(pretty much) EVERYTHING You Need to Know About Storytelling In 1 Book — Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks

This book changed my life before I actually read it*.

It’s one of the books that’s MOST filled with useful, practical, pretty-much-immediately applicable tips for storytellers that I’ve ever read. (And I’ve read quite a few by now)

In this book, you will not only hear some unforgettable stories from Dicks’ own (insane, tragically funny) life, as well as his experience becoming one of the top storytellers in the world (winning storytelling competitions some three dozen times, and teaching multiple workshops on the craft).

You will also learn how to tell better stories yourself, with insights & tips such as:

• How to make your audience cry
• The Five Permissible Lies of True Storytelling
• Why Jurassic Park is not actually about dinosaurs attacking humans (but the dinosaur attacks serve another purpose that isn’t immediately apparent to movie watchers)
• And MUCH more.

…totally worth the 10-ish hours I spent reading, analyzing, and extracting gold from this book. Highly recommended.

Who this book is for: Primarily people who aspire to tell stories out loud to a live audience, but also those who are interested in telling stories, period — whether that’s through novel-writing, filmmaking, or some other medium.

Scylighter rating: 5/6 ⭐s (explanation of ratings at the end)

Best Ideas From This Book

1. Homework for Life: Make it a practice to write a line or so on the most storyworthy event of every day in a spreadsheet. Do this EVERY day.
2. The Dinner Test: If you wouldn’t tell your story in that way to a friend at dinner, then don’t tell the story in that way to anyone.
3. The Five Second Test: Every story is, at its core, the tale of a change that takes place over no more than five seconds.
4. Make the Story Small: Find the smallest, most universal moments in the story, and craft your telling to feature that.

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BOOK NOTES

Foreword by Dan Kennedy

In This Chapter

• Dan Kennedy introduces Matthew Dicks.

Dan Kennedy talks about telling his first story in 2000 at an event called The Moth — how he was terrified, but when he told the story, it made him feel better.

“Storytelling helps you realize that the biggest, scariest, most painful or refretful things in your head get small and surmountable when you share them with two, or three, or twenty, or three thousand people.”

Storytelling also gives you a way to leave something for people coming behind you, letting them know they’re not alone.

Kennedy then goes on to talk about hosting The Moth StorySLAM (a storytelling competition), as well as The Moth Podcast, which grew to tens of millions of downloads a year.

But then the storytelling scene got a bit ruined as “the cool kids” (professional actos and comedians who wanted another thing for their resume) started joining in.

Still, though, there were “real deal” storyteller types who continued to come around, including one Matthew Dicks, the author of this book.

Unlike the aforementioned bad actors (in more ways than one, one would surmise), Dicks didn’t resort to “oversharing and emotional porn” to tell his stories. He told stories that made you “feel bigger emotional stakes in subtext instead of hitting you over the head with them.”

(What is it about poor storytellers and preachers and banging people over the head?)

In other words, Kennedy says: “Matthew Dicks hasn’t so much written a book about storytelling technique…[but] a book about you and how it would be great to have you hanging out and telling stories with everyone.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: In early 2000, I got onstage, I told a story at this thing called The Moth, and something in my heart and head felt better.

Closing: He’s written a book about you and how it would be great to have you hanging out and telling stories with everyone. Even if you don’t quite know what good could possibly come from it.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Even though this foreword is by Dan Kennedy, the annoying thing is that the table of contents says this, but the title itself doesn’t. I went through half of it thinking I was reading Matthew Dicks only to find it wasn’t him actually. Oops.
• Perhaps I should have known better, as this is a Foreword, not an Intro, but you know, there aren’t 100% established conventions for these things, so…

Preface: A Coward Tells a Story

In This Chapter

• How Dicks got into storytelling and found out that he was surprisingly good at it.

This is Matthew Dicks’ own intro to his book, which begins with his first experience telling a story in front of a live Moth audience in July 2011.

He’d flown all the way to New York to do it, because he’d promised his friends he would, and delayed that promise as long as possible — until the guilt of procrastination overcame his fear of public storytelling.

