Haritosh SrivastavFounder & Head Coach, Confident Storytelling Hub

Don't give too many details

23 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief talk, the speaker highlights a common storytelling mistake: beginning a narrative with excessive, irrelevant details that distract the audience. He argues that listeners are rarely interested in lengthy sensory descriptions such as “a sunny Tuesday afternoon, birds chirping, wind on my face.” Instead, he advises starting a story at the moment the main action unfolds, thereby capturing immediate interest. To illustrate, he recounts opening an awaited email in his office in October 2025, focusing on that single incident rather than surrounding context. The core takeaway is to keep openings concise, centered on one pivotal incident, and avoid overloading the audience with unnecessary background.

Chapters

One of the biggest mistakes people make when telling stories is to give too much content, too much details at the start. So people will be like, this was a sunny Tuesday afternoon. The birds were chirping. The wind was blowing onto my face. Seriously? Is anybody interested in all of this context? You might want to start at the point where the main action is happening. So you can say it was October 2025. I was in my office. As I opened my email, I saw this email that I have been waiting for months. You see, I am not telling you all the details, but I am making you interested in what's written in the email. So next time you have to present a story, focus on one incident, one context versus too much details.