People are instinctively drawn to hearing stories and telling stories. Practical Storytelling explains the mechanics of how and why stories work. It provides several step-by-step processes to help you create and tell your own stories to improve business and personal relationships. The example stories presented here, including the central story: "Tan's Tile," were chosen to demonstrate each aspect of story development. Practical Storytelling breaks a story down into a set of core components and explains how you can construct each one. You'll learn to implement stories in business and social settings including sales, marketing, meetings, training and more. This hands-on guide also includes a glossary, exercises, worksheets and sample stories. Topics include: attract attention and achieving retention, affecting behavior, story types, theme development, audience analysis, character design, plot construction, acts and scenes, factoring the environment, collecting stories and story delivery.