Stories: the washing line, dialogue, start in the middle

By Alastair Greener, presenter of Present Yourself in a Minute · Updated 5 November 2026

A good story does more for a talk than a slide of figures, and it costs nothing but attention. The Present Yourself series by Alastair Greener keeps coming back to three habits: collect stories continuously, tell them with the people speaking, and start in the middle. This page takes each in turn, then gives you a story bank to fill in.

The washing line: collect them as they happen

Most speakers go looking for a story the night before, when nothing comes to mind. People who always seem to have one ready are not more interesting. They write things down.

A washing line is a running list of short stories, pegged up where you can see them. Keep it in a notes app, a notebook or the back of your diary. Add an entry whenever something happens that made you smile, wince or change your mind. A client said something unexpected. A rehearsal went wrong. A customer's feedback surprised you.

Personal stories and testimonials are the strongest kind. The audience can tell the difference between "a case study of a company like yours" and "what Priya told me last Tuesday". Name the person if they would be happy for you to, and ask before you do. Change the name, or leave it out, if you are unsure.

When you are planning a talk, you do not write a story. You walk along the line and choose one that proves your point. If nothing fits, that is useful to know before you have built slides around a gap. It also fits well with a four-part talk of hook, message, recap and call to action, where stories do most of the work in the hook and the message. Our guide to writing for the ear helps with the sentences themselves.

Share a failure, not only a win

Stories where things went wrong humanise you. An audience trusts a speaker who admits a mistake and says what changed afterwards more than one who has only ever succeeded. Present Yourself recommends sharing challenges and failures for this reason. It also suggests acknowledging the difficulty and then moving on to the solution, so the story ends on what you did about it.

Pick failures that are over. A story about a problem you are still in the middle of tends to sound like a complaint, or a plea.

Dialogue, not narration

Compare two tellings of the same moment.

Narration: "My manager told me the client was unhappy and that I needed to ring them straight away."

Dialogue: "She put her head round the door. 'The Hendersons are furious,' she said. 'Ring them. Now.'"

The second is shorter in effect and far easier to picture. When you use dialogue you relive the story rather than report it, and your voice, pace and face change to suit each speaker.

A few rules of thumb:

• Use the words that were said, or close to them. Short lines work best.
• Do not do voices. A small change in pace or pitch is enough to show who is speaking.
• Keep it to two people at most in one exchange, or the audience loses track of who said what.
• Add vivid sensory detail, such as the smell of burnt toast or the hum of a failing fridge. One or two details are enough. Give the people in the story a few traits so the audience can see them.

Start in the middle

Do not begin at the beginning. Begin at the most exciting moment, then go back and fill in the context.

Here is the same story told two ways.

Beginning first: "Last March I had been working on a pitch for three weeks. We had a meeting booked with a big retailer. On the morning, I got on the train with my laptop and my notes, and about halfway there I realised..."

Middle first: "The laptop was on the platform at Clapham Junction. The train was pulling out. Forty minutes until the pitch." Then go back: who you were pitching to, what was on the laptop and what you did next.

In the second version the audience has a question within ten seconds, and they will stay to hear the answer. Do not say you are about to tell a story, or that you have a funny one. Begin with the line.

Keep the backfill short. Two or three sentences of context are enough before you return to the moment and carry it through to the point.

Make it land: the point, then the data

A story is only useful if the audience knows why they have heard it. Finish with one sentence that links it to your central idea, in the words you have already been using. Then, if you have a figure, bring it in as backing: lead with the story, support it with data. Our guide on data with a human face goes further into this.

The best stories have an emotional hit. Aim for the response "that is exactly how I feel", which is the sign that someone has recognised themselves in what you said.

If you use an AI tool to help with drafting, treat it as a supplement. Your own stories are the part nobody else can write for you, and the audience will notice if they sound generic.

Rehearse it out loud

A story that reads well on the page can still fall flat when spoken. Tell it aloud, in real time, and record it, even if you only use the voice recorder on your phone. Listen back for three things: where you ramble, where you rush and where you say "so" or "basically" instead of pausing.

Then trim. The most common cut is the middle of the backfill, which is where tellers explain things the audience does not need yet. Tell it again to one friend and watch their face at the opening moment and at the point. If they look puzzled at the opening, you have started too far in. If they check their phone during the backfill, shorten it.

Write only the first line and the last line on your notes, and learn both by heart. The rest should come from having lived it.

Story bank

Copy this table into your notes. One row per story.

The last column matters more than it looks. If you tell the same story to the same people twice, they notice, so note where each one has had an outing.

Mistakes to avoid

• Announcing the story. Cut "I want to tell you a story" and begin.
• Starting at the beginning. Open with the moment and backfill.
• Reporting speech. Let people speak.
• A story with no point. If you cannot say what it proves in a sentence, leave it on the line.
• Too much detail. Pick the one or two details that carry the scene and drop the rest.
• Using someone else's story as your own. Tell yours, or credit the owner. See the fifty ways to open for other ways in when a story does not fit.

Related guides

• Hook, Message, Recap, Call to action: the HMRC structure
• Fifty ways to open (hooks that work)
• How to end: bookends, loops, last lines
• Writing for the ear: short sentences, short words
• Words that cost you credibility: fluff, superlatives, -ly words, jargon
• All guides and tools

The picture at the top of this page is an illustration, not a photograph of a client or a real job.