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the great storyteller takes time to understand what his listeners know about, care about, and want to hear. Then he crafts the essential elements of the story so that they elegantly resonate with those needs, starting where the listeners are and bringing them along on a satisfying emotional journey.

a great story is never fully predictable through foresight—but it’s projectable through hindsight.

LMU’s Teri Schwartz picked up on Hodge’s idea: “Make the ‘I’ in your story become ‘we,’ so the whole tribe or community can come together and unite behind your experience and the idea it embodies.”

The context of the telling is always a part of the story

Great storytellers prepare obsessively

At the same time, the great storyteller is flexible enough to drop the script and improvise when the situation calls for it. Actually, intensive preparation and improvising are two sides of the same coin. If you know your story well, you can riff on it without losing the thread or the focus.

Most of the throng changed from true believers to thoughtful skeptics in just a few moments.

Orchestrate emotional responses effectively, and you actually transfer proprietorship of the story to the listener, making him an advocate who will power the viral marketing of your message.

the job of the teller is to capture his mission in a story that evokes powerful emotions and thereby wins the assent and support of his listeners

This explains the passion that great storytellers exude. They infuse their stories with meaning because they really believe in the mission

When truth to the mission conflicts with truth to the audience, truth to the mission should win out

At the end of the day, words and ideas presented in a way that engages listeners’ emotions are what carry stories

it isn’t special effects or the 0’s and 1’s of the digital revolution that matter most—it’s the oohs and aahs that the storyteller evokes from an audience

Colin Callender, president of HBO Films, noted that several of HBO’s most acclaimed productions are ones that audience pretesting marked as losers.

the ability to articulate your story or that of your company is crucial in almost every phase of enterprise management. It works all along the business food chain: A great salesperson knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero. A successful line manager can rally the team to extraordinary efforts through a story that shows how short-term sacrifice leads to long-term success. An effective CEO uses an emotional narrative about the company’s mission to attract investors and partners, to set lofty goals, and to inspire employees.