CHAPTER 2

The Story's Focus

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding why some stories are better than others
• Focusing on a single idea
• Setting your goals
• Understanding the importance of the audience
• Gathering your material
• Creating an authentic story

This chapter discusses the basics of storytelling: setting your story's goals and organizing the initial material. This step is very obvious—which is probably the reason why it is so frequently neglected by both novice and experienced presenters alike. Your goal is to try to find the intersection between things that you want to say and things the audience needs to hear. This chapter helps you start gathering and arranging the thoughts and facts—the building blocks for your story.