In this book summary of Storyworthy – Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling, you’ll learn how to craft a compelling story.
“All great Stories — regardless of length or depth or tone — tell the story of a five-second moment in a person’s life.” – Matthew Dicks
Content Summary
Start with action
Misdirection
Pause before the big reveal
Great stories contain an element of change and cast the storyteller as the protagonist.
Tell your story without any pre-prepared theatrical or poetic flourishes.
At its heart, every good story is about a five-second moment.
Find the beginning of your story by examining how it ends.
There are some crucial do’s and don’ts for immersing your audience in a story.
Help your storytelling career by avoiding swearing and vulgarity.
Summary
About the author
Genres
Table of Contents
Overview
Review/Endorsements/Praise/Award
Video and Podcast
Read an Excerpt/PDF Preview
Storyworthy (2018) explains how to craft a story for maximum impact. From intriguing beginnings to satisfying endings and everything in between, these blinks provide simple and effective tips and techniques for engaging your audience and bringing entertainment, authenticity and immediacy to your storytelling.
Everyone loves a good story. Whether we’re sitting around a campfire or a boardroom table, a great story, well-told, can stick in our minds forever. But what are the secrets to telling an engaging, memorable narrative? Although it might seem otherwise, the truth is that every single one of us has the potential to spin captivating narratives from our life experiences. We just need the right tools and techniques to tell them.
Join us as we go on a journey with bestselling novelist Matthew Dicks to learn how you can mesmerize your audience simply by telling them about key moments in your career, upbringing or everyday life. We’ll discover the ingredients that create the storytelling recipe for success and take a look at the simple do’s and don’ts that can make or break your audience’s interest. You’ll learn the nuts and bolts of storytelling, how to begin and end your story, as well as what to include and what to leave out if you’re going to achieve maximum audience impact.
In this summary of Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks, Read on to discover
- why every good story revolves around a five-second moment;
- which simple test every story needs to pass; and
- how to begin your story the right way, every time.
“There are many secrets to storytelling, but there is one fundamental truth above all others that must be understood before a storyteller can ever be successful: All great stories tell the story of a five-second moment in a person’s life.” – Matthew Dicks
The five-second moment Dicks is referring to is the moment you realized your life would never be the same.
- The moment you realized you were capable of more than you thought at mile 25 of a marathon or after acing a test.
- The moment you knew your business idea was going to succeed or the moment you realized you wanted to change careers.
The key to making any five-second moment of realization or transformation seem significant is to start a story in stark contrast to the five- second moment. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones starts the film as a non-believer who doubts the arc of the covenant has any religious power but ends the film with enough faith to close his eyes as the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant and have their faces melted off their skulls.
Dicks says, “You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new…”
- “I was once this, but now I am this.”
- “I once thought this, but now I think this.”
- “I once felt this, but now I feel this.”
After you have identified the five-second moment you want to share, you have the end of your story. Find the opposite of that, and you have the start of your story. Then, tell the events that took you from who you were to who you are by using three compelling storytelling techniques: start with action, misdirect, and pause before the big reveal.
Start with action
Director Christopher Nolan started The Dark Knight in the middle of an intense bank robbery. George Lucas started Star Wars: A New Hope with two starships racing through space. These movies didn’t waste time getting the audience involved in the action and wondering what was going to happen next – do the same with your stories.
Start your stories with phrases like, “Yesterday I was running from…” or “Last week I was in the middle of my work meeting when…”
If I were to tell a story about a kayak trip gone wrong, I would start the story halfway down the river just before realizing that I was heading towards a waterfall.
Misdirection
- Share your plan and then derail it. At the start of the first Ocean’s Eleven movie, the filmmakers detailed Danny Ocean’s plan to rob a Las Vegas casino to make the audience feel like they were part of the heist. When nothing went according to plan, the audience felt the same suspense and frustration as the characters in the film.
- State an assumption and then falsify it. For example, you could say, “Now that I’ve reached my goal, I could finally relax…” and then immediately introduce a stress-inducing event.
- Hint at an upcoming event and then reveal something unexpected. In one of Matthew Dicks’ stories, he says, “I see my crumpled McDonald’s uniform on the backseat, and I suddenly have an idea…” The audience needs to guess what he’ll do next, and they probably won’t guess that he’s going to put on that uniform, knock on a stranger’s door, and pretend to collect money for Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities.
Every time your audience thinks one thing and you deliver something completely different, you pique their interest for a minute – do this over and over and you will have an audience hanging on your every word.
