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What If the Best Stories Aren’t About You?

For your personal story to resonate deeply, your audience must see themselves in it.

Storytelling

Stage performance

On Stage

Public speaking

Michael

Port

Co-Founder

minute read

Published on

July 28, 2025

Masterful storytelling happens when speakers make their audience the hero of their story.

Perhaps you’ve mastered using the three-act storytelling structure to craft stories for your speech. You know the difference between a story and an anecdote (and why it matters). You even use present tense to make your stories more impactful.

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But many speakers make this all-too-common mistake when crafting, performing, and delivering their stories onstage: They assume that their personal stories should be the centerpiece of their speech.

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Now, I’m not suggesting you cut your personal stories altogether. Your personal accounts about overcoming a significant setback, discovering an important idea, or learning a valuable life lesson might be important, or even essential, for your speech.

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Stories add essential contrast, help drive home teaching points, solidify your Core Message, and, when performed in a unique or memorable way, can even become your signature bit.

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But in order to make a personal story you share resonate more deeply with your audience, it can’t be just about you.

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Audience-Focused Storytelling

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The best stories aren’t about you. They’re about the audience.

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Maybe you're telling your story. But if you want it to land, the audience must see themselves in it. They must recognize their struggles, their aspirations, their fears. Your job as a speaker isn’t just to share what happened to you, it’s to make your story a mirror for your audience’s own experiences.

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The five audience-focused storytelling principles below can help you tell personal stories that resonate powerfully with your audience.

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#1 Use Less Backstory

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Tell less, show more is perhaps the most common piece of storytelling advice. We hear it so often, but actually putting it into practice can be challenging. But here’s a simple way to “tell less”: Eliminate unnecessary details that don’t move the story forward.

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Usually, these details suffocate the exposition of your story, the first act where you set the scene. As much as we love our own backstories and think that our audience just absolutely must know that we were wearing a white pair of classic Converse Chuck 70 sneakers when it happened, cutting extra information makes your story much better.

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This is even true when we add more details, examples, and information to be sure the audience “gets it” (or because we want them to think we’re smart and know what we’re talking about). Cut to the meat. Be wary of extraneous details that disrupt the flow of your story.

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Your audience doesn’t need all the backstory you think they do.

Full Transcript

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choose only the strongest details for the background of your story.

#2 Shape Your Stories With Universal Themes

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A story about a teenager getting a D- on an exam is just a story about a teenager getting a D- on an exam, unless you frame it in a way that dives into broader universal themes like perseverance amidst failure, safeguarding self-esteem, or the inequality of educational evaluation systems.

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No matter what personal story you share onstage, when you shape it with a universal theme, it’s much easier for your audience to see themselves in your story.

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Remember, as the storyteller, you’re leading your audience on a journey of discovery, and how you frame the journey determines whether they’ll eagerly follow you or get lost along the way.

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frame your stories around universal themes that connect to your Core Message.

#3 Unpack the Turning Points

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Identify and unpack the turning points of your story: the moments of realization, learning, or growth. Centering your story around these critical points makes it much easier to write, craft, and deliver an engaging, exciting story.

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To determine the most powerful turning point in your story, ask yourself: At what point did my thinking change and lead to a behavioral change? When did I realize that thing that helped me get the desired result?

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AJ Harper, multi-award-winning author and HEROIC’s Book Business Thought Leader, shares a story of deciding to become a writer, despite her school teacher's comment that she’d have “a one-in-a-million chance.”

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However, instead of starting her story when she was given her first typewriter or after writing her first short story, she starts the story at the turning point: one morning in her mom’s car as she explained that she actually did have a chance to become a writer. Her story is one of hope that shows aspiring writers they, too, have a chance to succeed; and it’s not a one-in-a-million chance, it’s one far greater.

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Telling your own stories onstage is powerful. It naturally raises your energy levels and can help you show your audience you understand them. But remember, you aren’t onstage to tell your audience your whole life story.

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Focus on the turning point, the discovery, and tell it in an engaging way that they can relate to. And you don’t have to explain everything too explicitly. Through beats, expressions, and emphasis, you can let your audience draw their own conclusions and connect to your story. When your audience can see themselves in your story, it will powerfully captivate, inspire, and teach them.

Don't

make space for the audience to connect their own meaning to your message.

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#4 Show the Discovery

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Onstage, we share stories and anecdotes to drive home teaching points. But very often, speakers tell their stories as the person who’s already gained the knowledge, rather than their past self who was having the discovery in that moment in time.

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If you set up the problem or scenario of your story, then simply tell your audience what you did (for example, “So, I took a breath, and I decided to think big”) you’re analyzing and reflecting, not storytelling.

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You’re highlighting the teaching point (in this case, thinking big) that you want to share with your audience. Doing this in the middle of your story takes your audience from experience mode to analysis mode too early. It’s much more effective to build anticipation and suspense, let them make those connections on their own, and save the reflection for the end of your story.

