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Many podcasters say they want to improve their shows.
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One often overlooked area of improvement is you.
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Specifically, your ability to tell better stories with your episodes.
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This mnemonic device can help.
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Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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One of the most crucial skills for podcasters is the ability to tell stories.
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In fact, barring some weird edge cases and some experimental creators,
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I'll go so far as to say that every podcaster is a story teller, whether
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they consider themselves to be or not.
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I'd say that your ability to tell stories is more important
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than the tambour of voice.
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Your ability to tell stories is more important than your equipment stack.
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And, probably, your ability to tell stories is more important
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than how much money you allocate to marketing your podcast.
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But a lot of podcasters, perhaps you, see storytelling as an innate skill that,
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like having a good voice, is something that you either have or you don't.
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That's simply not true.
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Storytelling is definitely a skill that can be acquired.
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Storytelling is a discipline with many practitioners offering workshops,
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classes, and one-on-one trainings.
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One of those practitioners is Dawn Fraser.
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I attended a presentation of hers recently on the topic of storytelling.
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Specifically, her presentation was designed to help podcasters use stories
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to create riveting podcast content.
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While I am a capable storyteller, I am neither a teacher of
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the art of storytelling, nor am I a storytelling coach.
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So it is with all deference to Dawn that I relate her clever mnemonic
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device to help you, the serious podcaster, rethink how you can tell
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better stories on your podcast.
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Feel free to jot these ideas down, take a few notes as you listen along.
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But, as always, the salient bits of this information I'm going to
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pass on to you are in the episode details right in your listening app.
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There's also a link to a written-to-be-read article that
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contains all of this information for your later perusal.
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And if you're smartly subscribed to Podcast Pontifications In Your
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Inbox, it's already emailed to you.
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Dawn's technique for podcasters has an easy to remember acronym, S-T-O-R-Y.
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The S is for Stakes.
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The Stakes are not the why of the episode, it's the want of the episode.
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It's the hunger.
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It's a soon-to-be-fulfilled need.
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It's an expectation that you, the podcaster, set either explicitly or
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implicitly at the beginning of the story, beginning of your episode,
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and that keeps your audience locked in place as you continue through.
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Those are the Stakes.
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The T in STORY is for Theme.
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This is, if you will, the meat of the episode.
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You've heard me talk before many times about topic and angle and this is it.
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This is that, but it's more than just that.
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It's the actual thing you're doing, right?
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The nice thing about having your theme, your topic, and your angle, and where
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you're taking the story is it enables you to trim the fat, ensuring that all of the
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parts of your episode fit the framework, this theme, that you've established.
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But also, only those parts make it into your episode, really helps you
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clean house when you have a focus around your theme of the episode.
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The O is for Organization.
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How will the episode itself unfold?
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You know that every story has a beginning and a middle and an end, sure.
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But sometimes for your podcast episodes, it's better to start in
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the middle, sometimes even right near the climax, and then guide your
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listeners through a less obvious path.
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Another key part of Organization is making sure that along the journey
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you're answering questions, all the objections that may come up,
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dealing with any uncertainties, and making sure you're headed
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towards a loose-end-free conclusion.
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That's why Organization is so important.
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R is for Recreating, specifically, if you're retelling a story
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because you're not retelling a story, you're recreating it.
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You're not trying to repeat the story as it happens, you are recreating it.
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Recreate the experience for those who you are telling the story to now.
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They weren't there.
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They need a different structure, a different recreation.
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You have to summarize those points of what really happened and create
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scenes necessary to make the story work as a podcast episode.
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This is also the time to remember the old adage "show,
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don't tell" when you recreate.
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R is for recreate.
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Finally, the Y is for You.
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You are an integral part of every single story that you share.
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You need to be honest, authentic, and relatable, sure.
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And you also need to stand in for us, the listening audience.
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You are our proxy.
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You get us deeper into the stories you tell on your podcasting episodes, you,
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because your name isn't Wikipedia, right?
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Y is for You.
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Now, remember that, with a very few educational and experimental podcasts
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aside, every podcaster is a storyteller.
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If you need some help with your storytelling, don't talk
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to me, but definitely you can try out Dawn's S.T.O.R.Y.
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approach.
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And if you need more dedicated training visit her website dawnjfraser.com.
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There's a link in the podcast listening app you're listening to right now.
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She was amazing at that talk and no, by the way, this was not a sponsored episode.
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Just some excellent advice I heard and a clever mnemonic that I wanted
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to pass along to you so that you could use this technique to tell
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better stories on your podcast, which helps make podcasting better.
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With that, I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!
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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra.
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He's on a mission to make podcasting better.
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Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes
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section of your podcast listening app.
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A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at
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podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected
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transcript, both created by Allie Press.
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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.
