The Art of the Tale: Engage Your Audience, Elevate Your Organization, and Share Your Message Through Storytelling
- 5h 13m
- Steven James, Tom Morrisey
- HarperCollins Leadership
- 2022
Unleash the power of storytelling to transform your talks, speeches, and presentations—whether your audience is a boardroom of executives, a classroom of students, or an auditorium full of eager listeners.
Everyone, regardless of their background and training, can improve their storytelling abilities. But what is a story? How can you tell it in a way that delights and informs your listeners? Take a journey into the keys to great storytelling with two of the country’s top experts on story presentation and speech writing.
In The Art of the Tale, expert storytellers Steven James and Tom Morrisey team up and tap into their lifetimes of experience to show you how to prepare stellar presentations, tell stories in your own unique way, adapt your material to different groups of listeners, and gain confidence in your ability as a speaker. In this book, you’ll learn why:
- practice doesn’t make perfect.
- you should never tell the same story twice.
- there is no right way to tell a story.
- it’s best to avoid memorizing your stories.
You’ll also find helpful hints on:
- gaining confidence in your ability as a storyteller.
- connecting with your audience.
- matching your expectations with those of your listeners.
- understanding what makes a good story.
- drawing truth out of stories you wish to tell.
- crafting and remembering stories.
- shaping your memories into inspiring stories.
Learn how to tell stories more effectively, lead and teach more creatively, and prepare your message in less time by using this unique resource provided by two of the nation’s premier communicators, who tap into their experience to share a lifetime’s worth of insights and expertise.
About the Author
Steven James is the critically acclaimed, national bestselling author of sixteen novels. His work has been optioned by ABC Studios and praised by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, the New York Journal of Books, and many others. His pulse-pounding, award-winning thrillers are known for their intricate storylines and insightful explorations of good and evil. When he’s not working on his next book, he’s either teaching master classes on writing throughout the country, trail running, or sneaking off to catch a matinee.
Tom Morrisey is a mountaineer, aviator, shipwreck diver, and explorer, who holds a Full Cave certification from the National Speleological society - Cave Diving Section. He has launched, edited or contributed to numerous national publications and is an award-winning adventure travel writer. A popular speaker, he is also active in both youth and prison ministry. Morrisey earned an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University, and his fiction has been featured in numerous anthologies and magazines. His previous novel, Yucatan Deep, was a 2003 finalist for the Christy Award. He and his family live in Orlando, Florida.
In this Book
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Introduction
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The Unparalleled Power of Story
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Stories are Great… For Other People?
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The Three Questions That Will Change Everything
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Story? Or Anecdote?—(How to Tell the Difference and Why it Matters)
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Shrinking the Space Between Us
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The Chemistry of Storytelling—Hugging the Audience with Story
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The Six Most Common Mistakes Speakers Make (and How to Avoid Them)
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Diversity and Inclusion—The Story of Each of Us, the Story of All of Us
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The Story That Changed an Industry
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Humor—Adding a Light Touch to the Stories You Tell
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Warts and All—The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Story
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The Kung Fu Lesson, the Llama Sweater, and the Ice Cream Cookie Stack
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Going from Dry to Dramatic—When the Facts of the Matter Really Do Matter
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Transformative Techniques to Improve Your Delivery
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Dusting off Your Memories—Crafting Personal Experience Stories
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Shaping Stories Like a Speechwriter
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Steps to Growing Your Own Tale
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Orchestration—Bringing It All Together
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Conclusion
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Notes
