Here are some tips from the seasoned professionals – this is what they do for a living – so trust them.

• The Moth tips and tricks

  • Know your story well (do your research!!)
  • Have some stakes in your story, something to gain or lose, why is what happens important
  • Have a great first line that sets up stakes and grabs attention
  • Have fun with your story
  • Have a clear ending
  • Don’t rant and use the platform to complain

Ira Glass is the creator of This American Life, an hour long radio show that excels in storytelling and documentary radio. Summarized here, he tells his tips for storytelling he has learned through his decades of experience.

Here are a few key points that I picked out:

• Understand the building blocks of stories and make sure you always have them: action and movement to your story and a point of reflection, why does it matter? Why should people care?
• Devote lots of time to finding stories and get rid of boring stuff
• Produce a large volume of work. Every kind of sucks when they start out, the only way to get better is to create a lot of work!
• Don’t just talk about yourself, people are interested in other people too!