Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.
All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don’t GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game
I start,
My most “classic tip” is never lock a clue behind a roll if they need to find the love letter hidden under the bed to find-out about the affair explaining the murder, just make sure they find-it (the failed roll can still mean they are caught searching the room)
Another of my classic one is to ask players about their character friend and foes, it helps populating a setting, you have a black smith the warrior met while serving in the army or the young ambitious political advisor the bard went in a tavern fight with and gives pretty great plot hooks So your little sister is in the school witchcraft club, and looks like they summoned something too big
For one shot, I recently experimented a lot with LARP-style black boxes in order to play a scene which occurred before the game start, as it helps giving a clear view about everyone character and their ties while keeping these scenes shorts. It’s IMO a good compromise between loosing time in playing mundane life to get a feel on the character, and jumping to the action with unclear character ties/roles or expectation about normality