Like @Kayak8, my family would tell stories. My sister and my favorites were always about the spunky pets my parents had before we came along; told well they’ll get anyone laughing. But my family has many. We’ll hear about old-new ones or experience new-new ones, and when people come over, out they all pour, in four voices.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had one place where I was told how to tell a story, and I’m not always sure if I do “know how”.
I do know there’s a rhythm, even if I’m not always on it. Good story telling, the speaker isn’t afraid to stall, change pace, go off on tangents, but they never take it too far; they somehow know exactly when to pull off of main story, for filler or for comedy or for a building of anticipation, and then plunge back. The story grows in your mind as they tell it, and soon you’ve got a little world of their story that you’re in, and can return to whenever.
I read a book, Walking on Water by Derrick Jensen, and in it, while he talks about a lot, one of the points was that everyone is a natural story teller, should they let themselves be. That we all have that natural ability, that natural timing, instinctually. And, as with everything, it’d be a unique style all our own, naturally.—The most fun part is he talks about storytelling by telling a series of stories.
He talks about teaching two different classes: one at a college, and one in a prison. How none of the people were any less of a storyteller, and many of the people who had never been “taught” to write before brought their class to tears with their words. They discovered how to, with a little guidance to that place inside themselves.