初来乍到，大家好！（有干货）

豆瓣的朋友们大家好，我是Lexicon Language Institute中国区总监，我叫Aaron。初次来到豆瓣，请多关照。

我们是来自马来西亚吉隆坡的一所全母语外教语言培训机构，即将以游学的形式进入中国。希望在日后的工作生活中与大家多多交流，共同进步！

我在今日头条上（iamaaronjin）会每日推送一些英语中最地道最常用的词语或说法，希望可以通过全英文的注解给大家带来不一样的英语学习体验。前几日分享了一句我自己感受很强烈的话：You are purveying in the currency of emotion as a story teller，后来头条的同学们反应说每个词都懂，就是看不懂这句话。那我今天就在这里先为大家送上一篇有一定知识性的工具文，分享一下关于讲故事的一些感触。当然，作者是我本人。

I wanted to create an article about how to tell a great story. Obviously I tell stories of my own, but the same format is true regardless of what you are trying to put together. And I want this to be an educational resource for all our students, but also for our story tellers, because even though we might hope all the stories are told in a coherent, logical progressing fashion from start to finish, that’s not really how it goes. In general, people don’t always think about composing a story in exactly the right way to captivate the audiences’ attention, and to make sure they control the narrative through out.

In my opinion, any great story should have 4 key components:

1. Just enough background

Just enough back story for the context to make sense. Paint a picture for what we are about to hear. Explain the setting, who’s involved, and don’t get bogged down to someone’s life story.

I understand that a lot of people just wanna tell their life stories, but that’s not really what we are in for. What we want as audience is something that happens in a moment, in a day, in a short period of time, the kind of thing that you would tell a friend at the bar. Just tell me enough that I understand what you are about to tell me. Think of it as though, you are sitting across from a life long friend, someone that knows every single thing about you, you never have to explain anything about the context of a story. But then in the course of starting to tell the story, someone else joins the conversation. Maybe they are good friends with your friend, but you don’t know them.

This is what you’ve gotta do to catch them off, you could start with:

- At this period of time I was working in this job …

- I was driving this car …

- I was doing this event …

But this part shouldn’t ever take more than 30 or 45 seconds to establish enough back story for the rest of the story to make sense.

2. Something interesting

Some drama, something interesting, something exciting or entertaining.

3. A great resolution

A payoff, a punch line, something you actually get to as an ending. It shouldn’t be open ended.

4. A lesson for the audience

A moral, a life lesson, something that the audience can take away, feeling like they’ve grown hearing your story.

And if you have these 4 things, generally your story is gonna be a good one. When I listen to people telling stories, my hope is that I hear all those things come out at some point in time. They might not be in the order, but hopefully they all exist there so that I can at least chop it into something useful.

When you tell the story, there should be some drama, there should be some concern, you are purveying in the currency of emotion as a story teller. You want the listener to become invested, to become engaged to care about what happens through this dramatic point. So you raise the stakes, you paint a picture, you use colorful language, and you make sure they understand what you are talking about.