Improvisational Storytelling Secrets:
The Princess Bride Method
Learn a compelling storytelling technique straight out of Hollywood. Transform any story you tell so you can virtually hypnotize your audience...
In the next few minutes you're going to learn an extremely simple and easy technique that can transform your storytelling. It's from The Art of Improvisational Storytelling Masterclass. You can use it with any story. It doesn't matter if you're making it up on the spot, or telling a real story from your life.
If you're like most Americans, you've seen the famous movie The Princess Bride -- one of the most loved and quoted movies in the world. The movie starts with a grandfather visiting his sick grandson. He then reads to his grandson from a book called The Princess Bride.
The rest of the movie goes back and forth between showing what's happening in the book and what's happening in real life with the boy and his grandpa.
But, why?
Why not just show what happens to the main characters of the the book: The Man in Black, Hupperdinck, Inigo Montoya???
Literally all that happens in the first story is that the grandpa reads to his sick grandson. Then he leaves. That's it. Virtually nothing else happens.
Plus, in the actual book of The Princess Bride, the exact same thing happens. The sick boy and his grandfather are in it. It's the same as the movie.
Why include them in the book and movie?
Because, it adds depth. It adds a sense of multi-dimensionality. It gives the story layers. It literally gives it a hypnotic effect.
Literally hypnotic!
There was a world famous therapist named Milton Erickson. He was more effective than most other therapists. He became known as the world's greatest hypnotist. He had a wide range of skills and tools he used. One of the most powerful was stories. What was his technique?
By the end of his life, in 1980, he had groups of people regularly visiting to learn from him. He told stories that contained many lessons. And, he didn't just tell them, he nested them.
He started one story, and in the middle of it went on to another story, then on to another. Eventually he'd circle back to where he started. People would tend to enter a trance state as they listened to stories, within stories, within stories.
The Princess Bride is an easy to understand example of this. They nest the events of The Princess Bride within the story of the grandpa and the boy. By doing that it makes both stories more interesting and creates a powerful effect on your sense of reality.
This is a frequently used tool in movies and books.
Now, how can you use it to make your stories more powerful?
Most people tell stories in a straight, linear fashion. This happened, then this, then this. A, then B, then C. Now that you are familiar with this tool, you can structure your stories differently. ABCBA
You can find ways to nest one part of a story within another part of it. You'll keep people entranced as their minds attempt to keep track of the multiple timelines and situations.
How can you do this?
There are numerous ways to do this: "Then I told her about the time..." "And he told me about..." "That made me remember how earlier in the day..." "When I saw it, I remembered something from my childhood..." "It reminded me of a dream I once had..." "Looking at her, I thought of how we'd met..." "I told her it was like a story I read in a book years ago..."
You can jump to stories from earlier in the same day, from months before, or even from your childhood. After you tell those stories, you jump back into the story you started originally.
It will have a tremendously stronger impact on people. You'll keep them jumping around through time -- and, possibly, from the real to the imaginary.
Play with The Princess Bride Method. It's fairly simple and easy. You'll find it's a tremendously powerful skill that will add power and depth to your stories.
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Do you want to apply these ideas, concepts, tools and skills in your life? What would your life be like if you felt confident expressing yourself? Grab the bull by the horns and discover what's possible for you now!