Pause before the big reveal
Once you’ve worked your way to the end of your story, you may be tempted to quickly reveal the big moment because you’re excited to tell your audience about your realization but resist that temptation. Instead, delay, delay, delay. Make it seem like the timeline in your story has stopped and explain the situation seconds before the big moment in vivid detail. In Dicks McDonald’s Charity Thief story, he spends time explaining the scene just before knocking on a door to ask for money – “I’m wearing my McDonald’s manager uniform. Blue shirt, blue pants, blue tie…” Dicks is building up suspense by adding unnecessary detail and repeating words.
When you finally reveal the big moment and that moment is deeply personal and vulnerable, yet relatable, your story will be memorable, and it will establish a strong connection between you and the people you’re sharing your story with.
Great stories contain an element of change and cast the storyteller as the protagonist.
The author teaches people from all walks of life how to tell stories about themselves and their experiences. From sales executives hoping to entrance potential clients to grandfathers wanting to engage with their grandchildren, the author believes storytelling helps everyone be a better communicator.
Importantly, there are some non-negotiable rules to follow if you want to be an engaging storyteller.
Firstly, your story shouldn’t just consist of a succession of extraordinary events – it should reflect some type of change happening to someone or something over a period of time.
Don’t worry, though, because this change may be very small, and it also doesn’t need to reflect personal improvement. But some sort of change must occur in your story. Just consider the worst movies you’ve ever seen – even these reflect certain character changes during the action.
Significantly, stories that fail to involve change over the narrative are simply anecdotes and include vacation-related stories, drinking stories and various other one-note romps. Anecdotes merely recount harrowing, heartfelt or funny moments that may have been extraordinary but, nonetheless, do not leave a permanent mark on who we are. Unfortunately, without an aspect of change, you can’t expect your listeners to feel any sort of deeper connection with you after you’ve finished, or to change their opinions about something important on the basis of what you’ve told them.
You should also ensure that the stories you tell cast you as the protagonist. Your audience wants to hear about something that happened to you, rather than to your best friend.
Why?
Importantly, there is something intrinsically vulnerable, gritty and immediate about hearing the story of the person standing right in front of you. Telling your story requires a lot more courage than telling someone else’s. It also involves hard truths and authenticity – all things that your audience will appreciate.
Crucially, this is not to say that you can’t tell another person’s story; you just need to tell it from your perspective. For instance, through his work with an organization called Voices of Hope, the author taught Holocaust survivors’ children how to tell the stories of their parents. Importantly, they learned how to structure their stories so that the narrative was grounded in their lives while also dipping into the past to include their parents’ experiences. Thus, their stories became engaging – instead of sounding only like historical lessons from the past, they revolved around how their parents’ experiences have altered their own lives as well.
Tell your story without any pre-prepared theatrical or poetic flourishes.
Good stories must pass what author Dicks calls “the dinner test.” To see if your story measures up, ask yourself: “Is this the kind of story I would recount to a friend over dinner?” If it isn’t, then it probably isn’t a very good story.
When you’re planning how to tell a story, remember that the way you “perform” it in front of a wider audience – whether to work colleagues or at church – shouldn’t differ from the way you would tell it to a friend.
Just consider the way some storytellers, when in front of an audience, build in strange gestures to emphasize their narrative, like making fluttering hand movements to mime how an idea alighted on them. Ask yourself, would you make these odd gestures at the dinner table? Probably not. Remember, you’re not putting on a one-person theater show, you’re simply telling your story.
In addition to over-the-top hand gestures, there are a lot of needless poetical flourishes with which people adorn their stories when they find themselves on a stage – or when they try to render their stories in writing. Once again, ask yourself, would you have dinner with someone who told you that “the red roses were really ravishing in their glimmering green garden”? Well, you might, but probably only once, right? So remember, you’re not writing poetry here, you’re storytelling.
The same goes for starting your story with dialogue, particularly dialogue that is unnecessary. Take a moment to imagine starting a dinner-party story by saying “Dad, don’t go into my room!” or with a random noise like “Kapow!” It would sound deeply odd, and you likely wouldn’t be invited for dinner again. And yet, on the stage and on the page, many storytellers think it’s appropriate to kick off their narrative in this wacky, confusing way. So instead, before launching into dialogue, first introduce your story and its characters.
Importantly, most of these issues arise because storytellers make one crucial mistake. They think their audience wants them to perform their story rather than just tell it. This could not be further from the truth. Though your audience will likely know that some planning has gone into your story, they’ll want to feel that your story is off-the-cuff and unpractised. In other words, they want to feel that you’re speaking from the heart. Unfortunately, if you insert any of these ready-made theatrical or poetical flourishes, this illusion will be shattered; and the connection between you and your audience will be lost.
At its heart, every good story is about a five-second moment.
When it comes to storytelling, there is one surprising, yet essential truth you need to know. What is this great secret? It’s that every good story, at its heart, is about a five-second moment in someone’s life. Furthermore, the whole point of your story is to illuminate this instant with as much clarity as possible.
