Audio Storytelling Advice

In listening to Ira Glass’s videos on storytelling I found a few main takeaways. Firstly, it is important to use anecdotes, in the form of event sequences, to move a story forwards, although one should be careful to not make the anecdotes more interesting than the points they are leading towards. Another piece of advice was on finding the story you want to develop. Glass made it clear that it is important to know when to cut your losses on a story, that you will have to “kill” or abandon a lot of stories and that is part of the process, the failure is part of success. One thing he said about the reading/recording aspect of storytelling is to just talk normally, don’t try to emulate someone else’s voice and don’t emphasize too many words. In addition he said to let yourself show through a little, but not be the main focus, this way the story feels more conversational.