it.
I published the above story as Story #1. The story got 2760 impressions and 42 likes. I received more than 20 comments.
Since then, I have been writing a story a day. I even created a hashtag #30days30stories. Other people joined in, and we have a nice thread going where people are telling their stories while learning the craft of storytelling.
I have learned more about storytelling in the last week than I did in the past three years.
And it started by putting myself out there.
On the very first story, the story coach Dan Manning wrote to me,
“You can make any story better by getting really specific on the moment of change. Here it is in this story:
I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up. I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”
In all of your stories, make sure your audience knows this is THE moment they have been waiting for.
Later I had a Zoom call with him, and we talked about storytelling. He gave me a simple framework to craft my stories.
That framework was a goldmine. Using it, practically any anecdote from everyday life can be converted into a story.
It looks like this:
A story starts with a change. In your anecdote, look where the change is occurring and start building your story from there. Describe what was the situation (or the person) before the change and how it (the situation or person) changed after the change.
Phillip Berry Osborne said:
“Ultimately, the key to personal-experience stories is change. Where our personal lives are concerned, in fact, change is probably the biggest single challenge we all face and share.
That’s why the best personal stories explore our transition in life — if only to encourage us to accept ourselves in some new context or as we’re becoming.
Such transition or change is vital to storytelling since it’s bound up with the overall message that underscores any good story — and yet, too often, writers fail in this one key area of change and, especially, the message that comes out of it.
Without a message, a story is like an egg without a shell.
Many of us, as writers, neglect this fundamental requirement.
We, humans, love stories because we are looking for meaning in them. Meaning could be as simple as:
Pick those moments in your day and weave your stories around them.
Follow me on LinkedIn, and you can read my stories there.
There are three kinds of stories:
Want to learn more about them, watch this TED Talk.
A young girl from Nigeria reached out to me on LinkedIn:
“Please, I would like and appreciate it, if you would help me build my blogging career. I feel so passionate about writing and I would like to go far with it.
You can visit my blog (https//improvingfortune.com) and see where I am lacking, and if actually am doing the right thing. I will be ever ready to welcome any advice you give to me.”
So I went to her blog and had a quick look. I liked what I saw. But, unfortunately, I didn’t have time to provide a critique. The truth is, I am no expert on blogs or all that goes with it. So while cooking dinner, I wrote a quick response to her on my phone.
“Looks cool. Congratulations on starting the journey. Which blogging is. It is very hard to say what is lacking and what is the right thing. The biggest thing is that you have started.
The second biggest thing is to be consistent. It is a long-time game. Give yourself at least five years. Learn along the way.
In five years’ time, you will look back and see how far you have come. I am only two and half years in my journey and I have come a long way.”
She wrote back thanking me for encouragement.
Later at night, I thought I wanted to say so many other things to this young new friend of mine. In two and half years of blogging, I have learned a lot, which I want to share with new starters.
Rather than writing to her privately, I decided to list them here so that other wannabe bloggers might benefit from it too. Of course, I will send my friend the link.
So here we go.
I know it is cliché, but the only thing that will see you through the peaks and troughs of blogging is your why. If your why is not strong enough, if you are testing the waters, or you are doing it because everyone else seems to be doing it, you will be out at the first sign of trouble.
But if your why is that you have to write no matter what — the day you don’t write feels like a day wasted. If your why is that nothing else can fill your soul other than writing and you want to find a way to focus on your writing, then blogging is where you start.
Why blogging?
Because you will learn a lot more when blogging than practicing in isolation.
First, you learn to write for an audience from day one.
Second, you build an audience while learning the craft of writing.
Third, your tackle the fear of ‘publishing.’ For years, I was so afraid to publish anything with my name on it. Writing small blog posts regularly helped me overcome my fear and gave me the courage to write books.
Writing is not the only thing you need to learn.
In the twenty-first century, you need to be a Jack of all trades and master of one.
You will need to learn how to set up and maintain a blog. You won’t be able to fork out thousands of dollars every time you want to change the layout of your blog or want to include podcasting and video making to it.
You will also need to learn how email marketing works and how social media is essential to build your profile.
You will also need to learn how the publishing industry works because, sooner or later, you will be publishing books, writing courses, producing audiobooks. That is where the world is going.
Start learning them bit by bit from early on so that you can catch up. Because with technology, everything is changing faster than anyone of us can keep pace with.
