Hi there it's just about 30 degrees Celsius where I am right now which is
pretty warm for me I realized in these videos I don't
actually need to wear pants so this week just shorts
Hi it's Kelsey from beabetterguide.com and welcome to a very exciting
pantsless edition of our community Q&A this is a shout out to Lynn Neil's from
the Chicago area she leads tours there and reached out last week asking about
storytelling and actually sharing some of her tips and how she uses
storytelling on her tours and I thought this was a great chance to weigh in on
how important storytelling is to being a great guide so stories are so important
and central to the human experience before we had writing we passed along
our most important knowledge through stories great speakers if you think of
any great speaker they use stories to get across their points instead of just
bare bowing bare bones facts or things like this and many schools business
schools for example like the Harvard and Johns Hopkins business schools will use
case studies essentially storytelling to help make their lessons more sticky in
this way your business owner who's your protagonist goes through a struggle or
challenges in the business world and then there's a resolution and outcome
and the students learn and tease out the morals and lessons from that story so
stories are extremely extremely powerful and you definitely want to use them on
your tour let's take a look at the four most important things you can do to tell
better stories what is the message what is the most important information or
message that you want to get across to your group you're obviously choosing to
share some information with the people on your tour but what is the most
important message we think of these sometimes as the moral may be they some
insights or a lesson to be drawn from that maybe it's for humor but whatever
that main message is it's got to be very clear because what's that kind of that
will allow you to cut all the fat out of your story anything that doesn't
contribute to that main message can be cut out and you can be a much more
effective storyteller quick example I was leading a tour in
Frantz and we started our day on the hilltop where Julius Caesar Julius
Caesar defeated the United armies of the Gauls and this is a very very important
battle so there's obviously tons of facts that could share about that battle
information but the key message that I wanted to get across was a few points
one how important this battle was for the future of Europe to how victory for
the Romans wasn't certain that was kind of the tension we take it for granted
now but victory wasn't certain and lastly that the effects of that the
consequences of that battle echoed until this day so those are the three big
things that were my message who is your audience
every storytelling exercise should begin with who is in the group that I'm
telling the story to because if I'm talking about a building I'm going to
tell a very different story to a group of children and people from the general
public and maybe a group of architects or something like that
you always want common reference points for your audience they want to be able
to relate to the protagonist in some way or relate to their struggle so back to
my example of the biking it was a biking trip in France so I knew right away that
these weren't history buffs you know this wasn't an archaeology tour or
anything like that so I needed to keep the tour short and I chose to focus on
Julius Caesar someone who most of the group had probably heard of and then
really focused on the human struggle between these two cultures and what
Julius Caesar was facing in that battle always show don't tell so a great
storyteller will use visual language and sensory language to really get people
immersed in that setting where your story is taking place so for example
again we're talking about the Gauls I had them imagine that they were rising
in that camp on top of the hill and they looked down through the mists and saw
that Roman encampment and the smell of campfires and suit and that whinny of
horses and you're looking down you saw the glint of the mettle of the Roman
helmets little details like this visual language will set the setting much
better than a simple date or a description or saying oh it was in this
to always use visual language as much as possible and practice that's one of the
most important things honestly you're going through your stories or the facts
and information you give on tour try and tease out some characters some tension
some plot and then practice telling those short little stories over and over
until they're comfortable practice on your friends video whatever you are
comfortable with because storytelling is such a big subject I want to pop up a
few more do's and don'ts for storytelling let's take a look
so don't overwhelm your story with unnecessary details don't make it too
long don't tell a story without tension or
problem or a challenge especially that people can relate to and don't forget to
resolve that tension you do want to do do use dialog whenever possible have a
beginning middle and an end keep eye contact with your audience always
describe the setting at least one sentence and incorporate pauses to pace
your story so in the comments below let me know your best storytelling tips how
do you tell great stories on tour share this video if you're inspired thanks for
being here it is warm out I guess I can finally take those shorts off now huh