Dicks had been a blogger since 2004, was a published novelist, and had lived a very colorful life, so he was familiar with storytelling (albeit in written form) and had lots of friends who thought he really ought to take his personal stories to the big time.

(As evidence for this, Dicks quickly runs through a bulleted highlight of some of the most unbelievable stuff that’s happened to him, from being brought back to life on two separate occasions to being jailed for a crime he didn’t commit)

Dicks was also a fifth grade teacher and DJ, so those were his excuses for avoiding the Moth until he could avoid no more. (He even thought of starting his own storytelling show rather than go to the Moth)

But in the end, of course, Dicks DID attend the Moth and — surprise surprise — was the last person selected at random to tell his story (just when he thought he could escape the night unscathed!)

He not only ended up telling his story, he ended up winning the competition that night, which kicked off an entire new trajectory in his career. In the next 6 years, he won 34 Moth StorySLAMs in 53 attempts and became a 5-time Grand-SLAM champion.

This book is the written-down collection of his storytelling secrets.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: It’s July 12, 2011. I’m sitting in the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in downtown Manhattan on a Monday night, though the buzz in the room makes it feel like a Saturday.

Closing: We all have stories. You may not believe this yet, but you will. You just need to know how to find them in your everyday life and then capture them for future telling. // Let me show you how.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Always great to start a nonfiction book about storytelling with a story of how one got into storytelling…
• But seriously, it actually is a reassuring thing for people to know that Dicks really is the real deal and knows his storytelling stuff.

PART I: FINDING YOUR STORY

Chapter 1. My Promise to You

In This Chapter

• Why you want to learn storytelling even if you don’t want to be an on-stage performer
• What you will learn in this book

Dicks opens this chapter with a story about a man who’d been dragged to one of his storytelling workshops.

The man didn’t know why he was there — he didn’t want to be an entertainer or participate in story slams.

And perhaps you, reader, are the same, Dicks says.

But storytelling is a useful skill for far more than Slams.

Some of Dicks’ students include attorneys, salespeople, novelists, TV writers, even people who quit therapy to do his storytelling workshop instead.

“I promise you that whatever you do, storytelling will help.”

In this book, Dicks will share “lessons on finding, crafting, and telling stories that will connect you to other people” through specific examples of well-told stories, step-by-step instructions for crafting your own stories, and more.

This is a peek into Matthew Dicks’ life as a storyteller. If you apply his strategies and methods to your own storytelling, you will succeed.

How does he know this? Through his experience teaching students.

This instruction works. You can try it yourself. Starting with chapter two…

Comments & Analysis

Opening: 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.”

Closing: My instruction works. You too can be a great storyteller. It’s time to learn how.

OTHER COMMENTS

• I like this chapter. Short and sweet, straight-up promise given, no fluff.

Chapter 2. What is a Story? (and What is the Dinner Test?)

In This Chapter

• The Dinner Test: What it is and why it works
• How to tell the difference between a Personal Story and a Vacation Story, and why that matters

Chapter two begins with Dicks telling the story of how he learned how his wife Elysha fell in love with him.

Elysha was asked by another woman how she fell for her husband, and Elysha said it was from “listening to his stories…I l iked the way he told a story.”

This annoyed Matt. Because Elysha hadn’t told him this before.

“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?”

Elysha replied that she wasn’t “in the business of helping him construct his personal narrative” to which Dicks quips within the book: “She’s lucky I love her.”

Here, Dicks clarifies that what he means by specializing in storytelling is personal narrative. True stories told by the people who went through them. Not folktales and fables, because those don’t “create the same level of connection between storyteller and audience.”

But what are the requirements for a true personal story?

