This is the first of a two-part post on storytelling — what it is and is not.

Connecting with another person is one of the highest forms of social being for humans. At the heart of it is good storytelling. When I’m telling you a story, and you’re engaged in it, you match your brain waves to mine. If I’m telling you a story with a familiar structure, your brain actually anticipates what I’m going to say next. The point is that that’s good for both parties. We want to be in sync with other people. It’s how we communicate well with others and it’s why good storytelling is so powerful. That feeling of synchronization is a profoundly satisfying one. We want to hear stories, especially ones where we can guess what’s going to happen next, a split second before we’re told.

So, when communication works, we are literally aligned with one another, down to our very brain patterns. That’s both inspiring and reassuring to know; when we communicate successfully, we are actually experiencing the same thing.

We are not alone.

How to Tell a Great Story

So how do you tell great stories or, more precisely, how to turn your passion, your message, your vision into a great story?

Everyone seems to understand that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all. But we do remember stories.

Stories are even more important than that. They are how our brains work. For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite. We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes and forget the stats. That’s because we attach emotions to events to create stories and memories. Our brains are constructed that way. So storytelling is essential if you want to use the brain the way it’s meant to be used. We remember the emotional, the particular, and the violent especially. We forget the boring, the general, and the anodyne.

But let’s start with what storytelling is not. Let’s clear away the detritus and get to the core.

Stories Are Not about Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

My favorite wrong cliché about storytelling is the oft-cited “it has a beginning, middle, and an end.” Well, yes. But so do pencils. As a definition, this one is not specific enough to be helpful. Airplane flights, dentist appointments, and pencils all have beginnings, middles, and ends, but they are not stories. They might become the fodder for stories, but stories in themselves they are not.

Forget this one. It’s not helpful.

Stories Are Not Anecdotes

My next favorite spurious cliché about storytelling is that what happened the last time you visited a client site is a story. It’s not, unless a conflict developed at your client site, leading to a crisis, it was resolved in some way, and someone—the hero—changed deeply and profoundly because of it. Rather, it’s an anecdote. We relate anecdotes to each other all the time—I was at the drugstore and guess who I saw? My old college buddy Aaron! That’s an anecdote, or at least the beginning of one. It may even be fascinating, but it’s not a story.

More next time on what a story is and is not.