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Want to up your storytelling game? Put these 5 elements into every tale you tell.

Storytelling educator Philipp Humm says these five things make every story more interesting.

Photo credit: Canva

Being an engaging storyteller might be simpler than you think.

If there's one thing nearly every human on Earth appreciates, it's a well-told story. Our ancient love of stories is what leads us to read books and watch movies and spin tales around a campfire. A masterfully spun story can capture the attention of every ear in a room, and professional speakers know that one of the best ways to make a powerful impact on others is through storytelling.

Unfortunately, not all of us are skilled in the art of storytelling. Some people seem to have an intuitive sense of what to include and what to exclude to make a story shine, but others do not. A meandering, confusing way of telling a story can ruin a perfectly good tale, while excellent storytelling skills can make even seemingly mundane events engaging.

stories, storytelling, elements of a good story, how to tell better stories, engaging storiesStorytelling is an art that we can all get better at.Photo credit: Canva

So how do master storytellers do it? What are the elements of a good story? Bestselling author, speaker, and coach Philipp Humm teaches people the art of storytelling and he shares five key things that make every story better.

First, Humm explains that the goal of a good story is to "zoom" the listener into the moment of the story and put them directly into the action. Then he shares the five elements that help you do that without getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

1. Location (Where are you?)

"Two weeks ago, I'm sitting on my couch in my living room taking a deep breath…"

"September 2019, I'm standing in front of the conference room ready to walk inside…"

As Humm shares, the moment you say "living room" or "conference room," your audience starts to visualize it. Importantly, you don't have to describe these locations. Let people create their own version of the place. Details that don't matter to the story itself don't need to be shared.

where are you, location, setting, storytelling, storiesWhere Are You Cordell Walker GIF by Sony Pictures TelevisionGiphy

2. Actions (What are you doing?)

Leave out the extraneous context or details and simply state what you are doing in that moment. Walking? Biking? Shouting? Waiting? "Whatever it is, just state the actions," Humm says. "State the verbs."

Example: "I'm in my office, I open my laptop and start reading a message by my manager…"

Stating the actions brings in forward momentum, Humm says, bringing the listener right into the moment. "When you do that, your audience will immediately know you won't waste their time. You're straightaway taking them into the most important part of the story.

what are you doing, setting, action, storytelling, expositionSchitts Creek Wtf GIF by CBCGiphy

3. Thoughts (What are you thinking?)

Sharing the specific thoughts you were having at the crucial moment in the story can help bring a listener into your inner world, adding another layer of interest to the story. Instead of "I was excited to see my crush," try sharing the actual thoughts you were having—"I thought, 'Ah, this will be so cool to see her after all this time.'"

"It's a tiny tweak, but it makes any story more interesting," Humm says. However, he says, make sure the thoughts you share are worded the way you really would think them. The goal is to personalize the experience for people, not to sound professional or intellectual. "Give us the raw, unfiltered thoughts" he says. They will make your story more relatable.

what are you thinking, what, thoughts, storytelling, storiesJaz Sinclair Gen V GIF by Amazon Prime VideoGiphy

4. Emotions (What are you feeling?)

"The best stories? They're emotional," says Humm. "They take the listeners on this emotional journey." You can simply state the feeling—I was excited. I was disappointed. I was angry. But if we want to paint a picture for our audience, we need to show the emotions. For instance, instead of "I was relieved," you can describe how relief felt in your body. "I leaned back on the sofa and let out a huge sigh." Instead of "I was super excited," you might say, "My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest." Showing emotion this way makes the story much more visual.

how do you feel, feelings, emotions, storytelling, thoughts, storiesWhat Do You Think Schitts Creek GIF by CBCGiphy

5. Dialogue (What are you hearing?)

Many stories have more than one character. What did they say at the crucial moment of the story? You can show emotion with body language, and you can also show it with dialogue. Of course, you want the dialogue to actually be catchy and concise, not boring, so don't include dialogue just to include it. Share the things that made the moment what it was.