1. Change: Not just a series of events, but some kind of change, large or small, good or bad. Otherwise the “personal story” is just an anecdote / romp / drinking story / vacation story that won’t change people’s opinions on important things or feel connected to you.
2. Your Story Only: Even if you’re technically telling a story that happened to someone else, you tell it from your perspective — how it affected you. Personal stories have immediacy and vulnerability and grit. Telling other people’s stories doesn’t take courage or personal authenticity.
3. The Dinner Test: If you aren’t telling the story the way you would to a friend at dinner, you aren’t telling it right. That means no weird hand movements or purple prose or quoting invented dialogue.

For an example of #2, Dicks relates the tale of a roommate who used to be a record grudge-holder, which also made him difficult to be around. One day, this friend named Bengi went for a rainy day run after a blowup, and came back completely changed.

When Dicks told this story, Bengi said “So you tell my stories now?”

“No,” Dicks told him. “I told my side of your story.”

In other words, Dicks told how Bengi’s change also changed him by changing the relationship between them as friends.

“The stories that I tell onstage for thousands of people should be similar to the versions that I would tell for just one person.”

(This reminds me of what a lot of performers and speakers are told — to focus on the one person in the audience instead of the faceless masses. The most recent person I heard this advice from was Jordan Peterson, when asked how he does his massively popular public lectures)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: A couple years ago, a woman asked Elysha why she first fell in love with me. Fortunately I was standing right before her when the question was asked.

Closing: Okay, now you know what a story is and is not. Time to find some good ones.

OTHER COMMENTS

• It was well-chosen of Dicks to call this chapter The Dinner Test. He talks about other things as well here but the Dinner Test is a catchy title that is intriguing, and is the most important tip in this chapter, anyway.

Chapter 3. Homework for Life

In This Chapter

• How to find all the story ideas you’ll ever need through Dicks’ Homework for Life
• Why Homework for Life isn’t just about finding story ideas, it has several important secondary benefits

For Chapter 3, Dicks begins with a story of how he realized that his wife knows him better than everyone in the world. He tells this through a poignant story about his son throwing food, and the doctor advising them to teach him by withholding food, which leads to his wife revealing that she understands Dicks’ own food insecurity due to his terrible childhood, and how this affects the way he treats his own children.

(This all sounds super clinical, so read the book yourself to experience the full skill of the story itself)

The point of this whole story is that the moment when Dicks had this realization was a little moment. But…

“The problem is that we don’t see these moments. We fail to notice them or recognize their importance, and when we happen to see one, we don’t reach out to catch it…We fail to keep these precious moments safe for the future.”

Dicks eventually developed a method to recognize and collect these little precious moments from life, which he calls Homework for Life.

He came up with the idea because he’d started running out of stories to tell onstage, and simultaneously realized that some of his best stories were not the stories about his “big moments,” like life-threatening car accidents, but were rather the “small things” that people could relate to, like realizing his wife knew him best in the whole world.

So what is Homework for Life?

It’s taking a moment at the end of every day and asking:

“What was the most storyworthy moment from my day?”

Dicks would write a snippet — one or two sentences at most — every day in a spreadsheet (with just two columns with the date and notes, and that’s it), including the most story-worthy moment from the day as well as any meaningful memories that came up throughout the day.

The simplicity of the 1–2 lines in a 2-column spreadsheet is key. You don’t want it to get too unwieldy, because you want to do it every day. If you miss a day, it’s easy to miss two, and quit altogether. So keep it short and simple and consistent.

Also, spreadsheeting it makes it easy to sort, copy, cut, paste, and also see overarching patterns in his life. Because some of the things he writes down aren’t full stories in themselves, but they could become an anecdote for a larger story someday.

Here, in the book, Dicks gives an example of an excerpt from his spreadsheet, and then goes on to explain a few of the story moments:

Dicks observed that as he did his Homework for Life, he began to “develop a storytelling lens” that is “sharp and clear.” He started seeing more meaningful moments in life, moments when “your position on an issue suddenly shifts, or your opinion of a person changes forever.”

“The truth is this: I simply see more storyworthy moments in the day than most people. They don’t go unnoticed, as they once did.”