Make a list of all the things you think you need to learn at this point and stick it on the wall where you can see it every day.
Then pick one by one and learn them. You will be surprised how quickly you will get through the list if you focus on learning one thing at a time.
I tried to learn several at a time and ended up burning out. So now I pick one thing and do it for 100 days and become fluent at it.
Keep it in your mind you are not looking at becoming an expert but just fluent. You are fluent at brushing your teeth, fixing yourself a meal, writing an email, posting a picture on Instagram. You are not an expert at these things but fluent. Jack, not the master.
You need to be more authentic on the internet than even in real life. Anything you write will stay on the internet forever. And people can smell bullsh*t from miles.
All the dealings on the internet happen on trust. It is something very hard for new bloggers to grasp. Yes, the shonky deals are out there, and you will be bitten more than once, but people who will be there for the long term will be more genuine and open than even your next-door neighbor.
Being authentic and open doesn’t mean you share everything about yourself and open yourself to be taken advantage of. Being authentic means not putting a persona and presenting to be something you are not. Be your genuine self, even if you have a weird accent, expression, or appearance.
Also, figure out what details of your life are not for public consumption and make a point never to discuss them.
Other than learning skills, your next big thing should be making connections. Because, at some stage in the last two decades, apparently, we have moved from the Information Age to the Connection Age. Today’s economy is called the connection economy.
Build connections will people in your field. Help the ones you can help and seek help from those who can help you. Sometimes just reaching out is all you need to do to make a connection with a stranger.
Once you get a bit comfortable writing on your blog, find out other platforms you can write on. It is called guest blogging, and several sites publish content from bloggers — Huffington Post, Forbes, HubSpot, Mashable, Entrepreneur — are some to name.
Or you can start writing on a platform like Medium, Vocal, Newsbreak and bring visibility to your work.
Get some experience on your blog first because the early days when no one reads your blog are the golden days. It is time to take risks with your writing, make mistakes and refine your stories.
Learn telling stories from your life and life around you. Wrap your message in your stories. People forget everything else, but they remember stories. Need an example — Once upon a time, a young girl from Nigeria…
There you go, my young friend; I hope I have given you enough to keep you busy for the next five years.
Irving Naxon, the inventor of the crockpot, once revealed the inspiration behind his invention.
His grandmother grew up in a small village in Lithuania. Each Friday, her mother would send her to the local bakery with a pot of uncooked “cholent” to be put in the oven. The pot would sit there for the whole day. While the family observed the Sabbath, the dying fire of the oven would cook the stew. At sundown, she will bring back the pot and the family would have the steamy delicious stew for dinner.
That simple story stayed with Naxon for the rest of his life. He wanted to prepare the same kind stew but in the convenience of his home. He figured out a way to create a heating element that surrounded the pot in the same way it would surround an oven in a bakery. His invention was not only easy to use but also consumed less electricity. And it didn’t cost much. He called his invention ‘Naxon Beanery.’
Naxon Beanery later named the crockpot is central to western cooking. A simple story told by his grandmother led to change the western culinary history forever.
Before TV, before internet, before mobile phones, stories used to be the medium to pass knowledge from one generation to another.
Religion, society, culture, families all used stories to teach values, develop character, and provide inspiration.
As human beings, we are automatically drawn to stories because we see ourselves reflected in them. Stories illustrate the point much better than facts or explanations can. Through stories, we share passions, fears, sadness, hardships, and joys. Stories are central to our communication.
We engage with others through stories. Storytelling is a lot more than just a recitation of facts and events. Stories convey meaning and purpose that help us understand ourselves better and find commonality with others.
Every event can become a story. The reason we don’t see the story in everyday happening is because we don’t slow down to draw the lessons from our mishaps or admire the beauty of the opportunities that came our way. In today’s fast-paced environment, there is no time to reflect on our experiences and to build a narrative out of them.
There is the reason why children are so well engaged in storytelling. Kids can’t wait to hear a good story because they’re naturally curious and want to learn more about the world.
For centuries, stories have been used to pass on knowledge, and when important teachings are embedded in a story, we embrace that information uniquely because we tend to remember the underlying emotions in a story rather than the actual elements of that story.
We start thinking that our job is to constantly bombard our readers with new information. We tend to forget that people don’t need more information. They don’t need to be taught either. They need to be touched in their hearts. They need stories. Stories of people, places and things.