"Dialogue is such a simple tool to make any story much more interesting," Humm says. "It is actually the tool that I use the most."

what did you hear, hearing, thoughts, conversation, dialogueSeason 3 Episode 6 GIF by Parks and RecreationGiphy

People who struggle to tell stories well are sharing their appreciation for Humm's mini-lesson:

"I thought this was just a clickbait title, but bro over-delivered 1001% value. Absolutely brilliant, actionable insights!"

"Thank you! Thank you so much! I've been saying it. Big creators will tell you to use storytelling and confuse you on what storytelling is. This video is literally the easiest video any beginner will understand, without pressure too! Thank you once again."

"This is so freaking good! I’m sharing this with some of my coworkers who coach TED speakers so they can share how to better tell their stories. We’re often saying these things, but it’s so well said here!!!"

"This is one of the best breakdowns of storytelling I've seen! The five techniques—location, actions, thoughts, emotions, and dialogue—are so simple yet powerful. I especially loved the point about 'zooming into the moment' instead of just summarizing events. Definitely going to use these tips in my own storytelling!"

stories, storytelling, elements of a good story, how to tell better stories, engagement Storytelling skills can come in handy both professionally and personally.Photo credit: Canva

And some even made their praise into…you guessed it…a Humm-inspired story:

"Abe sat in the cafe, sitting hunched back in his chair as he listened to the intro of this video. In that moment he thought to himself, 'THIS is why my youtube videos are flopping... How the heck did I not know this stuff?! WTF?! This is GREAT!'... He quickly changed his posture, moving to the edge of his chair, and sitting upright. He scrambled to close his YouTube Analytics and quickly opened google docs to take notes. He sat there, staring intensely at his computer screen, all he could think was, 'I'm so lucky to find this video.'"

"I was lying on my bed, feeling sleepy but not quite ready to sleep, so I started browsing YouTube. Suddenly, a video caught my eye. I thought to myself, 'Great, another boring video to help me fall asleep.' I clicked on it, expecting to drift off. But as I watched, I found myself becoming less sleepy and sitting up in my bed. It was like discovering a whole new world. I never imagined I'd have such an Aha moment tonight."

"As I sat on my couch and scrolled on my YouTube home feed, I saw the title of this video. I thought 'great, another promise on getting better at storytelling that will likely simply focus on why storytelling is important.' After all, every single book I’ve read on the matter so far has disappointed me in this way. Imagine my surprise when as I kept watching, I felt the eyes in my mind clearing up, catching more light, the light of insight. This video over delivered, and for that, I am grateful."

You can follow Philipp Humm on YouTube for more storytelling tips.

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It can be tough for kids to talk to parents. So they're putting their stories onto film.

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State Farm

As Will Smith once said: Parents just don't understand.

Sometimes, it’s just hard to tell your parents things, and most kids struggle with finding ways to express themselves as a result.

But just because kids talk less sometimes doesn’t mean they don’t have stories to tell.

If anything, kids and teens are in the story-filled prime of their lives. They don’t just grapple with friends and family, relationships, gossip, school, and work — kids are also privy to conflicts of race, gender, sex, class, and other issues. It’s a complicated world out there, and kids know it.

That’s why re:imagine/ATL is giving them the tools they need to tell those stories in a powerful, and sometimes more comfortable, way. By equipping kids with film skills, re:imagine/ATL is handing them the mic — and letting them tell their own stories and make themselves heard.

Hear from the kids themselves how learning to film stories is changing their lives:

This group is teaching kids the skills they need to tell the stories of their communities through film.

Posted by Upworthy on Monday, September 11, 2017

When it comes to storytelling, everyone is on an equal playing field — which means that more diverse, more interesting perspectives have an opportunity to be heard.

As the program's founder Susanna Spiccia says, "Creativity — it doesn't discriminate."

For kids who are marginalized, that makes creativity a lifeline. Helping kids find a way to tell their stories doesn't just result in good stories, it also results in empowered kids.

At re:imagine/ATL, kids are pitching films focused on just about everything. Taj-Malik is telling "stories about [his] childhood," while Kalyn is addressing "how it's a little bit harder to do things when you're a girl."

