One quick way to know the story your reading is being spun by an inferior storyteller? Secrets.

Is there a character, or worse, more than one character, who has a secret? Do they let someone else in the story know they have a secret, but won’t reveal it? Is this secret crucial for the protagonist to move towards his goal?

Cheap. Suspense.

The storyteller is doing this so you know there is a secret, and wants you to keep reading the story to find out what it is. Though I’ve seen this in some bad suspense novels, I see it far more often on television.

The classic example is The X-Files, where Mulder kept getting a little closer to the Big Answer, only to have the rug pulled out from under him every time. He was Charlie Brown and Cancer Man was Lucy holding the football. Viewers, and maybe even Chris Carter, tired of this and eventually the show spiraled downward off the air.

Of shows that are still on the air, 24 does this constantly (at least they did when I still watched it, in the first 2 or 3 seasons). Someone knows something that Jack needs to know, but they won’t tell him until he does something for them first. This keeps the reader on the hook until the next secret comes along.

Good storytellers avoid this. They build suspense by making you wonder what a character is going to do, not what a character knows. By only making a character’s knowledge interesting, the storyteller has neglected to make the character interesting.

There is one storyteller working today who walks the line between these worlds, though more often on the side of the secrets. JJ Abrams, producer of Alias, Lost, and Fringe, takes pride in this style of storytelling. In his TED Talk, (JJ Abrams: The Mystery Box), he appears onstage with a box. He explains that this was a box of mystery prizes he ordered from the back of a comic book when he was a kid, and has never opened it. He says that the mystery of what’s in the box is far better than what is actually in the box. Unfortunately, his storytelling reflects this as well.

In his new show Fringe, the main character is haunted by her dead lover/partner who apparently knows stuff. When she asks him what’s going on, he replies, “I can’t tell you now.” Now. He can’t tell her now. Because if he did, we would know also, and then what would keep us coming back week after week?

And this is the point. Television requires people to keep watching the show week after week. Storytellers like an arc. Combine these two factors, and you have a badly designed story. An arc that never resolves itself, and eventually wears out the storyreader.

Abrams biggest show, Lost, is an example of this. I went digging around in old interviews and found some interesting information about the development of the show. But, I’m out of time right now, so I need you to come back next week before I can tell you what I learned.

(See how cheap that is?)

• tell :
  1. to relate in detail
• read:
  1. to receive or take in the sense of
  2. to interpret the meaning or significance of

Thus storytelling is the relating in detail of a story, and storyreading is taking in the sense of a story and interpreting its meaning or significance.

I am a storyreader.

When I was in the corporate world, my personal bête noire was PowerPoint. It is a massive timesink, and its potential to cause great boredom is limitless. 99% of all presentations I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot, were simply bulleted versions of what the speaker was saying. But, oh the time said speaker spent noodling that deck, deciding on diamonds versus dots, or bold versus italic. Inevitably, there would be printouts of the deck for everyone, which always made me wonder why they didn’t just email me the printout, then use the presentation time to just answer questions about the deck, rather than walking everyone through it. Instead we are given the same information three times in three formats.

During one major project, I made my opinion of PowerPoint so well-known that whenever someone started up a presentation, all eyes turned to me. When we went to a major software vendor’s Silicone Valley headquarters, and they showed us their software as static PowerPoint slides, I started to ask if we were going to be able to see the actual software. My CFO held me back, and laid into them far worse than I would have ever done.

After I started consulting, I had to work with sales reps directly, and few people love PowerPoint as much as salespeople (except for maybe consultants). I watched one salesman take two weeks to build a deck, then panic when the client asked him a question in the middle of the presentation. He broke out into a sweat, and forgot how to advance the slide. Another salesman had a deck that was so out-dated that prospects would point out errors in it during presentations, yet he continued to use it for the few remaining months I worked with him. I once had a project manager who used the same deck for years, but still read aloud directly from his notes in order to avoid going off script and messing up the whole presentation.

All of these problems are based in one basic emotion: fear. If PowerPoint is good for one thing, it is being a mask. Most presentations are given in darkened rooms, and people in the audience are watching the screen rather than the person speaking. It takes the focus off the speaker and re-directs it at something else. It is a classic magician’s trick, usually done so the viewer will not notice the performer pulling something out of a sleeve. But with PowerPoint, it is done so the viewer will not notice the wet spots under the arms, or the flop sweat on the speaker’s upper lip. PowerPoint is a crutch for bad public speakers.

The problem is that most companies think it makes people better public speakers.

I was frequently asked, when I expressed my opinion about PowerPoint, what I would do instead. My answer was always the same: uninstall it from every machine, and give everyone a copy of Henning Nelms’ Magic and Showmanship . I have owned at least three copies of this book, and have given them all away to friends and colleagues. Though its main focus is on teaching would-be magicians how to create a compelling stage presence, it is invaluable for anyone who wants to create a story to present to an audience.

Inevitably, these people would then ask me, what does that have to do with PowerPoint and presentations? My answer, again, was always the same: Everything is a story.

From the formation of the Himalayas to the pile of leaves on your front stoop, from the history of humanity to the sparrow chirping on your windowsill, all of these things have stories, are stories. Whether or not the story is interesting is in the presentation. Though I have seen PowerPoint used in a compelling way once or twice, it is not something that makes anyone’s presentations better. It is simply a tool. Only by understanding what we want to do can we do it well. Put me in the New Yankee Workshop with a pile of lumber, and I’ll build a pretty crappy bookshelf. Teach me carpentry, and with some simple tools and that same pile of lumber, I’ll build a better one.

Give a consultant a laptop and a script, and PowerPoint quickly becomes PowerNap. Give an accountant some basic storytelling skills and an awareness of narrative, and a budget variance report can be, well, not uninteresting.

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Did this suddenly become a corporate blog? Hardly. Everything is a story. Understanding the basic tools and techniques of storytelling allows one to extract meaning from the profound or the mundane, from the Big Bang or the balance sheet