This is my 5 year story about becoming a far better storyteller.
Goal: Tell a story as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It started with me podcasting to share stories with friends. Every time I spoke, however, I sounded lifeless like a stressed-out amateur.
Why?
I tracked down great storytellers to learn from them.
Unexpectedly, even the best could only articulate *some* of the ingredients that make them great.
There was something intangible underneath their explanations that they couldn’t address when pressed.
That sounded like a treasure hunt to me:
Collect the hidden ingredients needed to tell a remarkable story charismatically.
I would finally become a storyteller.
Because these ingredients were hard to identify, I used the process of “learning by inversion.”
This is where you learn how something works by studying its bad examples. Then you do the opposite of them.
So I watched a lot of bad storytellers on YouTube.
Thanks, TED.
It became clear that there are two ways to tell a story:
1. In whatever way suddenly comes to mind
2. *Strategically*