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Instead, show your audience the discovery. What did you think at that very moment? What emotions did you feel? How can you perform what you were experiencing, without explicitly explaining the discovery? When you let your audience discover new concepts and ideas with you in your story, it’s much more engaging, exciting, and memorable.

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give away the punchline; let your audience discover it in the moment.

#5 Emphasize Emotions, Not Just Events

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What happens in your story is important for the plot. But your audience members probably won’t have experienced the same exact events you have. However, almost everyone in your audience will be able to relate to the emotions that surround the events in your story.

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So don’t focus on being assigned a new project at work; emphasize the feelings of inadequacy, overwhelm, and stress. Don’t focus on the experience of being the only woman of color in your company; emphasize the feelings of loneliness, rejection, and exclusion.

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If you can make your audience feel as if they are living the story with you, rather than just being told a story, you’ll be able to connect more deeply and transform your audience through storytelling.

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focus on the emotional experience behind your story; powerfully convey those emotions through playing actions.

Toward the end of the comedy-drama film The Materialists, there’s a moment so quietly powerful, it punches above its weight (and height). It demonstrates many of the audience-focused storytelling principles mentioned above.

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Pedro Pascal’s character, suave and successful, finally opens a vulnerable window into his past. Before he received a limb-lengthening surgery that added six inches to his stature, he once stood 5’6”, a fact the audience doesn't know, until now. In a scene with Dakota Johnson’s character, he doesn’t just explain what it felt like to be overlooked, to be underestimated, to be dismissed. He doesn’t offer a monologue about insecurity, or perform a tidy emotional confession. Instead, he shows her. Quite literally.

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Face to face, with only a few inches separating the two, he bends his knees, dropping himself back down to the height he used to be. That’s it. No dramatic score. No voiceover. Just a shift in stature.

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And yet, the impact is profound. The physicality of the moment carries emotional weight. Suddenly, both the viewer and Dakota’s character see what it means to live life looking up; to be eye level with other people’s judgement rather than their admiration.

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It’s a masterclass in “show, don’t tell.” The scene doesn’t explain his past life experience. It reveals it. Visually. Simply. Honestly.

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Make Your Audience the HERO of Your Story

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You’re the leader who discovered something that changed your business or company. You’re the entrepreneur whose idea made a difference in the lives of millions. You’re the visionary who shares valuable insights with your audience.

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But framing yourself as such in the stories you share is self-serving, and might even come across as arrogant. What will make your stories more impactful is if you make your audience seem clever, smart, and heroic.

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For example, when telling a story about how you inspired your team to think big, if your audience relates more to being on a team than leading one, you need to make the team the hero of the story. Show how the idea was a collective effort and celebrate them for putting it into practice and achieving the results.

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Even if you’re the one who initiated the change for someone, stories that make that someone the hero are more powerful, more convincing, and more likely to resonate.

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When you tell it from that perspective, you make your audience the hero of your story. They make the discovery, they make the change.

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So next time you tell a personal story in a speech, ask yourself: Is this story truly serving the audience? Or is it just serving me? And if your story isn’t completely focused on your audience yet, ask yourself: How can I make my audience the hero of this story?

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After all, that’s why we call it HEROIC Public Speaking. It’s not just the speaker who’s heroic (although they are too). It’s your audience who’s heroic. When you can make your audience the hero of your story through masterful storytelling, they’ll understand and adopt your Core Message faster and be inspired to make the changes and put in the work necessary to transform their lives because of it.

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That’s the power of heroic storytelling.

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Tell stories so good they get retold again and again.

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#2 Shape Your Stories With Universal Themes

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No matter what personal story you share onstage, when you shape it with a universal theme, it’s much easier for your audience to see themselves in your story.

‍

Remember, as the storyteller, you’re leading your audience on a journey of discovery, and how you frame the journey determines whether they’ll eagerly follow you or get lost along the way.

Dont

frame your stories around universal themes that connect to your Core Message.

#3 Unpack the Turning Points

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Don't

make space for the audience to connect their own meaning to your message.

#4 Show the Discovery

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Don't

give away the punchline; let your audience discover it in the moment.

#5 Emphasize Emotions, Not Just Events

‍

Don't

focus on the emotional experience behind your story; powerfully convey those emotions through playing actions.

Learn from

Michael

HEROIC

Speakers

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It’s a masterclass in “show, don’t tell.” The scene doesn’t explain his past life experience. It reveals it. Visually. Simply. Honestly.

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Make Your Audience the HERO of Your Story

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Even if you’re the one who initiated the change for someone, stories that make that someone the hero are more powerful, more convincing, and more likely to resonate.

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When you tell it from that perspective, you make your audience the hero of your story. They make the discovery, they make the change.

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That’s the power of heroic storytelling.

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