Listen to lots of storytellers. It's like singers only worse- some get so carried away with their own voices that they forget that the audience are listening for pleasure. There's little worse than a story teling festival where everyone wants to tell, and no one wants to hear.

Choose stories that aren't just formulas. Boy meets girl, nasty (usually magic) things happen, all comes out well in the end. Good person does altruistic things to someone, turns out to be fairy/ saint/ magician, rewards richly, bad person hears, rushes out, meets f/s/m, isn't altruistic, gets punished. listen to enough storytellers to know the list. If you feel impelled to do the standards, the Fields of Athenrys of storytelling, remember the joke about the jokes-told-by-numbers, and save everyone's time.