Well, it's not like I'm a professional. I won't provide you with a detailed list of all the tricks and tools of the trade that you'll need. If you want to be a writer, you'll already know that you need to learn a little about marketing, tune up your grammar, and make a lot of friends who share the interest and who will help you spread it to the masses.
But I'm not talking about what you'll need to be a successful writer. Plenty of published writers have pumped out content that people like me regularly yawn at. It might be due to my attention span, or perhaps the childish impatience I have... but I digress.
I put "storyteller" in the title because I'm not talking about finding success in writing. I'm talking about the key ingredient(s) in storytelling. Yes, grammar and editing and marketing all matter a lot...
But you can't be a storyteller if you don't have any stories to tell.
If you do a lot of reading, you probably shake your head at all the stale characters you come across, whether it's in published works, fanfiction, or some hybrid in between. We often find beautiful characters, handsome characters, your stereotypical douchebag/hero characters or empty vessel characters trapped in a love triangle. Do you ever wonder why these stories suck so much?
The main characters lack depth.
I went through the teen phase of delving into trendy stories and writing basic, dumb plots based on overpowered badasses. Everyone is guilty of that... if they're a storyteller.
But if you want to write real characters, characters that the reader will actually care about and relate to, you have to draw that humanity from your own life, not a vampire movie or a slash fiction.
You have to know pain, real pain, and happiness, and guilt, and strength, and you have to reach your breaking point. You have to writhe in your own life, grab onto your humility, and channel that beautiful suffering when you write for your characters.
You have to know what it's like to be lied to, walked on, to lose what you have and to struggle to get it back. You have to experience something, anything, that you can grow from.
What do you need to be a good storyteller?
Depth.