Chris is pitching "a motivational piece," and Baldwin has ideas for "horror, drama, romance, comedy, action." For him and the rest of the kids at re:imagine/ATL, the sky is the limit.

There are lots of reasons it’s important to let kids tell their story their own way.

Society is biased when it comes to listening to grown-ups more than kids. Even stories about kids’ lives end up being told by adults. Remember the movie "Boyhood"? It was all about the experience of being a boy. And, yet, it was written and directed by a 42-year-old man.

Where are the stories about kids, told by kids?

When we hand kids the camera, there's no telling what they'll come up with. As volunteer Lisa Cunningham says, "We could be in camp with the next Spielberg."

The problem goes beyond just craving authentic storytelling. Too often, policy that applies to kids is debated and decided on by committees of adults. When kids are given a platform to voice the issues that affect them most, they’re able to be heard by the people who make the decisions that affect them.

But getting film experience is more than just a platform for telling stories. It’s also a huge leg up in a competitive industry.

In Atlanta, where the film and television industry is growing rapidly, kids who invest their interest in learning camera techniques early could see it pay off professionally down the road.

Normally, internships and entry-level jobs are slanted toward students with a hefty amount of privilege. But with re:imagine/ATL, kids from all sorts of backgrounds have the opportunity to get practical hands-on experience that could be the thing that becomes their foot in the door to a successful future.

That's something that doesn't need to be limited to Atlanta. As Spiccia says, "If you are in the film industry or you're in media period, you have a skillset that you can give back to our kids."

In any town, professionals have an opportunity to be a good neighbor to the younger generation, by passing on their experiences to kids who can then turn them into major opportunities.

And as the city of Atlanta proves, that’s a great thing for communities.

Empowering Atlanta's kids with film skills is an act that has powerful ripple effects. Not only does it set up a big portion of this generation for success, but it also allows them to go on to become mentors to other kids too.

Plus, you never know — the next huge thing in Hollywood could be something that was made right here in Atlanta.

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'Quite disturbing to me, to be honest': Jessica Chastain calls out sexism in film.

At the Cannes Film Festival, Chastain got candid about the need for more female directors.

Actor Jessica Chastain didn't pull any punches at the Cannes Film Festival closing press conference on May 28.

Chastain, who was a jury member at this year's event, was not happy about how women were portrayed in many of the stories she saw on screen, and she explained why.

Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.

Her two cents, captured in a minute-long clip below, has been met with several hell yeahs from other women across the internet, including celebrated director Ava DuVernay, who shared it on Twitter:

Chastain told reporters that after watching 20 films in 10 days, she found the way women were represented in many of them to be "quite disturbing."

Changing the way women are represented on screen begins with giving women more consequential roles behind the camera, she argued.

“I do believe that if you have female storytelling, you also have more authentic female characters," Chastain began. "The one thing I really took away from this experience is how the world views women from the female characters that I saw represented. And it was quite disturbing to me, to be honest."

Photo by Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images.

When it comes to women's roles in Hollywood — in front of and behind the camera — the data backs up Chastain's point.

A study published in February 2017 by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that of the 1,000 top-grossing films since 2007, just 1 in 24 were directed by women. That figure drops sharply for female directors of color.

What's more, the study found the span of a female director's career is shorter — men in their 20s or 80s can find directing success, while ageism appears to restrict younger and older women's opportunities. Certain types of films are far more inaccessible to female directors, too; women are less likely to get directing opportunities in action and thriller genres, for instance.

These gender imbalances are largely responsible for the discrepancy in opportunities for female actors. Speaking roles in Hollywood tend to go to men, and even when they don't, the characters women play are too often minimized to "the girlfriend, the mother, or the wife," Variety pointed out.

To Chastain, those numbers are unacceptable, but the solution is both obvious and possible.

Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images.

"I do hope that when we include more female storytellers, we will have more of the women that I recognize in my day-to-day life," Chastain concluded at Cannes, "ones that are proactive, have their own agencies, just don’t react to the men around them. They have their own point of view."

