I didn't get direct answers to your query, but I got some suggestions for dealing with the problem.
One person told me to defuse an awkward situation if a story isn't well-received with a joke:
Another friend suggested it's all about practice, and bearing through it:
That particular friend is a rationalist. By 'metacognition', I believe he meant 'notice you're practicing the right skills'. Basically, in your head, or on a piece of paper, break down the aspect(s) of storytelling you want to acquire as skills, and only spend time training those.
For example, you probably want to get into the habit of telling stories so the important details that make the story pop come out, rather than getting into the habits of qualifying the points with background details that listeners won't care about. This is a problem I myself have with storytelling. In each of our own minds, we're the only one who remember the causal details that led to the something extraordinary sequence of events that day on vacation. Our listeners don't know the details, because they weren't there, so assume you didn't make any glaring omissions until someone asks about it.
Also, try starting small, I guess. Like, tell shorter anecdotes, and get to bigger ones. Also, I don't believe it's disingenuous to mentally rehearse a short story you might tell beforehand. I used to believe this, because good storytellers I know like my uncle always seem to tell stories off the cuff. Having a good memory, and not using too much jargon, helps. However, I wouldn't be surprised if good storytellers think back on their life experiences and think to themselves 'my encounter today would make a great story'.
Here are some suggestions for generating environments limiting the social costs of telling lame stories.
Another friend of mine thought I was the one asking for how to to limit the social cost of telling lame stories, so he suggested I tell him stories of mine I haven't told him before, and he won't mind if they're
I am not skilled at storytelling in casual conversation (telling personal anecdotes). How can I improve this? In particular, what is a good environment to practice while limiting the social cost of telling lame stories?
Learn storyteller, read a writing book. A good story has to have setting, a character, situations that are ironic, funny or heartfelt, and then a transformation. Sometimes it can be short and other times it can be longer and more like an epic. If you have all the elements, then learn how to keep an audience's attention with good language.
3katydee
I'm considered pretty good in this respect. I think the #1 thing that helps is just paying attention to things a lot and having a high degree of situational awareness, which causes you to observe more interesting things and thus have more good stories to share. Reading quickly also helps.
When it comes to actually telling the stories, the most important thing is probably to pay attention to people's faces and see what sorts of reactions they're having. If people seem bored, pick up the pace (or simply withdraw). If they seem overexcited, calm it down.
One good environment to practice the skill of telling stories is tabletop role-playing games, especially as the DM/storyteller/whatever. In general, I think standards in this field are usually fairly low and you get a good amount of time to practice telling (very unusual) stories in any given session.
3Evan_Gaensbauer
Although I consider myself average in good storytelling abilities, I'd like to be better. Additionally, it's always been curious to me how one can improve this skill, rather than just leaving one's talent in it to the whims of social fortune, or whatever. As such, I've outsourced this question to my social media networks. If I haven't returned with some sort of response within a few days, feel free to remind me in a few days with either a reply to this comment, or a private message.
Ping :)