Notes from “Storyworthy” by Matthew Dicks

What is a Story?

A story is a personal, true account that revolves around a fundamental change or realization, marked by authenticity and reflection, and heightened by meaningful stakes.
It must reflect always reflect change over time. It can be internal or external, but you must start as one version of yourself, and end as something new

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”

– Steve Jobs

“Teach me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. Tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”

– Ancient Proverb

Part 1: Finding Your Stories

Homework for life:

Ask yourself: “What was my most story-worthy moment today?” Write down the essence of the moment (brief).
Benefits:
- Enhance storyteller “lens”
- Increased introspection
- Enhance memory and appreciation for overlooked moments in life (slow down time)
- Build story bank

Crash and Burn:

Stream of conscious writing (dreaming at the end of your pen)
- The act of writing down whatever thought enters your mind (without judgment/exception)
Set a timer for 10’ and write/record stream of consciousness

Rules:

Do not get attached to any one idea
- Allow unexpected ideas to intersect and overrun current ones.
Do not judge any thought or idea that enters your mind
- Record everything without regard for structure, punctuation, grammar, etc.
Do not allow the pen (keyboard) to stop.
- Hand-written triggers greater creativity, but the keyboard is acceptable
- If the mind becomes empty, cycle through colors/numbers/lists to cycle through until new thoughts occur

Benefits:
- Recover memories and potential stories from the past. The greater the storehouse of memory, the more complete our narrative becomes
- Discover significant associations between past and present

3. First, best, last, worst

Create a 4×6 chart, labeling each column with First; Last; Best; Worst, and each row with random prompts such as Kiss; Car; Pet; Injury; Gift; Travel; Trouble;
Fill in each cell with one-word answer to the prompt:
Analyze:
- Do any entries appear more than once? (signal of a likely story)
- Could any entries turn into a useful anecdote?
- Could any become full stories?

	First	Best	Last	Worse
Prompt 1
Prompt 2
Prompt 3
Prompt 4
Prompt 5

Benefits:

Expand the boundaries of perceived life, connecting disparate memories into a more complete picture.
Finding moments that once lacked meaning can be recognized as critical and essential to life story

Part II: Crafting a Story

[Principle] Every great story is about a 5” moment in the life of a human being, and the purpose of the story is to bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible.

If you think you have a story, ask self:
- Does it contain a 5” moment? A moment of true transformation?

The Ending

[Principle] Your 5” moment is the end of your story, the most important thing you will say. It’s the purpose of your story, the reason you tell the story. It must come as close to the end of your story as possible. Sometimes it will be the very last thing you say.

When crafting your story, start with the end.
- Will inform the choices we make to craft the story (ie humor, characters, stakes, omission, etc.)
- Every choice serves the 5” moment.

Process: Finding Meaning of 5” moment

When crafting a story from a 5” moment for the first time, speak it aloud. Don’t worry about the stakes or anything else. Just tell it as honestly and completely as possible. Tell the overly detailed version to (re)discover the meaning and importance of the moment.
- This process will help you to discover the meaning behind the 5” moment, and why it sticks with you.
Ask yourself: “Why you do the things you do?”
- Sometimes the answers reveal something much deeper, a hidden truth that makes for a great story.
  - By telling ourselves a story, it can help to understand the behavior and solve the complex problem of personal history. The solutions that often make great stories and provide opportunities to understand ourselves.

[Principle] Stories can never be about two things

This is because the end of the story (your 5” moment) will tell you what the beginning of your story should be. It should be the opposite of your 5” moment
If the 5” moment yields two different things learned, then you have two different story meanings that converge on the same point.

The Beginning

[Principle] The beginning of your story should be the opposite of the end

Find the opposite of your transformation, revelation, or realization, and this is where your story should start.
Creates an arc in the story, changes over time
- I was once x, now I am y
- I once thought x, now I think y
- I once felt x, now I feel y

[Principle] Start as close to the end as possible

Simplify to help tell better story. Time and space is limited.
- Written = Lake
- Oral = river

[Principle] Start story with forward moment when possible. Establish self as a person who is physically moving through space

Creates instant momentum in a story, immerses audience in the world you are moving throught, going somewhere important

[Principle] Don’t start by setting expectations. No thesis statements.

Goal is to surprise and immerse. Setting expectations breaks immersion and kills surprise.

Stakes

Stakes are the reason the audience listens and continues to listen to a story. They answer questions like:
- What does the storyteller want or need?
- What is at peril
- What is the storyteller fighting for or against
- What will happen next
- How will the story turn out?
5 strategies to infuse the story with stakes:

The elephant
1. The thing in the room that everyone can see. The clear statement of need, the want, the problem, peril, or mystery.
2. This signifies where the story is headed, and makes it clear that this is a story not an anecdote
3. Tells the audience what to expect and gives them a reason to listen and wonder
4. [Principle] The elephant should appear as early in the story as possible (ideally within the first minute)
5. Elephants can change color – The need, want, problem, peril, or mystery that started in the beginning can change along the way. Offer one expectation only to have it pulled away in favor of another.
  - Start gray and end pink, don’t switch just paint. Changing the color provides the audience with one of the greatest surprises that a story has to offer.
The backpack
- Increases stakes by increasing audience anticipation about coming event.
- Load up audience with tellers hopes and fears before moving forward
  - Make the audience wonder what happens next
  - Make the audience experience the same emotion the teller experiences in the moment to be described.
Breadcrumbs
- Hint at future events but only reveal enough to keep audience guessing
- Choose breadcrumbs that create the most wonder in the minds of the audience without giving enough to guess correctly.
Hourglasses
- When reaching THE moment, and approaching the payoff, slow things down. Grind to a halt when possible, Drag out as long as possible.
Crystal Balls
- False prediction made by teller to cause the audience to wonder if the prediction will come true
- We are constantly trying to anticipate the future, recount those “in the moment” predictions

(Bonus) Humor: Keeping audience’s attention.