What sort of five-second moment are we talking about?
Specifically, we’re referring to those moments in life in which something changes permanently. Perhaps you meet the love of your life – or you stop loving them. Perhaps you have a dramatic change of opinion on something important, or you forgive someone, or you fall into despair. It’s moments like these – typically sudden, powerful and small – that form the foundation of exceptional stories.
Not convinced? Just consider the following true story from the author’s life, which has made many audiences cry.
As a teenager, Dicks was involved in a terrible car crash in which his upper body was thrown through the windshield, and his legs were smashed into the dashboard. The crash was so bad that, as he was dragged from the vehicle, he technically died and had to be resuscitated by paramedics on the side of the road.
So, is this near-death experience the five-second moment that makes audiences cry?
Interestingly, it isn’t. This moment comes later. Shockingly, the author’s parents didn’t rush to see him in the hospital that night. Instead, they went to check on how the car was. The author was feeling deeply scared and alone when his transformative five seconds kicked in – all of a sudden, his teenage friends showed up in the waiting room to shout words of encouragement at him as he was being wheeled into surgery.
Why is this moment more powerful for audiences than the earlier near-death experience?
Simply because this is a transformative moment in the author’s life to which everyone can relate. Most of us will never understand what it feels like to experience a near-fatal crash. But loneliness, rejection and the power of friendship? These are things we’ve all felt, and so this is what audiences most connect with in the author’s story. In fact, when people talk about this story afterward, they rarely even mention the car crash – all they remember is that sudden change from feeling alone to feeling loved.
Find the beginning of your story by examining how it ends.
Once you’ve identified the transformative five-second moment of your story, you’ll also have discovered how your story ends. Why? Well, not only is this moment the heart of your story, but it’s also the pinnacle and purpose of your tale, so it needs to come as close to the end as possible.
But don’t breathe a sigh of relief yet because the hardest part of storytelling is still ahead of you. Now that you know how to end your story, you must decide how to begin it.
Importantly, finding the right place to start your personal story involves looking back over your life experiences and selecting the most illuminating moments from which to begin your narrative. This is difficult because most of us will have a lot of moments from which to choose.
How can you make the right choice?
First, you must remind yourself how your story ends. In other words, what happens in your five-second moment? Then ask yourself: What is the very opposite of this moment of revelation, realization or transformation? Quite simply, your story’s beginning needs to be the complete opposite of its end. This opposition is vital because it helps to construct a satisfying arc within your narrative, and this arc is how your story will demonstrate change over time.
For instance, consider a romantic comedy whose opening scenes show a young woman being fired from her job in a bank and her banker boyfriend running off with her female best friend. Surely we already have an idea of how this film will end? Almost inevitably, our dejected heroine will find a new lover who is the very opposite of a banker – an artist, perhaps. She will find a new job in a very different environment to a bank – opening a bakery, maybe. Finally, she will make a new best friend, but one very different from the one who betrayed her, such as an open-hearted gay man.
In other words, if you want to know how a movie will end, simply work out what’s the opposite of the first quarter of an hour, and you’ll probably have a pretty accurate answer. Your story should be no different.
There are some crucial do’s and don’ts for immersing your audience in a story.
Telling a good story means taking your audience on the journey with you. Where? To the moments in time when your story takes place. You want them to feel like they’re right there with you in the midst of your tale, seeing the sights, hearing the sounds and feeling the sensations that you felt when it was happening.
But if all this sounds like a big task, don’t worry. Luckily, there are some important do’s and don’ts that will help you provide an immersive experience for your audience.
Importantly, one way to take your audience with you is to use the present tense. Don’t start with, “I was on a train last year . . .” but with something like “I am on a train, and my whole body is shuddering from its forward momentum.”
Using the present tense in storytelling creates a feeling of immediacy for your audience. They are also transported onto that train, looking at you in real-time. The present tense sucks the reader into the period the storyteller wants them to occupy and brings them much closer to the key moments.
Now you know what you should do to immerse your audience in your narrative, but what are the things that you should avoid?
Crucially, don’t ask your audience any rhetorical questions. Doing so will only invite your audience to mentally come up with an answer to the question. When this happens, you will have managed to transform your storytelling session into a question-and-answer exercise instead. Your audience is reminded that they’re not on that train but in the room with you, thinking about that pesky rhetorical question.
Another no-no for storytellers is addressing the audience. This is something you shouldn’t do. Ever. For instance, when you address your audience by saying, “OK folks, have I got a story for you!” then the immersive experience is over for the listener. They become suddenly aware of the storyteller standing before them, the fact that they are being addressed, and the other audience members on either side of them.
So, don’t talk to your audience and certainly don’t ask them any questions. Instead, just tell them your story – preferably in the present tense.
