Storytelling SecretsHow To Keep People Listening MrBallen ~ Chris Williamson

describe your style? Like where did it come from? How did it originate? What did you do to develop this particular, and how would you categorize it?

So I think that there's some necessary context. I grew up around professional writers and storytellers. My father is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He worked at the Boston Globe. He ran the Spotlight team, which there was a movie made called Spotlight with Michael Keaton. That's like the type of investigative journalism he was doing. So, you know, my dad is this very high-speed journalist. My mother is also a professional writer, radio host, you know, when she was younger. Incredible writer. My older sister is a two-time Pulitzer winner, also a journalist at the Boston Globe. And my younger sister is a scientist. She's about to defend her dissertation, get her PhD to be a bee scientist. So I say all that because I was not like a big time academic. I was like, you know, barely scraping by and honestly did horrible as a student and But growing up, I was surrounded by people that were incredibly good writers and storytellers. And almost unintentionally, I learned how to speak. I learned how to tell stories. Just

through osmosis and some genetic raw material as well. It's

almost like, yeah, basically. And so I think that that is a big part of why I think I'm able to tell a story well, is just being around really good storytellers. But I think in terms of my specific style, which I would categorize as not deception, but telling a story where I'm holding off details, not to make the story not accurate, but rather using perspectives, inhabiting certain perspectives in a story that allow you to effectively tell an angle of the story where you are knowingly omitting a portion of the story that's going to come in later that will actually answer questions the audience is going to have. It's like I'm setting you up for an incomplete story that I absolutely fill in every single gap, but in a way that's not like, and then I'm going to explain it to you. It just, it happens where we've left all these holes and it gets filled in at the end for a big, powerful reveal. Use the story that we just went through. Sure.

Explain to me how you've constructed that. Tell me what's going on.

So it's really important to understand if you're gonna tell a really good story, that it has less to do with the story and much more to do with the delivery of the person telling it. Now, that's not entirely true because there are some stories that are so outrageous they carry the day, but most of the time, if you're gonna tell a story, it's your delivery that's gonna have the biggest impact on the audience. And so for this, I'm actually telling that lamp story with only you in mind. I'm not thinking about anybody else here. I'm really just gauging your reaction to the story. And so as a storyteller, I'm constantly trying to size up how my audience is reacting to what I'm saying. But in terms of that specific story, I know that I'm building to a place where I'm going to tell you that everything that happened in the story didn't happen. That's going to be the reveal. But the best way to set that up is to not flag that there is anything