Last updated April 10, 2022

Status:: #literature/books/finished Author:: Medium:: { Books MOC Tags:: Links: { Storyworthy Application

{ Storyworthy

Foreword

Importance of storytelling

If I can recommend storytelling to you for any reason at all, it would be that storytelling helps you realize that the biggest, scariest, most painful or regretful things in your head get small and surmountable when you share them with two, or three, or twenty, or three thousand people.

• A coping mechanism

The other reason I can recommend storytelling, and learning about it with the book you’re holding, is that we’re all disappearing — you, me, everyone we know and love. A little heavy for a foreword maybe, but when you tell stories, you do yourself a kind favor by taking a moment to write your name in the wet cement of life before you head to whatever is next … It’s a little like leaving a note in the logbook on the trail that others will be hiking after you, a note that might give the next hiker a clue

• Subjective immortality

just a crowd of people who want to hear what you have to say and in some cases might be stepping up to the mic right after you to share something about themselves.

• Influential

Preface

• Vulnerability, humour, honesty

Tells his story about telling a story at the moth for the first time

• He’s merely recalling his experiences, how he felt during the time
  • Definitely showing vulnerability and honesty
  • The man won his first mothslam despite not being a practicing storyteller???

Part 1 - Finding your story

1 - Promise

I teach storytelling to people who want to improve their dating skills. I teach people who want to be more interesting at the dinner table. I teach grandfathers who want their grandchildren to finally listen to them. I teach students who want to tell better stories on their college applications. I teach job applicants who are looking to improve their interview skills. I teach people who want to learn more about themselves.

• Storytelling can be used in a plethora of activities, and is a generally nice skill to have
• Claims that following his practices will help create better stories

2 - What is a story

When I’m asked a question, I tell a story, so I told some stories that night.

• Matt focuses on personal stories, not fictional ones
  • More powerful and influential
  • Express our hardest, best, authentic truths

Requirements for a personal story

• No one cares about drinking or vacation stories

Change

• Must reflect change over time
  • Does not need to be self-improvement, just a story

Your own story

• But feel free to tell your side of other people’s stories, as long as you are the protagonist in these tales.
• If you don’t have a significant enough role in it, then don’t tell it

Dinner Test

• Is the story something you would tell a friend over dinner?
  • Ideal

Avoid:

• Extreme hand gestures
• Extreme literary prowess
• Dialogue (“Mom, I told you not to look under my bed!”)
• People don’t memorize a story word for word, they remember certain parts (start, middle, end) to have a plan
  • Good to keep things unprepared and unpracticed
  • Audiences want to be told a story, not performed one
• Sounding over-the-top, inauthentic

3 - Homework for life

• Keep track of your stories
• Stories can be extreme, but more mundane ones with normal environments are more influential for the average audience
  • ex) His story about unspoken childhood hunger, overpacking daughter
    • people know hunger, people know about scarcity
    • people know about valuing children more than yourself
• Helps us realize how eventful our lives truly are, downplaying any insecurities or the questioning of our bland existence

I decided that at the end of every day, I’d reflect upon my day and ask myself one simple question: If I had to tell a story from today — a five-minute story onstage about something that took place over the course of this day — what would it be? As benign and boring and inconsequential as it might seem, what was the most storyworthy moment from my day?

• Helps somewhat with therapy
• Don’t write every story down from above, just write a sentence or two that captured the moment/essence that could be resalvaged for future use
• Feel free to recall memories too
• Author uses excel lmao
  • Date and story
  • ex) 11/5/15 - Walked Kaleigh. 2:00 AM. Underwear. Birds. Rain. Beauty.
    • I’m 18 years old, and I’m having sex with J. on the 18th green of a golf course in Walpole. Sprinklers kick on at midnight. SO MUCH WATER. SO MUCH LAUGHTER. Never laughed while naked with a girl so much.
    • Dog humped my leg at Petco. Woman is less than apologetic. I guess rightfully so. Meaningless apologies.
• Reflecting on our days like this helps to identify the abundance of stories in our lives
  • When we fully immerse ourselves in a moment, we can recall previous experiences with similar conditions

    As you start to see importance and meaning in each day, you suddenly understand your importance to this world. You start to see how the meaningful moments that we experience every day contribute to the lives of others and to the world. You start to sense the critical nature of your very existence. There are no more throwaway days. Every day can change the world in some small way. In fact, every day has been changing the world for as long as you’ve been alive. You just haven’t noticed yet.

What would have been just annoying and forgettable five years ago is now something that I’ve captured and will have for the rest of my life. Just from reflecting, absorbing, and recording that moment, it will never be lost to me. I don’t know what else happened on that day, but when I see those words: Walked Kaleigh. 2:00 AM. Underwear. Birds. Rain. Beauty. I am right back on that corner with the birds and the rain and my best friend. And when I’m lying on my deathbed centuries from now, I’ll be able to look back on that spreadsheet, see that handful of words, and return to that time and place as if I’m a time traveler. At that point, my best friend will have been dead and buried for years, but in my mind’s eye, I will see her as clear as day.