Help your storytelling career by avoiding swearing and vulgarity.
When the author writes stories on his blog, he’s careful about the words he uses. Why? Because he knows how important it is to preserve his reputation within the storytelling community. You’d be hard-pressed to find any swearing, profanity or criticism of his employer or colleagues in his narratives. Importantly, if you want to be a successful storyteller, you’ll have to be careful about what you say to the audience and how you say it.
Whether you’re at a wedding or in a theater, the particular words you use to tell your story will have an impact on your audience’s opinion of you. With this in mind, try not to swear too much.
Steering clear of swearing in your stories will help give them mass appeal. For instance, the author has found an audience of millions for his stories, mainly because he was invited to share them on the popular podcast and radio show, The Moth. Importantly, the author made it easier for the show to use his stories because they were almost swear-free and thus suitable for a range of audiences. If you do decide to use swearing in your stories, don’t expect to get invited to speak at corporate, family or school events. So think carefully before you drop the f-bomb – you might be detonating your career potential.
Additionally, it’s not just swearing that you should avoid if you want to impress others with your storytelling. Try to avoid vulgarity too.
Being vulgar means describing profane events, whether these events are sexual in nature or involve any other sort of bodily fluid. Although you might think you’re helping your audience create a mental image by describing these things in great detail, the reality is that you’re probably just disgusting them.
For instance, one of the author’s friends once spoke at a storyslam about having an upset stomach while on a first date, resulting in an unlucky situation for the sofa on which he was sitting. Instead of simply alluding to this unpleasant situation and letting the audience imagine it for themselves, he described it right down to smell, texture and color. Needless to say, the judges were not impressed and scored his story quite low that evening.
When selecting the words to tell your story, make sure that what seems authentic and honest to you does not come over as profane to your audience. Remember, a little restraint can go a long way in helping your storytelling career.
Summary
The key message in this book summary:
You can master storytelling by learning the right techniques. To tell a great story, include a meaningful element of change somewhere in the narrative, steer clear of vulgarity and unnecessary flourishes, and transport your audience by using the present tense.
Actionable advice:
Avoid celebrity references in your stories.
While telling a story, the author once described his ex-girlfriend as being similar to the actress, Zooey Deschanel. He then watched as half his audience nodded along, and the other half looked confused. Since then, he has avoided these sorts of celebrity references, and you should too. Not only do you risk alienating those audience members who have no idea who you’re talking about, but it’s also lazy. Instead of accurately describing the character in your story, you’re just relying on short-hand to bring them to life. Very little is revealed about that person, and your audience hasn’t gained enough information about them. So ask yourself: What is this character really like, beyond shallow celebrity similarities?
“Telling stories about your life lets people know they’re not alone.” – Matthew Dicks
About the author
Matthew Dicks is the bestselling author of novels such as Something Missing and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. He is also a performer and teacher. He is both a Moth StorySLAM and GrandSLAM champion.
Matthew Dicks is a bestselling novelist, thirty-six-time Moth StorySLAM champion, and five-time GrandSLAM champion. In addition to his widespread teaching, writing, and performing, he cofounded (with his wife) Speak Up, which produces sold-out storytelling performances throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York at least once a month. He lives in Newington, Connecticut.
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Genres
Communication Skills, Creativity, Biography, Oral Tradition and Storytelling, Writing, Self Help, Business, Personal Development, Psychology, Productivity, Leadership, Running Meetings and Presentations, Memoirs
Table of Contents
PART ONE: FINDING YOUR STORY
Chapter 1: A Coward Tells a Story
Chapter 2: What Is a Story? (and What Is the Dinner Test?)
Chapter 3: Homework for Life
Chapter 4: Dreaming at the End of Your Pen
Chapter 5: First/Last/Best/Worst: Great for Long Car Rides, First Dates, and Finding Stories
PART TWO: CRAFTING YOUR STORY
Chapter 6: “Charity Thief”
Chapter 7: Every Story Only Takes Five Seconds to Tell (and Jurassic Park Wasn’t a Movie About Dinosaurs)
Chapter 8: Finding Your Beginning (I’m Also About to Ruin Most Movies and Many Books Forever for You)
Chapter 9: Stakes – Five Ways to Keep Your Story Compelling (and Why There Are Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park)
Chapter 10: The Five Permissible Lies of True Storytelling
Chapter 11: Cinema of the Mind (Also Known As “Where the Hell Are You?”)
Chapter 12: The Principle of But and Therefore
Chapter 13: “This Is Going to Suck”
Chapter 14: The Secret to the Big Story: Make it Little
Chapter 15: There Is Only Way to Make Someone Cry
Chapter 16: Milk Cans and Balls. Babies and Blenders: Simple, Effective Ways to be Funny in Storytelling (Even If You’re Not Funny at All)
Chapter 17: Finding the Frayed Ending of Your Story (Or… What the Hell Did That Mean?)