For example, Dicks tells the story of taking his aging dog Kaleigh on a 3am walk because she woke him up wanting to go. Dicks went out in his underwear because he didn’t feel like putting on his pants and it suddenly started raining as cars passed by.

In the past, the discomfort of the rain and the hour plus the embarrassment of being outside in his boxers would have angered Dicks, and he would have picked up his dog and run inside. But with his storytelling lens now firmly in place, he realized that this rainy moment with his dog might be one of the last times he gets to walk Kaleigh in the rain before she passes from old age.

He learned to appreciate the crazy and beautiful moment instead of letting it turn into a forgettable, annoying incident.

“In searching for stories, I discovered that my life is filled with them…with precious moments that once seemed decidedly less than precious. Filled with moments that are more storyworthy than I’d ever imagined. I’d just been failing to notice them…[and as] I started seeing stories in my everyday life, stories began welling up from my childhood that I’d long since forgotten.”

So when you do your Homework for Life every evening, just ask:

• What is my story from today?
• What is the thing about today that has made it different from any previous day?

Even if you’re not a storyteller, doing your Homework for Life can create other remarkable effects.

For example, Dicks talks about a woman who called him crying to say that in 3 months, Homework for Life had changed her life. It made her feel for the first time that she was an important person for the first time. That she can’t wait to get out of bed to see what will make today different than the last.

Once you start seeing the “importance and meaning in each day” you don’t have any 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.”

In other words, Homework for Life (which I personally abbreviate as H4L) makes you more attentive. It slows down time. It relaxes the pace of your life. It helps you not to lose days anymore or rush through life blindly.

Dicks has assigned H4L to thousands of students over the years, but only a few have actually done it. Why?

Because H4L requires “commitment and faith.”

It only takes 5 minutes and it could change your life, but so many people aren’t willing to trust the process, for some reason.

Dicks recounts how when he first started doing H4L, he wasn’t finding very good stories. His “story lens had not yet been focused and refined.”

But he was so desperate for new stories that he “refused to stop.” He “kept doing homework, even when it seemed pointless” and eventually it did pay off.

Similarly, it may take you time to refine your own storytelling lens, but if you believe that eventually you WILL begin seeing these precious moments in life, “you will find your life changed forever.”

Dicks tells the story of a beautiful, fleeting moment with his daughter that he once would have been blind to, but now he can recognize these moments even while in the midst of them. “This will eventually happen for you too,” he says. “If you have commitment and faith.”

(I like his mention of commitment and faith, here. It seems that the most worthwhile things require both of these. Not just H4L, but people who create art, or writers, inventors, people who change the world…The tricky thing is choosing what to commit to, what to have faith in, and sticking with it when the hard times come. If you chose well and stick with it, it WILL pay off in the end. But how do you choose well? In a sense, that too requires faith…)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m eating dinner with my family.

Closing: In addition to my many other jobs, I’m an elementary-school teacher, so I feel like I have the righ tto assign homewokr to anyone I choose. // I choose you.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This is the chapter in the book that changed my life before I even read the book, and I’ll tell you why at the end of this article.
• Also: Note how the title of the book comes from this chapter. I’ve pull-quoted the exact quote in the notes above so you can see it. Pretty amazing that Dicks chose this as the title of the book, because if you take ONE thing away from the whole book, it really would be this one thing.
• This one thing that, as I said, changed my life before I read the book. (There. Now I’ve said it three times. If you’re curious about exactly what I mean, the answer is at the bottom of this article)

Story Break: Naked in Brazil

This is the first story break in the book.

And it’s a rather “meta” story about a time Dicks was telling stories and then giving a Q&A in a school in Brazil.

A girl at the event asked him “why do you share so much of yourself?” And Dicks answered instinctively after a pause to think:

“I think that I’m trying to get the attention of a mother who never paid me any attention and is now dead and a father who left me as a boy and never came home.”

He surprised himself with his own answer, as well as with the thought that he’d never thought to ask himself this question, himself.

“I have stumbled upon the answer to a question I never asked. // That is storytelling at its finest.”

