How to Tell a Story Well

Edited 03/26/2026

In a world that values speed, visibility, and performance, storytelling can quickly become another task on the hustle list. Another way to prove your worth. Another layer of extraction: from your body, your talents, your history, your voice.

I've long believed that storytelling is a tool that can be helpful or harmful depending on the circumstances. My goal here is always to use it for good. But I also have found a reverence for the parts of the process I cannot control. Story work is sacred work.

Story As Sacred Responsibility

Storytelling might be the oldest technology that we have. And the people who wield its power are memory keepers, shamans, spiritual intermediaries, historians, and meaning makers.

I love to think of the cave walls covered in handprints (mostly women's) that showcase cave paintings of migrations and plants—vital information shared to keep the next generation alive. I love that myths were often told as maps of the landscape so that when you oriented to them, you understood where you are.

Stories are part of the way our ancestors survived and how we remember. You find storytellers as honored, often holy, people across cultures.

The Senchai in Ireland who preserved genealogies, legends, and local memory. The bards of Britain, Scotland, and Wales. The Griot in Mali, Senegal, and Guinea who accompany their stories of history and cultural wisdom with music. The Hakawati who weave their epics of romance and morality into performance in cafes in the Middle East. The Pandavani performers who bring the Mahabharata to life through dramatic, often improvised performances.

These days storytelling has evolved to something that feels decidedly less sacred. Marketing. Spin. Political espionage. I wonder if it speaks to our survival as a species or just our drive for more. As if by manipulating this sacred art form we might get all the things we desire.

Sometimes it works; we have all borne witness to this age of influencers and politicians who know how to spin. Now we distrust the storyteller and story. There is no space for the sacred.

And perhaps that is why we must distinguish between telling a good story and telling a story well.

How To Tell Story Well

Telling a story "well" honors the experience of the storyteller and the needs of the audience. It's not just writing a strong hook to grab attention; it's about cultivating a connection with the people you truly want to speak to. This takes patience, research, conversations, empathy, and the ability to take your eye off what you want and focus on what your audience needs from you.

A story told well is rooted in authenticity, in integrity, and meaning-making. It means telling the truth without causing harm. Sometimes, it's choosing not to exploit the tenderest parts of yourself and noticing how your body feels when you start to share certain stories. Because what we feel in our bodies while telling a story will be mirrored in our audience. Storytelling is a shared nervous system experience. If our bodies are tense, fragmented, or dissociated, our audience will feel that too. But if we have integrated our stories and cared for our bodies, then our stories can magnetize and heal others who are walking a similar path.

I teach that storytelling isn't just content. It’s a somatic process. A sacred responsibility. An emotionally connected practice.

Staying present with ourselves is difficult in this era of sensationalism and quick dopamine hits. It would be easier to rant, to jump on the latest social media trend, to perform than it will be to tell a true story. Perhaps that's why so many of us fill our time with the shallowest form of storytelling. Because moving to the depths feels unsafe. And no wonder—with the political divisiveness and internet trolls, you are as likely to be attacked by your cousin as some rando on the internet.

So do we just give up on telling stories? If you’ve felt the tug-of-war between your longing to share your experience and your need to feel safe while doing it, know this: you’re not alone. You want to be seen and heard (not just for the roles you play or the knowledge you hold, but in your fullness and in your failure). You want to speak and feel witnessed, not exposed.

I can't promise to deliver all those things to you, but I understand this feeling, and I believe there is still space for the sacred in storytelling.

There are stories I held in my body for years before I could write them down, let alone speak them aloud. Even now, as I write my first novel, I feel the fear rise that I might be misunderstood.

But I also know there are spaces (this is one of them for some of you) where you can practice telling your stories before you go public. Tender story holders who can witness you as you uncover how you really feel about the story you're still learning to tell. When we give ourselves that kind of space, we’re able to tell our stories in ways that feel rooted, real, and alive.

These are the stories that not only heal us through their honesty, but also transform others alongside us through the power of our vulnerability. Let me share a story that illustrates this kind of unfolding within my work.

A Story That Holds It All

When Jade came to me, she felt split between two identities: humanitarian and artist. She loved working in spaces of global service, but the burnout was real. And there was a quieter part of her—the part that danced, painted, played—that had been pushed aside for years. Through our work together, we explored the stories beneath the story: the childhood narratives, the expectations placed on her during her college years, the workplaces where her creativity had been overlooked or undervalued.

What emerged wasn’t just clarity; it was integration.

We discovered that art and movement had always been a healing presence in her humanitarian work. She had been witnessing their power for years—from women dancing in refugee camps to people watching films outside post-earthquake zones.

It wasn't that humanitarianism was more important than art making. It was that art was a form of healing in some of the hardest situations imaginable. This was a knowing that Jade needed, but it was also a knowing that many others in humanitarianism needed too.

Today, Jade is a certified play therapist and is back in school, weaving creativity into her professional life in bold, beautiful ways. She didn’t choose between her identities. She reclaimed and reintegrated them through story. This is the power of storytelling done well. It holds the complexity of you. It allows you to bring your whole self to the world. It unfolds in a way where perspective can be taken and connections can be made. When you tell a story like that, your audience feels it in their body. They see themselves in you. And they remember what’s possible.

Storytelling as Embodied Practice

I work with many people who are exhausted by the pressure to "show up" and "be visible." In a culture obsessed with speed, scale, and glossy performing, storytelling can start to feel like another form of extraction: share more, quicker, louder. But that urgency erodes something within. It disconnects us from our natural, cyclical pace. It leaves no space for the slow, deep rhythm of a story finding its form.

That’s why I don’t rush the process. I listen to the pace of your body. Your breath. Your knowing. We don’t just make stories strategic; we make them safer for you and your audience. We make them true. And when a seed of a story arises from that kind of soil, it carries a power no marketing formula can replicate.

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This isn’t about becoming a better storyteller. It’s about becoming more honest inside your own story. It is only from that place that everything you create can carry truth. If that’s the kind of storytelling you’re ready for, I’d be honored to walk beside you.

Explore the story coaching process.