Some years ago, writes Margot Leitman in her new book, Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You’ll Ever Need , when she was an aspiring actress in New York, she was preparing to rush to an audition when she burned her neck with a curling iron. “It looked like a giant hickey,” she writes. “There was no makeup that could cover it up; I had to go with it.” She entered the audition room and explained away the burn–not a hickey, she said; her dating history had been terrible lately. The casting director asked her to explain, and she responded with a story about a disastrous recent date where the guy actually balanced his checkbook at the table.

Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You’ll Ever Need

She had the casting director laughing before she even read for the part. And a few days later, she got the call saying she got it.

It was a moment that crystallized for Leitman the power that stories can have. Soon, she began to shift her performing energies towards live storytelling. She established long-running storytelling shows and classes at Upright Citizens Brigade in both New York and Los Angeles, including a sex-themed show called “Stripped Stories,” and she’s won storytelling competitions several times at The Moth. She gives workshops at places like Universal McCann and Facebook, companies that reckon good storytelling is good communication, and good communication is business. She has taught, by her own count, thousands of students to date.

And now, with Long Story Short hitting shelves and screens everywhere, Leitman shares with Fast Company a few key lessons on storytelling from her book.

“In everything from politics to acting,” says Leitman, “the way to get ahead is often to get people to root for you.” When starting a story, first quickly introduce yourself as a clear character: “I’m the type of guy/girl who . . . ” The next step will run against the grain of what you’ve been taught about how to present yourself. In interviews and resumes, you’re supposed to talk yourself up. But in storytelling, people want to root for an underdog. Storytelling is not pitching. “When people pitch themselves, I’m put off by that.” Puffing yourself up makes people want to take you down a notch. When Bill Clinton insisted he “didn’t inhale,” no one could let it go, reminds Leitman. But when Obama readily admitted to smoking in his youth, people commended his honesty and moved on.

You should have a polished story or two in your repertoire. You never know when it’ll come in handy, says Leitman, pointing to a moment in Steve Jobs’s original iPhone keynote when the slide deck failed, and he sprung gracefully into a story he had at the ready. “I think it was a story he told socially a million times,” says Leitman. “Probably it worked socially, so he decided to tell it in front of the crowd. To me, it’s the most memorable part of that speech. Rather than talking about the components of the iPhone, he’s taking a moment that makes him human.”

Margot Leitman

“It’s really not what transpired that makes a good story,” says Leitman, upending conventional wisdom. “It’s about how you felt about what transpired.” The “plot” of your story is almost irrelevant when it comes to making a connection with your audience. “It’s not a matter of, ‘We won the game.’ It’s, ‘How did you feel when you won? What did you believe was impossible that now suddenly you can do?’” A corollary of this: Stories can be about very small stuff, so long as the emotions involved are big. Leitman tells a story about wandering into a Whole Foods in the midst of a personal medical nightmare. The cashier invited her to donate to the Haiti earthquake relief, and an emotional Leitman signed over $50. “The cashier said, ‘Wow, you’re a really nice person.’ I started crying, ‘I am! I am! a good person!’” Though small in scale, the story always gets a laugh.