Haritosh SrivastavFounder & Head Coach, Confident Storytelling Hub

The Opening Line That Actually Works #storytelling #shorts

20 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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0:50

In this short instructional video, the speaker explains a single, powerful technique for opening a story or speech that instantly engages the audience: begin with a captivating, thought‑provoking question. By posing a question that resonates with listeners’ own challenges—e.g., “How do you deal with so many challenges in your life?”—the speaker triggers curiosity and personal relevance, prompting the audience to want to hear the forthcoming solution. The video advises anyone preparing a speaking or storytelling slot to adopt this opening strategy so the audience stays glued to the narrative until the end.

Chapters

How do you start a story that keeps your audience on the edge of their seat? Now I'm going to share with you this one technique which is used by amazing speakers and storytellers across the globe that keeps you hooked. Start with a captivating question. A question like, how do you deal when there is so much of challenge going around in your life? What that does is it makes you feel about, okay, yeah, I actually have a lot of challenge. How do I turn it around? So now you are interested and curious to know what is the solution that speaker is going to offer. So if you have your next speaking or storytelling gig, you want to start with a powerful captivating question that makes your audience think, and that way they are glued to their seat until you finish your story.