How to Build a Story Bank from Ravi Rajani

Ravi Rajani, TSL facilitator and storytelling expert was on the podcast this week talking about how to leverage stories to create deeper connections with the audience.

Ravi and Grant dug into why stories matter, how to align your stories with the audience, what it means to workshop stories for success, how to build a story bank and more!

If you’re looking to start elevating your stories in your keynote or workshops, a great practical step is to build your story bank. Here’s how Ravi recommends that you do that:

“Question one would be, name one standout moment that happened to you today. Okay? Now, it could be something as silly as, or insignificant as the postman got the wrong house and delivered you somebody’s package. Right? It doesn’t have to be something big, but something noteworthy that happened that day.

Question number two, what was the date, time and setting when that occurred?

Question three, what was the challenge that happened in that moment?

Question four, what was the turning point? What was the aha. Moment where things began to shift?

Question five, what was the resolution of that moment?

Question six, what is the moral of that story?

And then don’t think about that story again. Done. Day two, do the same thing. Day three, day four, day five, on day six, look back at what you wrote. I can almost guarantee, almost guarantee there’ll be one micro moment that you could turn into a micro story that could be worth testing to then eventually tweak and turn into a fully fledged story.

So why I’m telling you this is building. Stories come from insignificant, seemingly insignificant micro moments which can be transformed into micro stories which eventually graduate to making the story bank.”

Interested in listening to the whole episode? Check it out here.