Homework for life helps slow down life, we don’t lose a day

• When we don’t write down our story of the day, it feels like we forgot a day in our life
• Unfortunately, it requires commitment that we prefer to waste, and faith that we’ll see the results later on
  • You only get to see the meaning of stories as you yourself and the stories age
• Eventually, we can be self-aware and realize our stories as they develop

4 - Dreaming at the end of your pen

Crash and burn

• Stream of consciousness writing
  • Writing whatever comes to mind, unfiltered
  • Used to resurrect old memories and generate new ideas

Rules:

1. Don’t get attached to an idea, accept other ones that may pop up
   • It’s what causes new links and new ideas
2. No judgement
   • The next sentence is often as much of a surprise to the writer as it is to the reader.
3. Continue
   • Pen leads to more creativity
   • colors, numbers, some pattern to generate leads

9 - Five ways to keep story compelling

Stakes are used to add flair to a story, and make people interested in it initially

Question your stakes: •Would the audience want to hear my next sentence? •If I stopped speaking right now, would anyone care? •Am I more compelling than video games and pizza and sex at this moment?

Elephant

• Large and obvious direction of story
  • Tells audience what to expect, a reason for listening
  • Appear ASAP, first 30 seconds
  • Raise questions in the audience’s mind
• Consider switching the emotion of the elephant throughout the story
• ex) Charity thief, he was broke and no gas

Backpacks

• Increase audience’s anticipation about an upcoming event

Two purposes:

• Make audience wonder what will happen next
• Experience same emotion as the storyteller in the moment about to be described
• ex) Explaining the details and effort of a plan make the readers emotionally invested
  • Only useful if end result is failure, as people want failure before success
• ex) Charity thief, explaining his plan for asking money

Breadcrumbs

• Hints as to what is going to happen next, more unexpected the better
• ex) Charity thief, noticing he has mcdonalds uniform

Hourglasses

• Letting an event slow down or pause to build suspense
  • Further elaborate on details
• ex) Knocking on door and describing setting prior to charity asking

Crystal Ball

• Provide fake predictions to make the reader question if it will be true
• ex) Charity thief, calling police

10 - Five Permissible Lies of Storytelling

Three caveats:

• Only lie for audience

Omission

• If things aren’t important in a story, omit them
  • People, events, etc, if they aren’t relevant to the main message

Compression

• It’s okay to shrink timeframs and say multi-day events happened on one

Assumption

• For when you forget details, at least be specific

Progreession

• Change the order of events

Conflation

• Push all emotional change into a tighter timeframe
  • Helps transform a moment into the moment

11 - Cinema of the Mind

Rather than jump around, stories should be continuous and allow the audience to visualize the scenes in their imagination like a cinema

A great storyteller creates a movie in the mind of the audience. Listeners should be able to see the story in their mind’s eye at all times. At no point should the story become visually obscured or impossible to see. As the title of this chapter suggests, effective storytelling is cinema of the mind.

• Every moment is a scene, every seen has a setting
• Always give a setting/physical location, then fill in the details
  • If wanting to info dump, depict an introspective scenario
    • Hopeless in a car, lying in bed
• Keep the story continuous
  • Don’t randomly go on lectures to inform on what something is
    • Instead, pull in previous experiences to help teach it

12 - But and Therefore

• Using and to combine sentences and parts of a story make it boring
  • Ideal is but and therefore
  • Why?
    • And is a linear path/treadmill, but/therefore change directions
    • Help oppose or compile sentences

I loved Heather since sixth grade, but as much as I loved her, she was never mine. I loved Heather since sixth grade. She was never my girlfriend.

• Use it as prompts for when telling a story

• Also consider using negatives, saying not “antonym” instead of the word

  • Hidden but
  • ex) “Heather is my ex-girlfriend” is not as good as “Heather is no longer my girlfriend.”

14 - “This is Going to Suck”

• Despite literally dying and coming back to life, the most resonating thing from Matt’s car crash story is the emergency room family realization
  • People don’t care about you, they care about how stories relate to them
  • Find the little, human moments in such stories, and use the big event as a hook
• The longer we speak, the more we have to try to gain retention, so just keep things short

15 - There is only one way to make someone cry

Surprise in a story makes someone cry

• Contrast, adding extra details
• ex) This is Going to Suck, christmas presents to car crash

Surprise Killers

• Putting thesis statement prior to surprise

Hide foreshadowing information in a story related to the 5 second moment

• ex) This is Going to Suck, hides fact that they called McD
• Hide it amongst mundane things, thorugh comedy

16 - Simple, Effective Ways to be Effective in Storytelling

• Good to let audience laugh 30 seconds into story, provides trust
• Make them laugh before crying
• Reiterate a comedic point

Methods

Setup and punchline

• Include a bunch of funny things, and save the best/most unexpected for last
• Specificity is funny through emphasizing