PART 3: TELLING YOUR STORY
Chapter 18: The Present Tense is King (But the Queen Can Play a Role, Too)
Chapter 19: If You Practice Storytelling or Public Speaking in a Mirror, Read This. If You Don’t, Skip It.
Chapter 20: The Two Ways of Telling a Hero Story (Or… How to Avoid Sounding Like a Douchebag)
Chapter 21: Storytelling Is Time Travel (If You Don’t Muck It Up)
Chapter 22: Words to Say. Words to Avoid.
Chapter 23: Time to Perform (On the Stage, in the Board Room, on a Date, or at the Thanksgiving Table)
Chapter 24: Why Did You Read This Book? To Become a Superhero.
Overview
A five-time Moth GrandSLAM winner and bestselling novelist shows how to tell a great story — and why doing so matters.
Whether we realize it or not, we are always telling stories. On a first date or job interview, at a sales presentation or therapy appointment, with family or friends, we are constantly narrating events and interpreting emotions and actions. In this compelling book, storyteller extraordinaire Matthew Dicks presents wonderfully straightforward and engaging tips and techniques for constructing, telling, and polishing stories that will hold the attention of your audience (no matter how big or small). He shows that anyone can learn to be an appealing storyteller, that everyone has something “storyworthy” to express, and, perhaps most important, that the act of creating and telling a tale is a powerful way of understanding and enhancing your own life.
Review/Endorsements/Praise/Award
“With candor, humility, and bust-a-gut humor, Matthew Dicks shares his storytelling secrets and leads you up the stairs to tell yours. He already knows that they’re gems.” — Nichole Bernier, author of The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.
“Holy moly! Matthew Dicks is right — every one of us has a story to tell. And whether onstage or on the page, this master of the craft pulls us into his world, entertaining, instructing, and inspiring with every word.” — Susan Gregg Gilmore, author of Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
“Offers countless tips, exercises, and examples to get you on your way to better stories. Anyone who wants to take the stage, become a better writer, or simply tell better stories at Thanksgiving will benefit from Storyworthy.” — Jeff Vibes, filmmaker
“I laughed, gasped, took notes, and carried this book around like a dear friend — because that’s exactly what a storyworthy book should be. As a novelist, I’ve studied my craft in countless ways, but never before have I seen its marrow revealed with such honest, approachable charisma. Matthew Dicks has written a perceptive companion for every person who has a story to tell — and don’t we all?” — Sarah McCoy, internationally and New York Times–bestselling author of Marilla of Green Gables and The Baker’s Daughter
“Matthew Dicks is a master storyteller and an incredible teacher. Most importantly, he is an artist who paints his verbal canvases with moments that change how his listeners see the world. Matt taught me about the hidden arc and architecture that lie behind every well-told story and I’ve incorporated his techniques into innumerable courtroom presentations — and told several stories before live audiences — all thanks to Matt.” — Ron Apter, trial lawyer
“When I gave Matthew Dicks a recurring spot on my podcast, I billed him as ‘the most interesting man in the world.’ He really has lived quite a life. But what’s truly interesting is not necessarily what he’s experienced but how he makes you, the audience, experience it through him.” — Mike Pesca, NPR contributor and host of Slate magazine’s daily podcast, The Gist
“Learning from Matthew Dicks has truly been life changing both for me as a public storyteller and for my high school students. Matt’s practical advice and techniques can be applied immediately, and that’s what Matt encourages and inspires you to do. Start crafting your best stories right now: learn a little about yourself in the process and begin living a life of yes.” — Jennifer Bonaldo, English teacher, Amity High School, Bethany, Connecticut
“Matthew Dicks is not only a master storyteller; he is a master teacher. His clear and detailed instructions allow him to brilliantly give his techniques and tricks of the storytelling trade to his students. I personally benefited immensely from Matt’s workshop, and I continue to use his techniques both in my professional work as a rabbi and teacher and onstage at Moth StorySLAMs.” — Rabbi Ira Ebbin, Congregation Ohav Sholom in Merrick, New York, and Moth StorySLAM winner
“I had the opportunity to take Matthew Dicks’s workshop for beginners and then his advanced workshop. They were truly life changing. From Matt’s instructions, I have been able to sculpt true stories that I have shared with an audience of five hundred people. I am not a professional entertainer. But because of Matt’s insightful direction, editing, and support, I now have the confidence and ability to turn my life experiences into stories that entertain and impact many people. Thank you, Matt. One doesn’t always have the opportunity to live a dream.” — Lee Pollock, president, The Pollock Company, Hartford, Connecticut
“In Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks gives us all the tools we’ll need to become an effective storyteller, and he does so with wit, wisdom, and self-effacing charm. What’s more, he reminds us that through storytelling — and our willingness to be honest and vulnerable when sharing the different moments that have helped shape our lives — we invite the great possibility of deeper connection with others, and with ourselves. This book serves as a guidebook and a muse, rooted in the belief that our individual stories, when shared with heart, end up walking us down the pathway to true belonging. Storyworthy acts as a bright light along that journey.” — Scott Stabile, author of Big Love: The Power of Living with a Wide-Open Heart
“Matthew Dicks is dazzling as a storyteller and equally brilliant in his ability to deconstruct this skill and make it accessible to others. His workshop was a veritable epiphany — it has been formative in my own professional career and in helping shape the work of my students. Trust me: whatever Matt has to say about storytelling, you want to hear. In my role at Yale, I oversee courses that involve more than one hundred faculty members. I can say without a doubt that Matt is one of the finest teachers I’ve ever seen.” — David A. Ross, MD, PhD, director, Yale Psychiatry Residency Training Program
Video and Podcast
Read an Excerpt/PDF Preview
CHAPTER 1
My Promise to You
About a year ago, a man in one of my workshops asked, “Why am I here? I don’t want to stand on stages and tell stories. I don’t want to compete in story slams. I’m not an entertainer. I don’t get it.”
