
This is a simple blog with simple ambitions! It exists purely as a place for you, gentle reader, to get hold of all the free material I’ve created so far for the. The Reluctant Storyteller itself isn’t free, but these are the free bits.
(Most of them are one-take live recordings shot during the Corona-Virus lockdown!)
If this sort of thing floats your boat, or you’re one of those people who wonders if you should tell more stories but you’re not sure how, or even feels you don’t want to, then you might want to check out the Reluctant Storyteller project and see what you think.
So let’s get started. (Oh, before we do, you might also want to read this blog about why your stories aren’t working in your presentations.)
You need confidence to tell stories
This is a bit of a long term thing for your presentation: it takes a lot of guts to stand up and and stick your neck out. I teach a lot of tools for handling the anxiety in the short term but this is a fantastic tool for developing your self-confidence in the long term. I suggest doing it once, briefly, to get the hang of the process and then again, properly!
How to collect your stories
Having the self-confidence to tell your stories is only useful if you’ve got a big enough library of the right kind of stories of course. I use the library analogy intentionally, ‘cos it’s not just about having the books in your library, it’s also about being able to find them. In this video I look at how I collect the books for my library and also m version of the Dewey Decimal System for putting them on the right shelves!
How long can your audience concentrate in your presentation?
In this video I mention that breaking your presentation into mini-presentations (called Black Boxing) is a hugely powerful tool for keeping audiences interested. Moving into and out of ‘story mode’ at the break points is incredibly powerful.
Sounding more interesting as you tell your stories
Of course all this means that you’ve got your stories all sorted out, right? Now all you need to do is tell them in an interesting way 😉 Here’s the way to sound interesting as you tell them
Orientating your presentation’s story matrix
Once you’ve got into the swing of using stories, there’s a risk of over-using them. In the jargon, it’s called getting your story-matrix mis-orientated! In this video I explore what happens when you’ve got carried away with how you use your stories.
Another risk of being a novice storyteller
Of course, you need to remember that the stories aren’t about the storyteller. That’s counter-productive – sorry about that. And you need to remember to keep them short (‘cos the problem with stories is that they can take time!)
Picking your stories with care
Finally (for now), here’s a bit of a cautionary video. It’s important to remember to get the basics right too/first, before you launch into story-teller mode!
Keeping your stories under control
It’s easy to get carried away with telling stories. Here’s one of the ways I keep my storytelling under control
Phew!
Wow – that’s it. If you’ve watched them all .. well done! 🙂

This is practically a training course in it’s own right – albeit a less structured one. If you’re interested in a “proper” training course, check out the Reluctant Storyteller site.
Podcasts on storytelling (and similar presentation stuff)
Oh – one last thing – I’ve done a bunch of podcasts too. (Links to most of them are here.) I’ll add them gradually as I get the links sorted out, but for now you might find this one I did with fellow Introvert Jon Baker interesting…