Combining opposite things

• ex) Grandma and sadist

17 - Finding Frayed Ending of a Story

• Share our stories to find meaning in them
• Can’t have a two-meaning story, as the beginning should be the opposite
• Storytellers tell stories to find meaning in their lives

3 Telling Story

18 - Present Tense

• Present tense helps the reader imagine they are there in the moment
  • Creates immediacy
  • Keep one situation as present, use past tense for other events
  • Helps the storyteller relive the story in their mind
  • Present tense for intimacy, past tense for distance and reflection

19 How to tell a hero story

• Downplay yourself and accomplishments
  • Show imperfections in your character
  • Show the failed opportunities
  • Help provide significance, show that the win meant something for you

20 Storytelling is time travel

My goal as a storyteller is to make my audience forget that the present moment exists. I want them to forget that I exist. I want their mind’s eye to be filled with images of the movie I am creating in their brains. I want this movie to transport them back to the year and spot that my story takes place.

Continuing the immersive time of storytelling

• Don’t ask rhetorical questions
• Don’t acknowledge audience existence
• No props
• Keep things related to the time period
  • ex) No internet in dinosaur age
• Don’t say story
• Downplay physical presence, dress casually
• Storytelling should be like an audiobook

21 Words to say and avoid

• Profanity
  • Make your content suitable for everyone
  • Swearing is lazy
• Vulgarity
  • Lightly downplay with understatements and euphemisms
• Always use different names for people, unless you want to expose
• Don’t use celebrities/pop culture as comparisons
  • Alienates, ruins immersion, lazy
• Accents
  • Only parental ones are allowed

22 Time to perform

• If you’re not nervous, you don’t care enough
• Nervousness signals authenticity and vulnerability for the audience to admire

Don’t memorize lines, instead, remember

• First few sentences to start strong
• Scenes of story
  • Remember physical locations
  • 7 scenes max for easy remembering
    • Remember through size of a circle, and color (tone)
• Last few sentences

Eye contact

• Find one person in the left, middle, and right, that you trust and use them as guideposts

Control emotions

• To not get too invested, view the story from a higher perspective

Microphone usage

• Still talk aloud
• Adjust properly
• Always use microphone

23 Superhero

• Speaking in a group setting makes you obligated to be entertaining

  Not only do you have an obligation to be entertaining, you have an opportunity to be entertaining. You have the chance to set yourself apart from the ever-present drone of the masses. You have the opportunity to make people smile. Laugh. Engage. Learn. Feel better about the time spent. I like to think about storytelling in terms of superheroes, because I believe that a person who can speak in an entertaining and engaging way to a group of people possesses a superpower that is sorely lacking in the world today. As people’s gazes continue to fall to their screens and communication is truncated into bite-size text messages, the human beings who can still hold the attention of an audience and teach and speak in an entertaining way possess enormous power.

• Large audiences are large time investments, use them wisely
  • Don’t waste time on redundant things like slides, information
    • Be engaging and perform

First date, share information in an entertaining fashion

This is who I am. This is what I believe. This is what I want. This is what I dream. How about you?

A first date is an interview of sorts. If you can make the person laugh, share a little vulnerability, and tell a good story in the process, your chances for second and third dates increase exponentially.

• Important lesson for teachers
  • Always have a meaningful story hook
    • Provides new context and interest for those who may need the extra stimulus
• When you share such good stories, you provide a safety zone for others who need it

Closing

These women didn’t tell me about their miscarriages because of who I am. They told me about their miscarriages because I told them a story. A story filled with heart and humor. A story that expressed authenticity, vulnerability, and truth. This should be our goal.

The world is filled with uninteresting people. I meet them every day. I suspect that in most cases, there is an interesting person lurking beneath their unfortunately uninteresting veneer.

These are people who answer, “How was your day?” with an itinerary of the day instead of sharing a meaningful moment. They are folks who tell us about their vacations by offering an adjective-laden time line of the week. They are the people who make meetings feel endless, dinners feel monotonous, and conferences feel disappointing.

These are the people who are afraid to talk about embarrassing moments or epic failures. They lack authenticity. Listen poorly. Fear vulnerability. Lack the skills and strategy to craft and tell a good story. They are not the superheroes of our world.

Storytellers have a superpower. They can make people feel good and whole and right. They can inspire and inform. They can make people see the world in a new way. They can make people feel better about themselves.

I may not be able to stop a bullet, but I make a woman feel better about a tragic loss. I can convince a reluctant teen to learn. I can make an audience laugh and cry in the span of a single story. I can make my children beg for more. I can make an eight-hour training session feel like two hours. I can convince a woman of absolute grace and beauty to marry me.

Me.

Fuck Superman. I’ll take storytelling any day.

I offer this superpower to you. This book is the instruction manual. All you need now is to practice. Begin collecting stories and telling stories.

Become the storyteller I know you can be.

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Created:: 2022-01-22