Doug Stevenson, a master storyteller and guru to business executives, professional speakers, and individuals like you, offers a lot of excellent DVDs, CDs, and books to sharpen storytelling.

I have been coached by Doug in his workshops and found his suggestions phenomenal. Check out his materials by clicking the conversation tools link at the top of my homepage on my site: www.conversationmatters.com

Frugal you, Prosperous You!

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How? By cutting back, by being frugal. Out went mindless consumerism, in came thoughtful frugality.

A principal way people are saving money is by using discount coupons like those in Entertainment books. Movie tickets? Save 40%. Restaurant meals? Save 50%. Car rentals? Save 25%. Dry cleaning? 50%.

The 2010 Entertainment© book membership includes new travel merchants, cruise line rebates, plus brand new offers. You save on any type of trip you'll take.

Books are available for most metro areas, even small ones like Duluth, MN. To check the discounts for your area, go to www.conversationmatters.com and click on Entertainment link. $213 saved in 5 months, that's a good thing.

"Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact."

--Robert McKee

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."

(Check your answer at the end of today's article.)

"His ignorance was an Empire State Building of ignorance. You had to admire it for its size."

--Dorothy Parker

WIK-ee

Meaning: a website that allows visitors to make changes, contributions, or corrections.

(An example of such a site is www.wikipedia.org.) Wiki is from the Hawaiian language, meaning "quick." At Honolulu airport, passengers can take the "wiki-wiki" shuttle to baggage claim.

Example Sentence

"The corporation has designed a wiki to make collaboration simpler among its employees worldwide."

A key skill of conversational mastery is being able to tell a story in such a way that you engage the imagination of the listener. Some folks are just so-so at telling stories; others are just plain lousy at it. A main reason for this is that the stories they tell lack structure and perhaps ramble along so that listeners have difficulty following the story-line and may miss the conclusion - if there is one.

I am grateful that I learned how to tell a story at my father's knee. He was a talented raconteur who used colorful descriptions and emphasis in his stories, sometimes adding dialects to spice them up. Where my father learned this craft I don't know (his own father had died when he was three.) He had natural gifts such as a good ear for nuances of language, and he was a good observer of people. As a student of storytelling, he mainly underwent an "apprenticeship of observation."

A well-crafted story has a spine, a kind of template into which the details fit. First, a skeleton, then sufficient flesh added to complete the body. An incomplete story is like a piece of music with a chord unresolved so that listeners are left unsatisfied.

We all know that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and end. A more detailed structure is necessary, however, one that the members of Story Net christened "the spine of the story." See www.storynet.org.) I include here the spine as described by Kat Koppett in her excellent book, "Training to Imagine."

Once upon a time . . .

Every day . . .

But one day . . .

Because of that . . .

Because of that . . . (Repeat as needed)

Until finally . . .

Ever since then . . .

(And the moral of the story is . . . optional)

That's it. A template that contains, as she says, "A platform, a change and consequences, and a resolution."

Not only speakers and preachers and trainers can benefit from using such a story spine, but so also can conversationalists. When you listen to the best storytellers, you'll be able to sense the structure, probably a adaptation of the spine above, as they tell each story. The content of stories will vary, but there will always be a need for a predictable structure. Humans since time began have been storytellers, and by now a need for story structure is probably hard-wired into our evolved brains.

Because the use of stories has become so important in the worlds of business and public speaking, many people feel a need to improve their skills. To improve you'll need:

-- good storytellers to observe

-- a clear story spine for structure

-- colorful details (flesh)

-- plenty of practice, with feedback

-- perhaps even a professional coach

Women especially may need some extra attention to their storytelling skills because, until recent decades, they've been denied the opportunity to be the center of attention that storytelling practice requires.

My son Aaron, now 30, often used to ask me when he was small, "Dad, please tell me another story about when you were a little kid." And so I would, describing a time when my dad took me fishing, or when I fell off the building and broke my collar bone, or when I sold firecrackers to students at my school and they lighted and tossed them out of the classroom windows. Aaron has long ago forgotten many of my abstract ramblings, but he still remembers many of these personal stories 25 years later.

For mastery, practice sketching out your stories in advance, then edit the details. Eventually you will find that the spine in your stories becomes a framework that you sense intuitively. The framework will free you to improvise the details in the moment.

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."

Correct answer: Hannah Arendt (journalist and historian)

True or false? Dracula's castle, in Transvlvania, Romania, belonged to a real-life Count Dracula known to have a taste for human blood.

True: The count's "taste for human blood" was manifested in his cruelty of impaling victims alive on stakes.

Loren Ekroth ©2009, all rights reserved

Loren Ekroth, Ph.D. is a specialist in human communication and a national expert on conversation for business and social life.