How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth

by Meg Bowles

Storytelling is the best thing about being human. And I believe it can change the world. That’s right. Stories can and do change the world.

You don’t need to be a writer to be a storyteller. Your story is enough.

This reminded me that the power of my music wasn’t contingent on my own fame or hanging with celebrities. It was about the joy of dreaming up and shaping my art. The office workers were enjoying what I had made, and they reminded me of the power and joy I had felt creating it.

“Sometimes you have to figure out who you’re not before you can become who you are.”

They asked me to reflect on my life experiences and consider how they might resonate with other people.

You have important stories to tell. They are stories that no one else can tell. But you have to be willing to do the work of developing them—and then work through your fears to share them.

You are a multitude of stories. Every joy and heartbreak, every disappointment and dizzying high—each has contributed to the complex, one-of-a-kind person that you are today. While your experiences are ephemeral, your stories can be eternal.

Sharing stories aloud is one of humankind’s best attributes—our magical ability to shape-shift into each other’s imaginations with the spoken word. Because we have the capacity for imagination, stories bring other people’s experiences to life, so we can see, and very often feel, events that didn’t happen to us.

NEIL GAIMAN, MOTH STORYTELLER AND BOARD MEMBER: How important is truth in these first-person stories? Lying is like playing solitaire and cheating: It takes the fun out.

There is power in millions of strangers experiencing one person’s story.

Storytelling is sacred; it is how we keep the dead living, and the living thriving. It’s how we show up as our most authentic self. It can permeate artificial boundaries of race, borders, gender, language, and unequal power. It is the language of the heart, reflecting the breadth of our humanity as individuals and as a collective.

Stories are what turn friends into family.

“Sharing a story is an act of courage and an act of generosity.”

Stories happen when expectations meet reality. Sometimes stories take place during an exception, an outlier event.

Every good story, I feel certain, hinges on a decision.

There is something comforting when people are willing to share the not-so-pretty sides of themselves. It’s as if they give the listener permission to relax.

vulnerability is power, especially when it comes to story.