It was a good question, particularly because the man in question hadn’t chosen my workshop. His wife had asked him to attend.
He wasn’t the first person to attend a workshop for this reason. “My wife told me to take your workshop” is a surprisingly common reason given by men sitting before me in workshops.
Perhaps you’re asking the same question. If you have no desire to stand on a stage and bare your soul, why learn to find and tell great stories?
Not that long ago, I was asking the same question. Two years into my storytelling career, Elysha and I founded that Hartford-based storytelling organization that I’d once talked about with friends. We call it Speak Up. Together we produce shows throughout New England to sellout audiences numbering as high as five hundred people.
About a year into Speak Up’s existence, I started teaching storytelling too. But as with my journey to becoming a storyteller, my career as a teacher of storytelling began against my will. As our Speak Up audience grew and people wanted to learn to tell stories, they began asking me to teach them the craft.
I balked. I had no interest. But they were persistent. Many wanted to take a stage and tell a story. Others saw storytelling as a potential asset in their careers as attorneys, professors, salespeople, or therapists. Still others thought storytelling might help them to make friends and improve their relationships. Buckling under the weight of their pressure, I announced that I would teach one storytelling workshop.
One and done.
Ten people spent six evenings with me in a conference room at the local library. I taught them everything I knew about storytelling. I told stories and explained my process for crafting them. I listened to their stories and offered feedback.
As with storytelling itself, I quickly realized how much I enjoyed teaching the craft. Deconstructing the elements of a good story. Building a curriculum around what I knew and was still learning. Listening to stories and helping to find ways to shape them better. Turning my students into the kinds of people who can light up a room with a great story.
My “one and done” workshop has grown into something I do regularly and with zeal today. I travel the world teaching the art and craft of storytelling.
The people I teach are varied and diverse. I teach performers and would- be performers who want to become better storytellers. Some have never taken the stage before, and others are grizzled veterans looking to improve their skills. Many of these former students have gone on to take the stage at The Moth, Speak Up, and other storytelling shows. In August of 2016, one of my students beat me in a Moth GrandSLAM competition for the first time. I finished second, and she finished first. Perhaps I taught her a little too well.
I teach attorneys, salespeople, and business leaders who want to improve their presentation skills, sales pitches, and branding.
I teach novelists, essayists, screenwriters, television writers, poets, archivists, and other creative sorts who want to refine their understanding of story.
I teach professors, schoolteachers, ministers, priests, and rabbis who want to improve their lectures and sermons and hold the attention of their audiences.
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.
People have quit therapy and opted to participate in my storytelling workshops instead. While I don’t endorse this decision, it’s apparently working for them. Wives send their befuddled husbands to my workshops, hoping that storytelling will spark something inside them. Later they tell me how their husbands have opened up like never before. One woman told me that her husband has opened up “a little too much.”
People take my workshops again and again to discover more about themselves and find ways to connect with other people through their own personal narratives. A married couple once spent their anniversary attending one of my all-day workshops because they knew it would be a chance to laugh together and learn about each other. They brought champagne.
I teach the children of Holocaust survivors who want to preserve the stories of their parents and grandparents. I teach psychiatrists and psychologists who want to help their patients reframe their lives through story. I teach politicians, labor organizers, health-care advocates, and educational reformers who need to change hearts and minds.
