The Art of the Tale

Engage Your Audience, Elevate Your Organization, and Share Your Message Through Storytelling

Steven James, Tom Morrisey

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781400233120
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Business Communication

Winner of a 2023 Storytelling World Award

Unleash the power of storytelling to transform your talks, speeches, and presentations—whether your audience is a boardroom of executives, a classroom of students, or an auditorium full of eager listeners.

Everyone, regardless of their background and training, can improve their storytelling abilities. But what is a story? How can you tell it in a way that delights and informs your listeners? Take a journey into the keys to great storytelling with two of the country’s top experts on story presentation and speech writing.

In The Art of the Tale, expert storytellers Steven James and Tom Morrisey team up and tap into their lifetimes of experience to show you how to prepare stellar presentations, tell stories in your own unique way, adapt your material to different groups of listeners, and gain confidence in your ability as a speaker. In this book, you’ll learn why:

• practice doesn’t make perfect.
• you should never tell the same story twice.
• there is no right way to tell a story.
• it’s best to avoid memorizing your stories.

You’ll also find helpful hints on:

• gaining confidence in your ability as a storyteller.
• connecting with your audience.
• matching your expectations with those of your listeners.
• understanding what makes a good story.
• drawing truth out of stories you wish to tell.
• crafting and remembering stories.
• shaping your memories into inspiring stories.

Learn how to tell stories more effectively, lead and teach more creatively, and prepare your message in less time by using this unique resource provided by two of the nation’s premier communicators, who tap into their experience to share a lifetime’s worth of insights and expertise.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: The Story
• Part II: The Listeners
• Part III: The Context
• Part IV: The Storyteller
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A—Ten Surefire Ways to Come Across as an Amateur
• Appendix B—Emceeing Made Simple
• Appendix C—365 Story Starters
• Notes
• About the Authors