telling stories

I’ve seen the Ira Glass interview making its way around the blogosphere via (Presentation Zen, Russell Davies and Stephen Landau). If you haven’t seen it yet, now is your chance. Here’s parts 2, 3 and 4.

However, if you’re not ready to watch it, David Nottoli did a great job of distilling Ira’s interview into six points:

1. Have a good anecdote (sequence of events) and a good meaningful moment of reflection (what the story means)
2. Generate enough stuff/stories to get lucky and find the one good really great one.
3. Enjoy the killing.  It's important to kill lots of crap so you can get to the good stuff.
4. Be yourself.  Don't try to talk like people on TV.
5. Be interested in the other person’s story.  Don't try to make the story about you. The drama comes from the interaction between the characters in the story.
6. Allow your storytelling ability time to catch up with your taste.  It takes a long time to get good at it basically.