Book Summary #3 | Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks

Book Summary in 3 Sentences: 

If you want to live a better life, become a better storyteller. Storytelling changes lives, moves people to action and makes people like you more. We all have stories to tell — so  learn how to recognize, craft, and deliver them.

Big Thoughts:

• • 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. In the end, it must be about realization or transformation
  • Make it my mission to find, see, remember, and identify stories, and you will begin to see your life in a new and more compelling light. 
  • Understanding that stories are about tiny moments is the bedrock upon which all storytelling is built, and yet this is what people fail to understand most when thinking about a story. Instead, they believe that if something interesting or incredible or unbelievable has happened to them, they have a great story to tell. Not true. Everything being said boils down to a singular moment. Everything else is used to serve and bring out that moment for the greatest possible clarity for the audience to hear. 
  • Let’s strive to fundamentally change people with our stories. 
  • Humor is optional, heart is non-negotiable.
  • Feeling alone, forgotten, and lost is a feeling we all know. Use this knowledge when telling crafting stories. 
  • We may be fooled by whips and snakes and car chases, but if it’s a good story, our protagonist is going to experience something deep and meaningful that resonates with the audience, even if the audience doesn’t fully realize it. 
  • A great storyteller creates a movie in the minds of the audience
  • If you think you have a story, ask yourself: does it contain a five-second moment? A moment of true transformation? Your five-second moment may be difficult to find and one you must dig for. The five-second moment is the reason you opened your mouth. It must come as close to the end of your story as possible. Sometimes it will be the very last thing you say. 
  • Brevity is the soul of wit. 
  • Storytelling is not about a roller coaster ride of excitement. It’s about bridging the gap between you and another person by creating a space of authenticity, vulnerability, and universal truth. 
  • It’s an odd thing: the audience wants characters (or storytellers) to succeed, but they don’t really want characters to succeed. It’s struggle and strife that make stories great. They want to see their characters ultimately triumph, but they want suffering first. They don’t want anything to be easy. Perfect plans executed perfectly never make good stories. 

All Stories Must have a Transformation, Revelation or Realization

• • Stories must reflect a change of some kind. It need not always be a positive change, and the change need not be monumental. In fact, stories about failure, embarrassment, and shame are fantastic. Even when progress is made, the best stories often reflect incremental change. Audiences would much rather hear about incremental, tenuous growth than about overnight success. Change is key.
  • 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. 
  • I was once hopeful, but now I am not.
  • I was once lost, but now I am found .
  • I was once happy, but now I am sad.
  • I was once uncertain, but now I know. 
  • I was once angry, but now I am grateful.
  • I was once afraid, but now I am fearless. 
  • I once believed, but now I don’t.

The Beginning of a Story

• • The right beginning creates a satisfying narrative arc that will cause people to connect to and remember your story. It will provide a clear, coherent path to the end. It will serve as an enormous arrow that will point both you and the audience in the right direction. Try to start your story as close to the end as possible. Strive for simplicity. Avoid unnecessary setup. Eliminate superfluous details. 
    • Start your story with forward movement whenever possible.
      • Establish yourself as a person who is physically moving through space. Opening with forward movement creates instant momentum in a story. It makes the audience feel like we are already on the way.
  • The beginning of the story should be the opposite of the end. Find the opposite of my transformation, revelation, or realization, and this is where your story should start. This is what creates an arc in your story. 

Breadcrumbs 

• • Storytellers use breadcrumbs to hint at a future event but only reveal enough to keep the audience guessing. 
  • The trick is to choose the breadcrumbs that create the most wonder in the minds of your audience without giving them enough to guess correctly. Breadcrumbs are particularly effective when the truly unexpected is coming. 
    • You can see an example of this during this story at 2:32. 

Use Present Tense 

• • The present tense acts like a temporal magnet, sucking you into whatever time the storyteller wants you to occupy. The present tense will bring you a little closer to these moments in time. It may even trick you into believing that you have time-traveled back in time to these moments. Use the past test in your story when you are talking about the past tense in your story, or you are telling the backstory.  

Physical Location 

• • Make sure that every moment in your story has a location attached. Every moment should be a scene, and every scene needs a setting. It’s the simplest, most bang for your buck strategy.
    • BAD EXAMPLE — “my grandmother’s name is odelie dicks which probably explains why she is who she is. She’s a crooked old lady in both body and mind….”This version of the story has nothing for the audience to see. If it was a movie, it would open in black with voiceover. No image is formed.

• • • GOOD EXAMPLE – i’m standing at the edge of my grandmother’s garden, watching her relentlessly pull weeds from the unforgiving soil. In this one, an image instantly forms in your mind.  

The Word “and”

• • A majority of human beings tend to connect their sentences, paragraphs, and scenes together with the word, and. This is a mistake. The ideal connective tissue in any story is the words but & therefore. 
  • “And” stories have no movement or momentum. But & therefore are words that signal change. The story was heading in one direction, but now it’s heading in another. We started out zigging, but now we are zagging. We did this, and therefore this new thing happened. 

How to Enhance Suprise 

• • Heighten the contrast between the surprise and the moment just before the surprise.
  • Raise the stakes to increase the surprise.
  • Avoid giving away the surprise in your story by hiding important information that will pay off later (planting bombs). This is done by:
    • 1. Obscuring them in a list of other details or examples. 
      2. Placing them as far away from the surprise as possible.
      3. When possible, build a laugh around them to further camouflage their importance.