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She returned from Iraq to a broken family. Then writing changed her life.

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Megan Leavey

Kate Hoit always dreamed of joining the FBI. Then she was deployed to Iraq in 2004, and her life took a different turn.

"I was a 17-year-old girl from the suburbs, I was a cheerleader, shitty at math, and I was just really interested in being an FBI agent," she says. After three years in the Army Reserves, she received that unexpected phone call that she would actually be shipping off to war.

Her official assignment? Working for the resident newspaper on the base, covering a wide variety of topics, from the construction of water treatment facilities in local villages to reporting from the hospital as injured soldiers were airlifted in. She spoke with Iraqi civilians and Australian soldiers alike and witnessed everything from horrible injuries to opportunistic generals posing for press photos.

Hoit on deployment in Iraq. All photos by Kate Hoit, used with permission.

"During that time, I really fell in love with the power of storytelling and journalism and photography," Hoit says.

"It was really just a way to see the war at different levels in a way I never would have if I had just sat behind a computer all day," she continues. "So that impacted me on the ground, and I realized I could tell stories and focus on the more humanized aspects of that."

Hoit saw a lot of things during her year in Iraq, but what she didn't see was the effect her deployment had on her family back home.

Her father was a veteran, too. But his experience in West Germany in the early 1950s was nothing compared to the dangers of the Iraq War, and he worried immensely about the safety of his daughter. This lead to a relapse into alcoholism, and later he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.

Soon her mother struggled with alcoholism, too. The family ended up losing Hoit's childhood home when her father was checked into a nursing home.

Hoit with her parents before her deployment.

Hoit returned to a very different life than the one she had left.

"I didn’t have anyone to turn to," she says. "My friends got it as best they could, [but] at the time, I was a little bit frustrated going through this whole experience: My family’s destroyed, kind of, and I can’t connect with anyone."

Hoit re-enrolled in college with a newly inspired interest in pursuing a journalism career, but the transition wasn't easy.

She was angry and isolated, and it only got worse — until one of her professors encouraged her to write about her experiences. As numerous psychological studies have shown, the act of storytelling can have a profound effect on traumatic healing.

Hoit discovered a new passion for the ways that storytelling can connect with the veteran experience. "I was like, oh, I have a community again," she says. "It helped with my transition because I didn’t feel as alienated when I started writing."

Then a few of her criticisms drew the attention of the Veterans Affairs department.

They caught the eye of now-Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who had just taken over as the VA's assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, and Hoit was soon recruited into the department's newly formed digital engagement team.

During her time with the team, Hoit launched the department's social media presence and also worked on several crucial public relations campaigns, including Veteran of the Day and Strong at the Broken Places, which aimed to break down stigmas around veterans and mental health.

Since then, Hoit has made a career of helping veterans tell their stories — and making sure the public hears them.

Hoit left her role at the VA and worked in a congressional communications role while she pursued a master's degree in non-fiction writing.

Since then, she's found a new home as director of content at Got Your 6, a nonprofit that works with the entertainment industry, veteran groups, and government organizations to normalize depictions of veterans in the media and empower veterans to build communities and tell their own stories.

And all the while, her mission has remained the same: "You can draw on an emotion or a struggle, and even if people are on the opposite side of the spectrum, you can make that connection with people. That’s my goal with content."

Among their many programs, Got Your 6 offers official certification for films and TV shows ranging from Marvel's "Daredevil" to "Megan Leavey" in recognition of their efforts to depict the veteran experience with greater accuracy and humanity.

"It can be a challenge when people only want to see veterans as broken with PTSD or as superheroes," Hoit explains. "They don’t want see the normalized, nuanced story."

Hoit and her colleagues from Got Your 6.

It's been more than a decade since Hoit returned from Iraq, and strangers still email to ask about her experience.

"I feel like, at the end of the day, if you’re helping people and making a difference, then you should use your voice for some greater good," she says. From what she's seen, most veterans are eager and willing to talk about their service and all the complications that come along with it. They just need someone to listen.

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