Most people tell each other anecdotes, thinking that they’re telling stories.  An anecdote is something that happens.  A story has a structure that makes it memorable.  To be an effective communicator, you should stop telling anecdotes and start telling stories. 

Let’s take an example: 

I met a beautiful woman at a party the other day.  I shouldn’t have been at the party because it was at the house of someone who doesn’t like me.  But the woman was beautiful.  

That’s an anecdote.  Here’s how you turn it into a story:

I met a beautiful woman at a party the other day.  I fell in love at first sight – and she with me.  But when I learned her name, she turned out to be from the family of my sworn enemies.  Nonetheless, we married in secret.  Meeting a group of my enemies in the market the next day, I got into a fight with one of them and killed him.  Now I’m banished from the city, and my wife is being pressured to marry someone else.

That’s a story, or the first part of one, and you probably recognize it:  Romeo and Juliet.   You probably know the rest of the story, too:  Juliet takes a drug to make it look like she’s dead in order to escape having to marry the other guy.  Romeo doesn’t get the word in time, finds her apparently dead, and kills himself.  Juliet wakes up and, finding Romeo’s body, kills herself.   It’s a tragedy.

What’s the structure of a story like that?  All great stories have the same structure.  Stories begin with a meeting, or at least a significant change in circumstances.  (Romeo meets Juliet and falls in love.)  Then, there’s a complication that raises the ante (Romeo marries Juliet).  Then there’s a crisis that pushes the story irrevocably to an end (Romeo kills Tybalt).  That leaves you with a question that must be answered either yes or no (will Romeo and Juliet be able to live together in peace? Answer – no). 

It’s important to understand that each of these steps is irrevocable.  That’s what makes a powerful story – the force of circumstances tests and reveals character, and that’s what we find interesting.  Once people have met, they can’t ‘unmeet’.  Once Romeo and Juliet have married, in those days they couldn’t ‘unmarry’.  And it’s still the case that once Romeo has killed Tybalt, he can’t bring him back to life.  Comedies answer the resulting question with a resounding ‘yes’, tragedies with a ‘no’. 

How do you apply this kind of story structure to your communications?  Think about giving your audiences information that changes their perception of things, powerfully enough that it can’t be undone.  Build one realization on another like the events in Romeo and Juliet.  Build to a question that you resolve at the end.  Then your presentations will attain the level of the classic story, and your audiences will hang on every word.  (I talk more about how to do this in Trust Me.)