Corey Rosen - Your Story, Well Told: Creative Strategies to Develop and Perform Stories that Wow an Audience (How To Sell Yourself)

Praise for Your Story, Well Told

This book will help you to craft your memories with joy and art. Let Corey Rosen teach you how good-humored authentic story sharing, in any social and cultural context, beats those nasty public lying contests ev ery time.

Nancy Mellon, healing storyteller, counselor, and author of Storytelling and the Art of Imagination and Hea ling Story

Your Story, Well Told by Corey Rosen is an invitation to enter the theater of living story with a ticket already in your hand. Drawing from his impressive background in film, improv, and radio, Corey uses key techniques and the unbridled enthusiasm of a skilled storytelling coach to discover, refine, and tell your life story to the applause of one or thousands. Everyone has a storyCoreys storytelling guide offers proven tips, exercises, and expertise to showca se yours.

Kate Farrell, librarian, storyteller, and author of S tory Power

Corey Rosens book is a great resource. I know I will return to it again and again for ideas, inspiration, and entertainment. Its like listening to a good story being told, while learning how to tell your own storie s better.

Samantha Harris, cohost of Dancing with the Stars and Entertainment Tonight and author of Your Healthie st Healthy

I believe you should read this book cover to cover and trust in Corey as your storytelling coach because of his twenty-plus years of dedication to story mastery as a performer and a teacher. This book is his lifes work. The greatest thing I believe Coreys book can do for you is to give you the confidence to believe your stories are worth developing and sharing. Maybe one day youll be sitting in a theater, watching your story as a movie, or perhaps youll be on stage, holding people in the palm of your hands with three stories youre unfolding in the petal structure. The key is to believe in yourself.

Patrick Combs, writer, director, and star of Man 1, Bank

Everyone is a storyteller; its how we communicate, make friends, and go through life. But few of us would dare to tell a story in public for fear that it has to be a good story. Coreys book demystifies everything. His book will help everyone have the confidence to share their story with the world. And the more we hear each others stories, the better well understand each other. Get this book; give it to your kids and yourself.

William Hall, cofounder of BATS Improv. and author/ editor of
The Playbook: Improv Games for Performers

Your Story,
Well Told

Creative Strategies to Develop and Perform Stories That Wow an Audience

By Corey Rosen

Co ral Gables

Copyright 2021 by Corey Rosen.
Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover Design: Roberto Nez
Cover Illustration: jongjawi/AdobeStock
Layout & Design: Roberto Nez
Interior Illustrations: Bhairavi Kulkarni and Magnolia Rosen
Photo Credits: Jack and Jill Illustration by Bhairavi Kulkarni, Mind Map Illustrations by Magnolia Rosen, Petal Structure Illustration by Magnolia Rosen, Author Photo by Stu Maschwitz, Moth GrandSlam Photo by Kathleen Sheffer, courtesy of The Moth, The Story Spine was created by Kenn Adams, author of the book How to Improvise a Full-Length Play: The Art of Spontaneous Theater .

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Your Story, Well Told!: Creative Strategies to Develop and Perform Stories that Wow an Audience

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2021930100
ISBN: (p) 978-1-64250-465-1 (e) 978-1-64250-466-8
BISAC category code SEL040000, SELF-HELP / Communication & Social Skills

Printed in the United States of America

To Mom and Dad, my favorite sto rytellers.

Table of Contents

This book is an excellent manual on storytelling, I assure you. The advice contained herein is exceptional. Id like to share the story of why I said yes to writing the foreword and why I implore you to read it cover to cover and trust in Corey as a storytell ing coach.

Patrick, the lawyer who helped you is similar to Obi-Wan in Star Wars . Its night, and I, Corey, and our mutual friend Scott are standing in line outside a club in San Jose, California. Were waiting to see Alanis Morissette, a little-known artist Scott has recently discovered. Jagged Little Pill recently came out, and Alanis is still a good six months from attaining her stadium-packi ng status.

(Years later, in my book, Cash Me If You Can , Ill tell a story about Scott first playing You Oughta Know for me in his San Francisco apartment as it created an unforgettable memory, but thats another story for another time. Right now, Im telling you a story of another moment that Ive never f orgotten.)

Corey and Scott worked together at ILM, Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects home of George Lucas. I found it fascinating that ILM was in an old shopping mall, disguised to create the effect that there was nothing special to see here. Inside, Corey and Scott had holy-shit-amazing jobs where they worked on Star Wars movies, which still held an untarnished legenda ry status.

In fact, Corey, Scott, and a guy named George worked at ILM, and George might have been out with us on this particular night as well. Corey and George were roommates, but George has no role in this story other than to serve as a contrast to Corey. George always dressed in fashionable, expensive black clothes and wielded his job at ILM like a hood ornament on a Rolls Royce. In comparison, Corey always wore earth tones, and if I remember correctly (and as a storyteller, trust me, I usually do), Corey went to the Alanis show wearing a frumpy green, or maybe brown, corduroy jacket. Brown. I can see it now; Corey was in a brown corduroy coat and had on his signature roun d glasses.

Corey was enthusiastic, not snobbish, about his job working on one of the greatest stories ever told by one of the greatest storytellers of all time. The more I think about it, Corey should have wielded his Star Wars job like a Rolls Royce hood ornament because he was working at story mecca, but Corey was much too down-to-earth to do so. Life would later make it very clear to me that the best teachers are usually down-to-earth people who give freely and withhold nothing they know. Thats what Corey has done in this book. Hes written not to show off what makes him a great storyteller but rather to show you how you can become the same.

While Corey was at ILM, I was three years into my self-styled career as a motivational speaker, and my first book, Major in Success , had just been published. In stark contrast to Coreys job which was a conversation igniter at parties, my job was a conversation ender. What do you do? Im a motivational speaker. Thud. Suddenly, it seemed like Id p assed gas.

Anyway, as we wait under the yellow streetlights for entrance into the music venue, our sidewalk conversation turns to a recent real-life experience Id had that everyone loved talking aboutmy recent high-profile escapade with a $95,000 junk-mail check. Id deposited a phony check into my bank as a jokethe bank had accidentally cashed itand Id inadvertently gotten myself into what amounted to an insane series of events. In contrast to my occupation, everyone loved hearing about my gobsmacking banking e xperience.