Trying to Make Your Stories Interesting Can Have the Opposite Effect.
It’s always fun to tell travel stories and tell your friends about all the interesting, new places you’ve discovered. However, research shows that listeners are more interested in talking about their experiences.
In a study published in the journal Psychological Science , presenters were asked to watch a short video and then share it with listeners. Some listeners have already watched the video, while others have not. The speakers expected more engagement from listeners who did not watch the video, but they were wrong.
People who had already watched the video and knew the story enjoyed listening to it more than listeners who hadn’t. You might think it would be the other way around – who wants to hear the story of what they already know? The researchers concluded that this is probably because people find it more difficult to explain new things. The researchers wrote (emphasis added):
The novelty of the experience can make the stories more interesting to listen to, but it also makes them difficult to tell, a fact that creates a puzzle for speakers: if they tell familiar stories, they are more likely to be understood, but less likely to be interesting. and if they tell new stories, they are more likely to be interesting but less likely to be understood. Thus, a successful speaker must carefully balance these two outcomes by telling stories that are familiar enough to be understood but new enough to be worth understanding.
However, when telling a story, it is easy to miss it. Telling a friend about the amazing monkey park you visited in Japan is trying to convey how cool it is. You are not so focused on explaining to them what Monkey Park is, so they get confused and disconnected.
In other words, most of us tell stories to be engaging, not explanatory, so that our listeners get confused and can’t see the conversation. To tell a successful story, try to tie it to an experience that your listeners (or readers) can understand and understand. Check out the study for more details.