I promise that whatever you do, storytelling will help. While I am often standing on a stage and performing, there are few things I do in life that aren’t aided by my ability to tell a story. Whether I’m teaching the metric system to my fifth graders, pitching Speak Up to a new venue, selling my DJ services to a prospective client, or making small talk at a professional development seminar, storytelling helps me achieve my goals. Storytelling makes me a better dinner companion. It compensates for my inability to hit a golf ball accurately. It makes me far more palatable to my in-laws.
No matter who you are or what you do, storytelling can help you achieve your goals. That is why you are reading this book. That is why that man was sitting in my workshop that day.
In these pages, you will find lessons on finding, crafting, and telling stories that will connect you to other people. Make them believe in and trust you. Compel them to want to know more about you and the things you care about.
You’ll find specific examples of well-told stories. Exercises designed to locate meaningful, compelling stories in your life. Step-by-step instructions for crafting those stories.
I hope to entertain as well. As much as I want you to learn to become a storyteller, I can’t help but tell some stories along the way. In addition to teaching you how to tell an effective, entertaining, and moving story, I hope to give you a peek into my life as a storyteller. My plan is to pull back the curtain and show you some of the highs and lows of my storytelling career. In short, I plan to tell you some stories.
I also want you to trust me. There’s no codified curriculum when it comes to storytelling. No universally accepted laws or rules, no canonical absolutes. Storytelling is more art than science. It’s an ancient form of communication and entertainment that has been practiced since humans first developed language, but the rise in the popularity of personal storytelling is relatively new. There are no official schools of thought. No hard-and-fast formulas.
But I tell my students this: If you apply my strategies and methods to the craft, you will become a highly successful storyteller. Not every storyteller agrees with my strategies, but every student who has followed my instruction has become an effective, entertaining, successful storyteller.
My instruction works. You too can be a great storyteller. It’s time to learn how.
CHAPTER 2
What Is a Story? (and What Is the Dinner Test?)
A couple years ago, a woman asked Elysha why she first fell in love with me. Fortunately I was standing right beside her when the question was asked.
I waited for Elysha to say something about my rugged good looks, quick wit, or enchanting eyes. “I thought it was this situation,” I said, motioning up and down my body.
“It’s never been this situation,” Elysha informed me.
Instead she told the woman that it was storytelling that first made her fall for me. She told the story of the night when she and I went to Chili’s for dinner — our first meal alone — before our school’s talent show.
Just so we’re clear: This was not a date. Maybe I wanted it to be a date, but at that time, I thought Elysha was out of my league. I still think this today. Please don’t tell her.
Elysha and I were fellow teachers and slowly becoming friends, but we were both involved with other people at the time. We were technically unavailable. Also Chili’s was one of the closest restaurants to our school.
My point: I didn’t take Elysha on a first date to Chili’s. I’m not that guy.
Okay?
Elysha explained to the woman that over the course of our dinner, she had asked me some questions about myself. We’d known each other for a couple years by then, but we didn’t know much about each other personally. When I’m asked a question, I tell a story, so I told some stories that night. I was still more than seven years away from taking a stage and telling my first official story, but even back then, I was always ready and willing to share my life with others, warts and all.
Elysha told the woman, “That was the night I started falling for Matt. Listening to his stories, I realized that he wasn’t like anyone I had ever met before, and I knew I wanted to hear more. I liked the way he told a story.”
Beautiful, right? I found the perfect spouse through storytelling.
Right after the beauty of the moment washed over me, I quickly shifted to annoyance. By then I had been performing onstage and teaching storytelling for a few years. I had made a name for myself in the storytelling world. I’d attracted interest from businesses, universities, nonprofits, and performers. Knowing all this, why had she waited until now to inform me that my storytelling had been the key to her heart?
I told her that the story about falling in love with me through storytelling fit perfectly into my personal narrative and explained how useful it could have been to me for the past couple years of teaching and performing. “You’re telling me that I found the perfect wife through storytelling! That’s like a baseball player hitting a home run into the right-field bleachers that’s caught by the woman he eventually marries. It’s amazing! How could you keep this from me?”
“I’m not in the business of helping you construct your personal narrative,” she said.
She’s lucky I love her. But you see my point, right? Even before I was telling stories onstage and thinking of myself as a storyteller, the ability to tell a good story was helping me immensely.
Let’s also be clear that when I talk about storytelling, I am speaking about personal narrative. True stories told by the people who lived them. This is very different than the traditional fable or folktale that many people associate with the word storytelling. While folktales and fables are entertaining and can teach us about universal truths and important life lessons, there is power in personal storytelling that folktales and fables will never possess.
