A sure way to fail at storytelling is to make your story up on the spot and not rehearse it, says Calum Coburn, director and vice president of The Negotiation Experts.
Not only is practicing a story necessary for a stronger delivery, reworking them until they are ready to present is essential. The first draft is rarely, if ever, ready to be rolled out to prospects, a message that Pete Docter, director of Pixar hits “Monsters, Inc.,” “Up” and “Inside Out,” says was initially tough for him to accept.
“One of the big revelations for me telling stories is how much work they are,” Docter says in a video touting the movie studio’s Pixar In A Box online education program offered in partnership with Khan Academy. “I always thought you’d tell the story once and it would be perfect, and geniuses like Walt Disney or [Hayao] Miyazaki…their brilliance comes out of their heads once and there it is. The truth is our stories don’t always come out exactly perfectly the first time, or the second time, or the fourth time, or the 40th time, so you keep going again and again and again. Only after retelling the story many, many times, does it really sparkle.”
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