Review: How to Tell a Great Story

How To Tell A Great Story

Author: Sundararaj Aneeta

Publisher: BookShaker (July 4, 2011)

Paperback: 172 pages (also available in Kindle Format)

Synposis:

How To Tell A Great Story will equip you with powerful storytelling techniques that master storytellers have used throughout time to amaze and engage their audiences. This simple, but powerful beginner’s guidebook, makes learning storytelling techniques easy and explains things in simple language. When you read this book, you will learn how to:

• Start telling your own story quickly and effortlessly.
• Construct a fascinating, well-structured story from scratch.
• Use powerful master storytelling techniques to amaze your family and friends.
• Find interesting ideas and inspiration for your stories.
• Vividly and expertly describe the characters and settings in your stories.

Review:

Who is a storyteller? When you think about it…everyone. Whether you’re relating a family story at the dinner table, writing a novel, presenting a work update in your office, or giving a speech you are a storyteller. So everyone can benefit from this book. How to Tell a Great Story gives us a new way to look at the many times we communicate with others. We aren’t just talking: blah, blah, blah, we’re telling a story: Once upon a time…

Aneeta divides this books into effective sections that build on each other. First, let’s talk about what theme is and what some classic themes are. Next, determine what your theme is. And so it goes. The detailed Table of Contents makes it easy to zero in on just the section you want to review before an important presentation or when writer’s block strikes. The book also includes a generous helping of quotes from storytellers of all types revealing what works for them and giving the reader interesting things to mull over. The price of the book was worth it just to gain the viewpoints of these many successful storytellers.

I’ll be consulting How to Tell A Great Story before a begin my next short story AND before I teach my next workshop. This book will be equally helpful for both situations.