STAR answers stopped sounding robotic once I stopped treating it like a template to fill in

Used to write out Situation, Task, Action, Result as literal labeled sections and just read from memory, came across stiff every time, even after dozens of practice runs. A career coach pointed out I was optimizing for hitting the format instead of telling a story someone would actually want to listen to. Started just talking through what happened like I was telling a friend, the STAR pieces were still all there, just not announced. Interviewers started actually asking follow-up questions instead of nodding and moving to the next one, which apparently means it landed.