Tell a Good Story By David Wygant

Todays blog is an inside conversation that my coach Khiem and I had the other day.

Khiem: The key to story telling is that you want to speak more from the first-person perspective: I did this; I felt that; I came across this… Everything else – the other people in the story, the things that you see – can just illustrate better who YOU are as a person.

You are not trying to sell yourself – you’re not ONLY talking about yourself – but when it comes to a point for you to relate to her, talking about yourself helps her relate to you. The more you talk about yourself, and the more you express who you are, the more interesting you will become to her.

She’ll think, “well yeah, he’s from Arizona, and there is something about him that makes him very personable,” and that personable quality comes from you talking about yourself.

We talk a lot about “painting a picture” – and I might have walked down the same street in Paris that you have – but your experience of it is different.

Even if we were to experience the same moment at the same time – we see the same people, the same things – but you would express that experience completely differently than I would. Why? Because the emotions and the perceptions that we have of that scene are different.

We could be walking down the same street, but if I tell her about my experience doing it, it will be different than hers. Just because she felt differently, she notices things differently than I do.

She might say, “when I was walking down the street with David, I couldn’t help but notice the dog. And I felt happy because it was such a cute dog, and the more I see cute dogs, the more I want one!” And that’s what she would notice, assuming she was walking down the street with me.

But I might be noticing the hot girls everywhere! And thinking the same thing… “I want a girl now!” So: same street, same scene, same people, but I experience it differently than she does.

David: See the difference?

When a woman says something to you – “man, I love Paris,” you say, “oh my god, you love Paris? Let me tell something about Paris – have you ever been down to the Eiffel Tower late at night?” She says, “no,” and you reply, “well let me share this with you…” and then you spin the story with animation. And with voice tone – don’t be monotone!

You want to take her on an emotional journey so that at the end of the story, she pictures being there with you. That’s what the story is all about – that is the whole object of story-telling – getting her to picture herself being there with you.

If you are monotone, all she pictures is going to Paris with somebody else!
Khiem: And being monotone isn’t that bad as long as you are talking about yourself. If you are monotone and you’re just talking about things, that’s bad. But if you say in a monotone voice, “I went to Paris, I did this, I went to the Eiffel Tower, and it was gorgeous. I felt this, I saw the scenery” and you’re not very animated, it’s still more interesting than, “the Eiffel Tower is great, the view is beautiful, you could see this” in an animated voice.

Add the element of animation to help paint the picture, but not as a main focus. The main focus of the picture should be you. How you felt, how you perceived that experience – this is what is most important.
Once you turn her on with your words……use those same words to turn her on online.