In this solo podcast episode, Sally Z of Be Moved shares three essential storytelling practices that many speakers overlook. First, she urges speakers to frame a story as a single, vivid moment rather than a vague, generalized narrative, encouraging the use of the word “moment” to focus attention. Second, she explains how to make that moment come alive by employing dialogue, rich visual details, and present‑tense description, so the audience can see and feel the scene as if it’s happening now. Third, she stresses the importance of explicitly drawing meaning from the moment—connecting the anecdote to a clear takeaway or perspective for the listener—rather than leaving interpretation entirely to the audience. Throughout, she uses conversational, enthusiastic language and offers brief anecdotes to illustrate each point, positioning these techniques as crucial tools for entrepreneurs, coaches, authors, and changemakers who want to move their audiences.
Chapters
Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're gonna talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved. This moved me. What is moving Serving you. Today is all about 3 storytelling tips. Okay. What we can do in the moment when we've found the story in our everyday, we've got to organize so that we're tapping into the right stories at the right time. And now it's really about what happens when we stand on our feet and we share these stories. So I wanna share with you 3 things that I don't see enough people doing when I see them sharing their stories. So these are 3 things that even the pros sometimes need some reminding about in their storytelling. Okay. Really, really important. All right. The first thing that I wanna talk to you about is making sure that when you are telling a story, you're making it about one moment. It sounds pretty obvious, but more often than not, when people show up out front and they tell a story, they kind of talk about a general thing that happened rather than bringing us and dropping us in to one specific moment. So I have started, instead of calling it a story, I've started calling it a moment with some of my speakers. And just the other day, we were in our STS, our hot seat. So every few weeks we get together. STS, our hot seat. So every few weeks we get together and we, you know, talk about how it's going as you're moving through the course and how can I help and And we were just talking about really all the ways stories can look differently, right? There's a lot of creative ways to bring a story to life, but sometimes it limits our thinking when we use the word story because we're like, well, it has to be like this. It's like, actually, I want you to just think of a story as a moment because when you think about it as moment, it brings you back to that moment. As the teller. And that is really what we want to do. And this brings us to our second one, which is that when we bring that one moment out front, we want to make it alive. We want to make it as alive as possible rather than it just being told almost like it's up here. It's happening up like at a really far distance. We want to drop into that moment and then bring it alive for our audience. Now, some of the ways that we can bring our stories to life, we can make them feel like they are happening in the moment, right in front of us. Some of the ways that we do that is we use dialogue. Doesn't have to be like a speech piece. If you think back to like Vinnie, like other speech people out there, when you did speech in high school, or when you saw speech in high school, whatever, and like somebody was— literally all it is is dialogue, and you're going back and forth. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about finding those moments where you can give dialogue to one of the characters in the story, because when you do that, it turns it all of a sudden into this thing that's happening in front of us. It makes it come alive. And when you are setting the scene of your story, I want you to think about what are the visuals that you can bring into this? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What we are doing when we use dialogue and we, we lay the scene out and we set the scene and we talk about what's happening. What you feel, what you see, is it's helping our audience members see it in their own heads. And that is truly the goal of speaking, because when our audience members begin to see the story that we are telling in their own heads, they are much more likely to remember it and it starts to integrate with their own life, which is kind of crazy. You think about that. That is big. It's so powerful and it's really, I don't know, it's like metaphysical magic. I don't even know how to describe it. It's, it's really, really amazing. So we want to bring that story to life. Dialogue, visual details, set the scene. Find moments where instead of talking about it like it's in the distant past, there are moments where that scene is happening literally in present time. Rather than past tense, it's present tense, and just a hint, those moments come to life just like dialogue. So that moment when you're like, this person actually said this, right? When they are saying it, it's happening again. It's happening in the present tense. So I want you to think about those moments that you can bring to life as if it's happening right there in front of us in present tense. Okay. The third thing that not enough pros are doing, even the pros struggle with on this, is this last piece right here, and that is to make meaning with our stories. There are two really big parts to our stories. There's the moment, and then there's the meaning from that moment. One of a fabulous speaker that I coached a long time ago. He's a wonderful storyteller and he had some incredible stories to share. He was this explorer and he was, um, literally like going up to Antarctica. Is Antarctica up there? I don't know. North Pole, you guys. Whatever. He went where most people don't go. He's an explorer. And I mean, he had run-ins with grizzly bears and all these moments that were like, this is an incredible story. And he would tell the story and then back away from the meaning part that comes after the story. He felt really strongly that it was not his job to lay the meaning out. He was like, "These people are adults. They're gonna take with it what they will." I'm like, "There's truth there. They will absolutely take with it from the story you just told what they will, but you have been hired. Your job is to actually shape understanding." to shape perspective. And so your job is to make meaning with that story. And it's not that there isn't room for other people to bring their own meaning in, because that will happen. It always happens. But your job is to connect the dots for your audience, to say, this is what happened, and here's why I think it matters. Here's what I think there might be for you to think about and take with you on this. And you don't have to be like, here's what you need to think about that. Here's the meaning of this. But it's an invitation for people to see it differently. And it, uh, at the bare bones level, our job as speakers is to help people see differently. And to bring our own vision and perspective into that experience. So if you cannot bring the meaning into it, you're missing a really important part of the equation. If you back off from that part and you're just like, I'm just telling an entertaining story, there's value to that and it can be really powerful. And in the right context, that's exactly the thing to do. But I want you As an entrepreneur, a coach, an author, a changemaker, a leader, your job is to actually make meaning with your story. Don't back away from that part. It's really important. And this is the part where we are innovating, where we are pushing against perhaps current thinking, where we are challenging people. So I can understand why some people back off from it because it's not necessarily an easy thing to do, but it's why, it's why you're there. And so I want you to, to step into that place and step into that experience as much as you can. So we're gonna make it about one moment. We're not gonna talk generally about something and think that we've told a story. That doesn't cut it. We're gonna drop into one moment in time, and then we're gonna think about ways that we can bring that story to life. We're gonna find dialogue. We're going to make it as visual as possible so that in our audience's head, they are starting to imagine what's happening. We are going to then make meaning with that story. That's what it's really truly all about. All right, my friends, thank you for being here.
