The Art of the Tale: Engage Your Audience, Elevate Your Organization, and Share Your Message Through Storytelling
About this audiobook
Read by the authors with an audiobook-exclusive bonus conversation!
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.
Graphics, an exercise, and appendix 3 are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.
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About the author
Steven James is an award-winning storyteller and the bestselling author of more than 50 books. Since 1996, he has taught writing and performed storytelling shows around the world, entertaining young and old alike with his inspiring and humorous stories, appearing more than 2,000 times on five continents. He loves making up tales that might or might not be true, and even served for a year as the Official Liar of South Carolina. (Or did he?) Steven also hosts the popular podcast, The Story Blender, where he chats with the world’s leading storytellers about the secrets to great storytelling. When he’s not writing, telling stories, or daydreaming, you’ll find him hiking in the mountains near his home in eastern Tennessee or binge-watching science fiction movies while eating bottomless bowls of chips and salsa. Connect with him at stevenjames.net.
Tom Morrisey is a mountaineer, aviator, shipwreck diver, and explorer, who holds a Full Cave certification from the National Speleological society - Cave Diving Section. He has launched, edited or contributed to numerous national publications and is an award-winning adventure travel writer. A popular speaker, he is also active in both youth and prison ministry. Morrisey earned an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University, and his fiction has been featured in numerous anthologies and magazines. His previous novel, Yucatan Deep, was a 2003 finalist for the Christy Award. He and his family live in Orlando, Florida.