Button the Scene 

• • A short, positive statement at the end of a paragraph of description can often serve as an amusing button to a scene. Here is the difference — In the bad example, the storyteller strips the moment of its potential surprise. It alerts the audience to the horror that is coming.  In the good example, the thesis statement comes at the end of the paragraph, allowing for the grandmother’s method of pulling teeth to be as surprising as possible. In storytelling, our job is to describe action & dialogue. 
    • BAD EXAMPLE — “My grandmother was a sadist. She tied a length of string around my loose tooth. She leaned in close so our two faces were just inches apart. She told me to look her…”

• • • GOOD EXAMPLE — “My grandmother tied a length of string around my loose tough. She leaned in close so our two faces were just inches apart. She told me to look her straight in the eyes. “Don’t blink,” she warned. Then she wrapped the other end of the string around her fist raised it between our noses, smiled, and pulled down. Hard. My grandmother was a sadist.”  — That short, positive statement at the end of the paragraph serves to summarize all that came before. Inflection and timing can make that simple sentence amusing. It might even get a laugh.

Hourglasses 

• • This is all about the sentence you have been waiting to say. The sentence your audience has been waiting to hear. It’s time to slow things down. Grind them to a halt when possible. When you know the audience is hanging on your every word, let them hang.
  • This can be seen in this story at 2:32. Watch how he summarizes what has just happened. It is unnecessary and redundant. He has the audience dying for the next sentence, and he knows it. This unneccessary bit of summary slows things down and raises the tension even further. It’s the final delay before the sentence that everyone is waiting for. The sentence that will cause people to either laugh or groan. “Hi, I’m Matt, and I’m collecting money for Ronald Mcdonald Children’s Charities.
  • The audiences desire to hear the next sentence, only made greater by the slowing down his speaking pace, is brilliant.

Crystal Balls 

• • A false prediction made by a storyteller to cause the audience to wonder if the prediction will prove to be true.
  • Example — ” The man points his finger at me and says, “you stay right there.” Then he walks back into his house, and I know what he’s doing. He’s calling the police, and they will come and arrest me.” (This is the false prediction) This does not happen of course, but when he presents this very real possibility, the audience wants to know if it will happen. By predicting the future arrest, he’s established wonder in the audience minds about a future event.

Tell Your Side of the Story 

• • Don’t tell other people’s stories. Tell your own. But feel free to tell your side of other people’s stories, as long as you are the protagonist in these tales.
  • A story is like a diamond with many facets. Everyone has a different relationship with it. If you can find a way of making your particular facet of the story compelling, you can tell that story as your own. Otherwise, leave the telling to someone else.

Stakes 

• • Stakes are the reason audiences want to hear your next sentence. They are the difference between a story that grabs the audience by the throat and holds on tight and one that an audience can take or leave. 
  • We listen to stories because we want to know what happens next. 
  • Boring stories lack stakes, or their stakes are not high enough. Stories that fail to hold your attention lack stakes. Stories that allow your mind to wander lack stakes. Don’t tell stories without stakes!

The Elephant 

• • This is the thing that everyone in the room can see. It is large and obvious. It is a clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery. It signifies where the story is headed, and it makes it clear to your audience that this is, in fact, a story and not a simple musing on a subject. 
  • The audience doesn’t know why they are listening to the story or what is to come, so it’s easy to stop listening. If you don’t present a reason to listen very early on, you risk losing their attention altogether. 
  • Give audiences something to wander about.
• • BAD EXAMPLE —”My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum and civility. She served as PTO president and treasurer of the ladies auxiliary. She was the only female umpire in our town’s little league. She baked and knit and grew vegetables by the pound.”
• • GOOD EXAMPLE – I don’t care how perfect my mother was. When I was nine years old, I wanted to disown her. Leave home and never return. Forget she ever existed. My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum and civility. She served as PTO president and…”  Now, the audience will want to know how this ends and you have created wonder in the mind of the audience. .They are wondering
    • Why did this woman want to disown her mother at an early age?
    • Will things turn out okay in the end?
    • Was her mother to blame for these feelings of ill will, or will we discover that the storyteller was the real problem? 

Backpack

• A strategy that increases the stakes of the story by increasing the audience’s anticipation about a coming event. It’s when a storyteller loads up the audience with all the storyteller’s hopes and fears at that moment before moving the story forward. It’s an attempt to do two things:
  1. Make the audience wonder what will happen next. 
  2. Make your audience experience the same emotion, or something like the same emotion, that the storyteller experienced at the moment about to be described.
• As seen in this story at 2:10,
  • “So I make a plan. I’m going to beg for gas because it’s 1991. Gas is eighty five cents a gallon, so eight dollars is all I need to get me home. I’ll offer my license, my wallet, everything in my car as collateral in exchange for eight dollars’ worth of gas and the promise that I will return and repay the money and more. Whatever it takes. So I rehearse my pitch, take a deep breath, and walk in.” — At this point, the audience is loaded with hopes and dreams. They know the plan, so when the kid behind the counter refuses to give gas for the car, the audience experiences the same kind of disappointment that the storyteller told. They knew the plan. They wanted it to succeed.

 

Resources for you: 

1. The podcast that introduced me to this book — click here
2. A Ted Talk by author Matthew Dicks – click here 
3. Matthew Dicks Youtube page where he shares his stories – click here
4. Storyworthy on Amazon (I’m not receiving money by promoting this) — click here
5. Speak Up Storytelling Podcast – click here