Well-told stories are a gift from a writer to his readers. Here, is one from story from Sidney Sheldon’t memoir The Otherside of Me:
At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide. I was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our pharmacist. I had read the whiskey and sleeping pills were a deadly combination, and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die.
It was Saturday – the Saturday I had been waiting for. My parents would be away for the weekend and my brother Richard was staying at a friend’s. Our apartment would be deserted, so there would be no one there to interfere with my plan.
At six o’clock, the pharmacist called out “Closing time.”
He had no idea how right he was. It was time to close out all the things that were wrong with my life. I knew I wasn’t just me. It was the whole country.
I read this story when I was seventeen years old. It has stayed with me for forty years. I can’t say the same about the articles I read both online and in print.
In today’s world with easy access to high-quality content, people don’t want you to give them more things to think about, more stuff to do, more clutter to fill their minds. There is an ocean of self-help articles. YouTube videos are screaming for attention with headlines such as – “You are missing out if you don’t do this routine.”
In such an environment, if you can tell a simple story in your authentic and honest voice, your writing will have much more impact. It will stay with more people, much longer than the screaming YouTube video or a mile-long self-help listicle.
When someone writes something that doesn’t tell me what to do but instead shares their honest perspective and personal story in an authentic voice they touch me.
They inspire me to become the kind of storyteller Naxon’s grandmother was, whose simple ‘stew-making’ story inspired Naxon to invent a simple device but which had a profound impact on the lives of millions.
Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash
If you are in the same age group as me, then the chances are you have ditched writing by hand in favor of typing. And if you are a millennial, even greater chances are that you have never written by hand since you left school. But if writing is your vocation then you should seriously consider writing your first drafts by hand.
Even then some people can’t resist the invitation of a blank notebook and a fancy pen and I am one of them. To me a pen and paper are magical. Give them to me any time and I will be lost for hours.
Each morning, I get up, brush my teeth and settle down to write. Of course with my favorite Uniball pen and my daily diary with lovely botanic print. I have a rule – not to reach for any digital device until I have written three pages.
Of course, I developed this habit from Julia Cameron’s classic book The Artist’s Way where she recommends writing three pages in longhand. “Pages are meant to be,” she says, “simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind.”
I found writing by hand a great way to access anecdotes and information from my subconscious. The things that surface, sometimes my conscious brain is not even aware of them.
Here are five proven benefits of writing by hand.
1. It helps access long-stored memories
There seems to be some special connection between the act of writing by hand and the memory vaults of our brains. Moving one’s hand across the page seems to open multiple locks at the same time.
Sometimes my hand can’t move fast enough to capture all stories that keep pouring out. Then it doesn’t matter how I capture them – whether in fragmented sentences, incorrect spelling, or unfitting words – as long as I capture write them. Because if I don’t, they will get locked up again.
2. It enhances mindfulness and creativity
According to a study performed at Indiana University, the mere act of writing by hand unleashes creativity not easily accessed in any other way. A high-tech magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) shows that writing by hand increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, much like meditation.
“This is perhaps the true magic of a pen,” writes Nancy Olson in Forbes, “it transports us to unexpected places, on wings that require no more than a timely shot of ink to keep them aloft, destination unknown. And in the process, the mindfulness writing engenders encourages calm and creativity.”
3. It results in better composition
Research reveals that students who write essays with a pen write more than those that used a keyboard; they also wrote faster and in more complete sentences.
4. It prevents distractions
Working at the computer is full of distractions. The easy access to the internet, email and pop-ups keep tempting you to stop mid-sentence and do a little check. Half-an-hour later when you get back to finish that sentence, the train of thought is gone. But when there is only a pen and paper is in front of you, you tend to go deep inside, and what surfaces even surprises you.
5. It helps retain information better
In the process of writing, a particular area of the brain is used, the so-called reticular activating system (RAS). It acts as a filter – it blocks the processing of extraneous information. By drawing letters with a pen or pencil on paper, we better concentrate and force the brain to consider what we write carefully. Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, explains the differences between the pen and the keyboard: “You make more movements because each letter has its own set of elements, and working on a computer is monotonous – you only need to press a key each time.”