Humor is not the goal, but it helps bridge moments, and to keep the audience listening.

Permissible Lies

[Principle] Only lie for the benefit of the audience, never for personal gain. Never manipulate the truth or the fabric of reality, or shift time and space for our own benefit (mitigate shame, failure, make self look better or appear noble). Only lie when the audience would want us to lie – only when the story is better for doing so .

Omission
- It’s advisable to leave out characters, locations, and details that don’t serve the purpose of the story to simplify and distill the story to its essence.
Compression
- Push time and space together to make the story easier to comprehend, visualize, and tell.
Assumption
- Use assumption when there is a detail so important to the story that it must be stated with specificity (forgotten details).
Progression
- Change the order of the events of a story to make more emotionally satisfying or comprehensible to the listener
Conflation
- Used to push all the emotion of an event into a single time frame.
- Rather than describe a change over a long period, we compress all the intellectual and emotional transformation into a smaller bit of time.
  - Keep stories shorter

Cinema of the Mind

[Principle] Always provide a physical location for every moment of the story. Great storytellers will create a movie in the mind of the listener. Listeners can see the story in their mind’s eye at all times.

Beware of all things that will break the listener out of their “vision” of events (make self the center of the show, crack jokes, insert amusing or observational non-sequiturs, ask rhetorical questions, step outside the timeline)
- Example: setup, thesis statements, context explanation

“But” and “therefore”

[Principle] The ideal connective tissue in any story are the words but and therefore (along with their synonyms

Use words that signal change
- The story was headed in one direction, now headed in another
- Makes the story feel as if it’s constantly going somewhere new
- You must be able to connect scenes (beats) with a “but” or “therefore” for the next scene to work

The trick to telling a big story:

Make it small. Find a small, relatable, comprehensible moment in our larger stories. Find the piece of the story that people can connect to, relate to, and understand.

The only way to elicit an emotional response

Surprise
- Enhanced through contrast, establishing expectations then upending them
- This can be accomplished by hiding key info so they don’t see it coming
- Ways to ruin a surprise
  - Present the Thesis statement before the surprise
  - Failing to take advantage of the power of stakes to enhance and accentuate the surprise
  - Failure to hide critical info in a story. Try to:
    - Place details as far away from the surprise as possible
    - Hide the bomb in the clutter: hide details for important moments by making them seem unimportant, pushing it all together (lists)
    - Camouflage: hide the bomb with a laugh. Best because it elicits an emotional response
Humor
- [Principle] When possible, get an early laugh, but end with heart
- [Principle] Make them laugh before you make them cry
  - Heightens contrast hurts more

[Principle] Contrast is king in storytelling

Part III: Telling your story

[Principle] The present tense is king. It helps the audience be with the storyteller in the moment and creates the movie in the mind.

Helps to load them up with sensory info, to feel as if they are occupying the space and experiencing time with the teller
Creates a sense of immediacy and intimacy
It also helps the teller see their story. To connect with it more effectively

[Principle] Past tense can be used to shift into backstory and provide critical info needed to serve the story.

Telling a hero story (how to avoid sounding like a douchebag)

Proverbs 27:2 “Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth.”

Success stories are hard to tell because failure is more engaging than success

Malign yourself. Undermine both yourself and it. This is because of two realities:
1. Humans love an underdog, it’s universal.
2. Wins are a surprise
Marginalize your accomplishment
1. Rather than tell of an overnight success, tell the step-by-step nature of accomplishment. Tell about a small step.
Make the story about something else, perhaps about a piece of individual growth that resulted from the accomplishment.

Storytelling is time travel

It’s a way to transport the audience in a time-traveling bubble. Transporting back to the moment. Don’t pop the bubble.
- Don’t ask rhetorical questions
- Don’t address the audience or acknowledge their existence whatsoever
  - “You guys…”
- No props
- Avoid anachronisms
  - Thing that is set in a period other than the period it exists. (fridge in the renaissance)
  - Remind the audience they are listening to a story
- Don’t mention the word “story” in your story
- Downplay tour physical presence as much as possible

Things to avoid (use best judgment):

Profanity
- Unless it’s a direct quote, or it serves the story
Vulgarity
Peoples names
Pop culture references
Accents

Telling your story:

Nervousness can be your friend. Unless you are a perceived expert (at which you should speak with confidence), nervousness is endearing.
Don’t memorize your story
- Can memorize the first few and last few sentences. Start and end strong.
- Instead, memorize the scenes of your story.
Make eye contact
Control your emotions
Learn to use a microphone

Why you read this book:

Kevin Smith: Anytime a person is speaking to a group of people, in any context, the speaker has a duty and an obligation to be entertaining.
You have an opportunity to:
- Be entertaining
- Set yourself apart.
- Make people smile
- Make people laugh
- Learn
- Feel better about the time spent