A folktale or a fable would never have convinced Elysha that I was the love of her life. My friends would not routinely invite me to play golf if I promised them a well-told folktale between swings. I would not be hired for a job by answering questions with folktales. Nonprofits, corporations, universities, and school districts would not be able to improve their image and messaging through fables. You can’t become the life of the party by telling a good folktale.
Most importantly, folktales and fables do not create the same level of connection between storyteller and audience as a personal story. I have never listened to someone tell a folktale and felt more deeply connected to the storyteller as a result. I may have loved the story and admired the storyteller’s skill and expertise, and I might have been highly entertained, but I have never felt that I knew the storyteller any better at the end of their story. The storyteller who tells folktales and fables is a highly developed, highly skilled delivery mechanism, often more entertaining than television, radio, or a YouTube video, but never revealing, vulnerable, or authentic.
Folktales and fables don’t require vulnerability. They do not demand honesty and transparency from the storyteller. They can never be self- deprecating or revealing, because the story is not about the storyteller. They are entertaining, possibly educational, and often insightful, but they do not bring people closer together.
We tell stories to express our hardest, best, most authentic truths. This is what brings thousands of people to hear stories at theaters and bars every night in cities all over the world.
They want the real deal. They want the kind of stories that just might make them fall in love with the storyteller.
As we prepare to embark on this journey together, keep in mind that there are a few requirements to ensuring that you are telling a personal story:
Change
Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new. The change can be infinitesimal. It need not reflect an improvement in yourself or your character, but change must happen. Even the worst movies in the world reflect some change in a character over time.
So must your story. Stories that fail to reflect change over time are known as anecdotes. Romps. Drinking stories. Vacation stories. They recount humorous, harrowing, and even heartfelt moments from our lives that burned brightly but left no lasting mark on our souls.
There is nothing wrong with telling these stories, but don’t expect to make someone fall in love with you in a Chili’s restaurant by telling one of these stories. Don’t expect people to change their opinions on an important matter or feel more connected to you through these stories. These are the roller-coasters and cotton candy of the storytelling world. Supremely fun and delicious, but ultimately forgettable.
Matt’s Five Rules of Drinking Stories
1. No one will ever care about your drinking stories as much as you.
2. Drinking stories never impress the type of people who one wants to impress.
3. If you have more than three excellent drinking stories from your entire life, you are incorrect in your estimation of an excellent drinking story.
4. Even the best drinking stories are seriously compromised if told during the daytime and/or at the workplace.
5. A drinking story about a moment when you were over the age of forty is often sad, pathetic, and even tragic except under the following circumstances:
• It is absolutely your best drinking story of all time.
• The storyteller is over seventy. Drinking stories about the elderly are acceptable in any form, because they are rare and oftentimes hilarious.
Matt’s Three Rules of Vacation Stories
1. No one wants to hear about your vacation.
2. If someone asks to hear about your vacation, they are being polite. See rule #1.
3. If you had a moment that was actually storyworthy while you were on vacation, that is a story that should be told. But it should not include the quality of the local cuisine or anything related to the beauty or charm of the destination.
Your Story Only
You must tell your own story and not the stories of others. People would rather hear the story about what happened to you last night than about what happened to your friend Pete last night, even if Pete’s story is better than your own. There is immediacy and grit and inherent vulnerability in hearing the story of someone standing before you. It is visceral and real. It takes no courage to tell Pete’s story. It requires no hard truth or authentic self.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t tell someone else’s story. It simply means you must make the story about yourself. You must tell your side of the story.
Back in 1991, I was living with my best friend, Bengi, in an apartment in Attleboro, Massachusetts, that we called the Heavy Metal Playhouse. It was thanks to Bengi that I had a roof over my head. He was attending Bryant University but decided to live off campus during his sophomore year. I was graduating from high school at the time, and my parents expected me to move out and begin taking care of myself. But I had nowhere to go. I worried that I might become homeless.
While my classmates were counting down the remaining days of high school with great anticipation, I spent much of my senior year worried about where I would be living after the school year ended. Then salvation. On a warm spring evening, while Bengi and I were sitting in the cab of an idle bulldozer on the site of a future grocery store, he asked me if I wanted to live with him. I couldn’t believe it. I was ecstatic.
There was only one problem: I knew that living with Bengi would be hard, because unlike anyone I had ever met, Bengi was a person who held on to grudges. Cross him in any way, and he did not forget. I suspect that it was the result of being an only child and not facing the constant adversity that comes with sibling rivalry. Growing up as the oldest of five, I was awful to my siblings. I made their lives miserable. I tricked my brother Jeremy into believing that the yellow bits in the Kibbles ‘n Bits dog food were real cheese and convinced him to eat them fairly regularly. I constantly short-sheeted his bed. Sold his Star Wars action figures to raise cash. Locked him out of the house every other day. Jeremy had every reason to despise me.
(Continues…)
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