When you write things out, you create spatial relations between each bit of information you’re recording. Handwriting activates parts of your brain involved in thinking and working memory, and allows you to store and manage information. The movement associated with the pen and your hand can help you encode and retain information long-term.
The Benefits of Handwriting vs. Typing
Many people get frustrated by the slowness of writing by hand and reach straight for the computer. Typing might seem a fast way to put words out there and spell-check and in-built thesaurus provides additional support in polishing your work but they take away the trance-like state you enter into when you are writing by hand.
But that is where the real writing comes from – from your subconscious.
Think of writing by hand as meditation. Your writing may not sound spiritual or even meditative but it is a valid form of meditation that helps you move from fast to slow, from shallow to deep, and from the logical brain to an artist’s brain. It gives you insights you never would have reached with your conscious brain.
Give it a go.
Not just give it a go, build a solid habit of writing by hand.
Last month, I wrote about 3 Habits of a freshman writer (and why you should concentrate on only these) in your first year, where I urged the new writers to focus on developing just three habits:
While working on developing these habits, a day will come when you feel that you have wasted the whole day if you had to go to bed without writing something.
You would have a nagging feeling if you did not file away the scribbling you did on the back of an envelope when your diary was not handy or notes you took on a piece of paper while reading the amazing book you accidentally found in the library.
When this starts happening frequently, congratulations. You are now in the sophomore year as a writer and ready to develop three habits of sophomores. They are:
As a sophomore writer, you will have some writing under your belt. Your job now is to take some bits from it and learn to edit it. To make it ready for human consumption.
Self-editing is as important as writing. You will have to learn to do it. If you have this thought in mind that editing is the job of editors and proofreaders, banish it from your mind. Build a self-editing habit from the early stages, and you will not struggle when you are writing a book.
Tighten your sentences. Remove unnecessary words. Cut out the waffle. Refer to objects by name. Be specific. Avoid adverbs and use more verbs. Choose an active versus passive voice. Include dialogue. Learn how to describe a scene and a setting.
Though much disliked and feared, editing, in fact, is one of the most joyful activities for writers. This is where you learn and practice the craft of writing.
And the craft is in making our writing meaningful. As a writer, our job is to observe, decipher the meaning and articulate in such a way that the message becomes universal. It might take us a lifetime to learn how to do that, but when we do, we will leave behind something that will last much longer than us.
Once you have a few pieces of work ready, it is time to find appropriate writing groups. Writing groups are the best way to get some objective feedback to improve your work.
It is also the least threatening way to get a critique of your work. It could be very intimidating for new writers to get their work critiqued. Writing groups provide encouragement and help and aren’t afraid to pick things apart when they need to be. I have been a part of various writing groups for two decades now and have benefited immensely from them.
How do you find a writing group?
Usually, there are some already in your city or town. Sometimes, when you attend a writing course, participants agree to continue meeting after the course and form a writing group. There are some online writing groups also available. One I know of is Ninja Writers, run by Shaunta Grimes.
If nothing works, form your own group by giving an ad at your local writer’s center.
The time has come to call yourself a writer. You don’t have to publish a book to be a writer.
The fact that you’re actively and consistently writing and sharing your work with others is all the proof you need to take up the title of ‘writer’ and start proclaiming your writerhood to the world
So what are you waiting for? Go own your status!
Tell the world. Actively seek opportunities to tell people.
The best way to do that is to have an elevator pitch ready. An elevator pitch is a short, pre-prepared statement you use to introduce yourself. It needs to be short, punchy and should finish before the finish of the elevator ride.
You don’t want to feel embarrassed or hesitant in admitting to someone that you are a writer. A handy, ready-made well-practiced statement can do wonders for your confidence level.
So when someone asks you what do you do, rather than fumbling for words, you can automatically say, “I am a writer, I write…”
Try using this statement even when you are not a full-time writer. Try it on strangers first then move on to friends.
The idea is to make your subconscious mind believe it.
Be ready for the next question, “What do you write?”
Incorporate it in your elevator statement. Keep it sweet and simple. In most cases, the person you’re talking to isn’t expecting a seamless three-paragraph book blurb. They’re simply curious about what you write.
There you have it, the three habits of a sophomore writer.
A sophomore writer writes daily, reads daily, edits daily.
They organize their work and notes so that they can find it when they need it. They show their work to others and get critique to improve their writing. Most importantly, they introduce themselves as writers without hesitation.
Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash