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Pippa and Beth talk about some methods to improve the stories you tell in English. They look back at Georgie's story about a boy band and Neil's story about parking.

Transcript

Beth
Hello and welcome to the Learning English stories podcast. I’m Beth.

Pippa
And I’m Pippa. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been sharing some true stories. Listen back if you missed them.

Beth
And today we’re going to look at some of the methods we use to tell better stories in English.

Pippa
Head to our website to find a transcript for this episode, bbclearningenglish.com.

Beth
Right. Let’s start with a story we heard from Neil about something very silly he did.

Pippa
Ah, I remember this one. So, Neil was meeting up with his parents at a park after a long time of not seeing them. He sees his parents arrive and decides to help them get into a tight parking space. Let’s have a listen.

Neil (clip from programme)
I started sort of waving my arms around to direct my parents into this parking space that was free. And my parents have got quite a good sense of humour, so I thought I'd, you know, be a bit funny, and I started directing in a very kind of exaggerated way. Like, you know, you see people directing planes on a runway into a space. So, with big movements of my arms and sort of crouching down to my knees to guide them into this space. And as they got into the space, I realised that these people were not my parents. And they were just some other old couple.

Beth
This is a great story. Neil gives us a lot of description of the movements he’s making to help his parents. He makes a comparison to people on a runway at an airport. And then he describes it in even more detail. He says he made big movements with his arms. He crouched down on his knees, and that really helps us imagine and be able to see what happened.

Pippa
And then of course he reveals that these are not his parents at all.

Beth
You’ll often hear stories where people add lots of detail and build up a picture before revealing a mistake. Neil could have just said: ‘I directed my parents into a parking space, and then I realised it wasn’t them and felt silly.’

Pippa
Yes, but the way he tells it makes it funnier because he has described how silly he looked in lots of detail. He also holds back the important piece of information that makes the story funny as long as possible.

Beth
Yes, and you can try adding more description in your stories like this. You don’t need to use complicated language, but think about what the thing you were doing or saw reminded you of. Like with Neil, the way he was acting reminded him of people directing planes on runways.

Pippa
OK, let’s look at another story. Georgie told a story about meeting a very famous boy band called One Direction. Let’s hear some of what she said.

Georgie (clip from programme)
And as One Direction, the boys, were going inside, um, Harry Styles hugged me. Well, I hugged him. He received my hug, um, and he took my poster and he said, 'see you, love'. And then I cried for the rest of the day. Um, and that is not an exaggeration. I promise you, as soon as he let go of me, I started crying and I didn't stop for the rest of the day.

Phil
How, how did it feel the day afterwards when you got back home? When you were...?

Georgie
It felt like a dream. I, it felt like it didn't happen, but I knew it had. Um, the one thing that makes me very, very upset is that there's no photographic evidence of it. Um, but I promise you, this is true. I'm not lying. It happened.

Beth
OK, this is another great funny story, isn’t it?

Pippa
Yeah, I really liked this one. What I noticed as well is that Georgie repeats the phrase ‘I promise you’ a lot during this story.

Beth
Yes, this is quite common when a story might sound unbelievable. So, Georgie is telling us that her story might sound untrue, but she promises that it is true.

Pippa
Yes, when she’s talking about crying all day after meeting the band, Georgie says ‘this is not an exaggeration, I promise you’.

Beth
Yeah, sometimes stories seem like they are exaggerated. This means that they might be partly true, but someone has changed the story to make it more dramatic. But Georgie says this story really was that dramatic. She’s not exaggerating.

Pippa
Right, let’s look at one final story. And Beth, this one’s from you. You told a story about travelling around the world, and running into someone you knew. Not once, not twice, but three times. Let’s listen.

Beth (clip from programme)
I was in Alaska. Alaska really is not a, not a very common place to visit, I would say. And I was on a ship, and I saw a guy that I thought I knew, and I thought, no way, this is not happening again. I'm not seeing someone I know, surely. And the man that I knew was called Ben, and, he played the piano, and I convinced myself that it wasn't him. But the last night of the ship, there was a man playing the piano on the stage, and there was a singer, and she said, 'take it away, Ben'. And it was Ben. And it was absolutely him playing the piano. And I went up to him at the end of the, of the performance, and he said, ‘Beth, what are you doing here?’ I said, ‘what are you doing here in Alaska?’

Beth
Yeah. It’s quite common for people to tell stories about groups of three. So, this was the third time that I met someone I knew.

Pippa
Yeah. And there’s a lot of language here to emphasise how unlikely that situation is, and your disbelief that it’s happened for the third time!

Beth
Yeah. For example, I said ‘no way, this is not happening again.’ It’s showing that disbelief.

Pippa
And you say you convinced yourself that it wasn’t Ben you saw in Alaska.

Beth
Then we have the drama that I waited until the last night of the trip, I didn’t go and speak to him, and then the singer revealed that it actually was Ben.

Pippa
Yeah. And you can try and add this drama to your story by revealing your thoughts and feelings about a situation.

Beth
And we have a few ways to introduce what you are thinking to a story. So, for example, you could just say 'I thought' or 'I was like'. And another way is to say 'And I'm thinking.'

Pippa
Yeah, then generally we share the thought in the present tense, even if you’re telling the story in the past tense. So for example, here you said, ‘I thought no way, this is not happening again.’

Beth
That’s it for this episode of Learning English Stories. Keep emailing us your stories, because we really enjoy reading them. Our email address is [email protected].

Pippa
If you’ve enjoyed this series, try the other dramas and stories on our website at bbclearningenglish.com. Thanks for joining us and goodbye.

Beth
Goodbye.

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