Detailed, clear descriptions help listeners understand and engage with the message.
Be exceedingly minute in the details of what you describe. Take very short steps, and take each one very distinctly. If, for instance, you are narrating to a man, you may simply say, if such an incident occur in the course of the narrative, that your hero "went down to the shore, and got into a boat and pushed off." Your hearer has probably got into a boat often enough to understand it. But, if you are talking to a child, he will be more interested if you say, "He went down to the shore, and found a boat there. One end of the boat, the front part, which they call the bows, was up against the shore, a little in the sand: the other end was out on the water, and moved up and down gently with the waves. There were seats across the boat, and two oars lying upon the seats. The man stepped upon the bows of the boat: it was fast in the sand, so that it did not sink under him. Then he took up one of the oars, and began to push against the shore to push himself off. But, as he was standing upon the bows, his weight pressed the bows down hard upon the sand, and so he could not push the boat off. Then he went to the other end of the boat, stepping over the seats. The other end of the boat is the stern. The stern sank a little; and the boat rocked from one side to the other, and made the oar which was on the seats rattle. There was nothing but water under the stern of the boat, and that was what made it unsteady. The man stepped carefully; and, when he was fairly in the stern, he reached his oar out again, and now he could push it off. The bows rubbed slowly back off the sand, and, in a minute, the whole boat was floating in the water." Abbott.
