Storytelling Techniques You've Probably Never Heard Of

Master them all!

Jan 27, 2025

You already know the basics of storytelling: show, don’t tell; develop compelling characters; make sure your plot has a beginning, middle, and end, and the rest.

You’ve heard them all before a thousand times.

But storytelling is an art, and like any art, it’s full of hidden gems that not many people know or talk about.

In this post, I’m going to show you some of them.

These techniques, when properly applied, will take your storytelling to a whole new level, especially if you write fiction.

I’ve used some of them in my stories, and I just learnt new ones that I’ll definitely be using soon.

Let’s dive in!

Chekhov’s Gun… But Reverse It

You’ve probably heard of Chekhov’s Gun: “If there’s a gun on the wall in Act 1, it should go off by Act 3.”

This basically means that every element you introduce in your story should be important later on.

But what if you reversed it?

What if the gun goes off first?

Instead of foreshadowing events, start with the result and then work your plot backward to show how and why it happened.

This technique works beautifully in thrillers and mysteries.

It keeps your readers hooked because they’re dying to know: What caused this?

This is one of my favourite forms of storytelling.

I used it in Romantic Homicide, and I really love how it turned out.

The Rashomon Effect

Named after Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon, this technique involves you telling the same events of a story from multiple perspectives, with each version differing from the other.

Each character has their own biases, motivations, and incomplete knowledge of a story, and this shapes their version of events.

Your reader is left to decide what’s true and what’s not.

This technique can add a lot of depth to your narrative and create many possible layers of exploration in your plot.

If you like messing with your readers and making them question their sanity, like I do, then you’ll enjoy using it.

Example: A heist story where every thief recounts how the job went wrong, but their stories contradict each other. Who’s lying? Who’s telling the truth?

The Unreliable Narrator

This is a storytelling technique I love to both read and write.

Note - The narrator is said to be “unreliable,” not “lying.”

So, the narrator is completely unaware of the fact that their perception of events is not true.

Instead of a character who’s intentionally deceitful, you can create one who’s blind to their biases, flaws, or mistakes.

They believe what they’re saying, but as the story progresses, the reader slowly starts to realise that things are not adding up.

This adds an interesting dose of complexity to your story and just keeps your audience bewildered and wondering, “Huh?”.

Think of Life of Pi. Was the tiger real, or was it all in Pi’s mind?

I used this technique in How I Killed Your Father, and well… you already know.

Negative Space Storytelling

Now, this is a technique I will definitely be using sometime soon.

It’s similar to the one above, except for this one, you focus on what isn’t said in the story.

Artists use negative space, the blank areas around a subject, to make the subject stand out in their painting.

To apply this in storytelling, you’ll have to leave gaps in the narrative and let your readers fill in the blanks.

Sometimes, what you don’t reveal is more powerful than what you do.

The Beach & a Beautiful Stranger is one story that reflects a lite version of this technique being applied.

The Plotless Story

Who says every story must have a traditional plot?

Many memorable works focus more on mood, atmosphere, and character exploration rather than a defined beginning, middle, and end.

Example: My Neighbour Totoro doesn’t have a villain or high stakes. It’s simply about two girls adapting to their new life in the countryside. And yet, it’s captivating.

You can use technique to break free from rigid plot structures and focus on the experience you want your readers to have, which is very freeing, in my opinion.

The “Time Loop” Perspective

Another of my all-time favourite storytelling techniques.

When I think of stories with messed up timelines, I think of Christopher Nolan, and then I think of Tenet.

I still don’t understand that movie, but it works on the principle of:

Instead of a straightforward timeline, why don’t we play around with it a bit?

You can start your story at the end, jump to the beginning, and then work your way through the events in a non-linear fashion.

Kaleidoscope is a TV show that applies this technique perfectly.

It has 8 episodes split into particular dates (6 weeks before, 2 weeks after, etc…), and you can watch them in whatever order you want.

It’s based on a bank robbery too, so it’s a really good series.

The day I get the right idea, I’ll write a story using this non-linear method.

The truth is that it’s much easier to “show” stories like this on the big screen than to “write” them on paper.

But we’ll see.

The Metafictional Twist

What if your characters knew they were in a story?

You’ve probably seen Deadpool.

The movie completely breaks the fourth wall, and it’s a very interesting way to tell a story.

It adds surrealism to it.

Example: What if a character starts to realise their life is being controlled by someone else (you, the writer), and they fight back?

Epistolary Fragments

Instead of telling your story traditionally, you piece it together through letters, diary entries, news clippings, or even text messages.

This fragmented style gives readers a puzzle to solve and makes the narrative feel more personal and immersive.

In Letters From The Frontline, two lovers are separated when the man goes off to fight in World War II and the story is based on the letters they use to communicate with one another.

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