(This reminds me of the quote: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking.” — Joan Didion)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m telling stories to an audience of about seven hundred high-school students at an American school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the summer of 2015.

Closing: The young lady who asked me that question received a prize that day.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This is also why I write. Not Dicks’ answer of a mother who didn’t care and a father who left me, but something like that…and also to find out what I know but don’t know that I know. Or what I think, but don’t realize that I think.
• Not that that is the most worthy and final goal for writing, but it is one of the side effects, and not an unimportant one.

Chapter 4. Dreaming at the End of Your Pen

In This Chapter

• Another exercise for coming up with more cool story ideas

Dicks talks about the reason why he doesn’t dream well — because he was robbed at gunpoint once and had a hard time getting over that trauma. For twenty years.

You can find a video of Dicks telling this story on his Youtube channel: “Storyworthy the Book.”

Dicks’ wife Elysha eventually convinced him to see a therapist, and after two years, he started to relax more and have fewer nightmares.

The point of all this talk of dreams and such?

Dicks states that he can take advantage of a “dreamlike state while I am awake” that helps him come up with tons of ideas for stories. And in this chapter he’s going to share another exercises he uses to brainstorm story ideas. It’s called:

CRASH & BURN

This is basically stream-of-consciousness writing, which “mimics the free-associative thought patterns that so many of us experience while dreaming.”

There are a few rules:

1. Don’t get attached to any one idea. The point is to let the ideas crash the party whenever they want to.
2. Don’t judge any ideas. No matter how ridiculous or nonsensical.
3. Don’t allow your pen to stop moving. Keep writing even when your mind is empty, even if it’s just a list of numbers written out as words.

“The reality of writing [is] the next sentence is often as much of a surprise to the writer as it is to the reader.”

(This exercise is basically like Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages concept, just without the additional requirement of doing it in the morning. He doesn’t cite Cameron, so I wonder if this was an idea he came up with in parallel, or maybe he forgot?)

Dicks recommends doing Crash & Burn for 10 minutes at a time. He demonstrates this process on his Youtube channel and also prints a version of one session in the book itself, putting slashes (/) to separate different thoughts, then afterwards explaining what he was thinking as he jotted down the thoughts that came into his head.

Dicks himself says he has recovered many memories from doing this, and it makes his life feel “more expansive and significant.”

“The reason is simple: We are the sum of our experiences, the culmination of everything that has come before.”

Take 15 minutes to try out this exercise. Dicks recommends doing it daily. It will take more commitment, but if you do it, you’ll have more stories to tell.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I don’t dream well. // When I was twenty-two years old, I was robbed at gunpoint while managing a McDonald’s restaurant in Brockton, Massachusetts.

Closing: I don’t know if my father and I will ever be able to spend much time together or open our hearts to each other, but these letters have been a blessing for me, and, I hope, for him.

OTHER COMMENTS

• One whole chapter for one story-finding technique. It’s a longer one than you’d expect, with the detailed demonstration, but I appreciate that.

Story Break: Storytelling Instruction Can Apparently Be Romantic

This story break is about how Dicks wasn’t terribly happy to hear that one couple had driven for multiple hours to do a daylong storytelling workshop with him, and another couple had come to celebrate their anniversary at his workshop.

This makes Dicks nervous because the bar has been raised quite high. And that’s pretty much the entire “Story Break.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: In 2014, I was teaching a storytelling workshop in Hartford, Connecticut.

Closing: It was also unfairly nerve-racking and set a bar way too high. I can be entertaining for ten or fifteen minutes on-stage, but an eight-hour workshop? Not possible.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Not exactly a story, this, using his own criteria of the Five Second change which he talks about later in this book. More of an anecdote. Not sure why it’s here, although it is a little bit interesting. Besides being another reason for why the reader should trust that he knows what he’s doing, teaching storytelling.
• You could argue that by this point people should trust him, he’s given a few fairly good ideas that can be assessed on their own merit. Then again, this IS still a bit early in the book and the real power-hitting ideas come later, and readers won’t get there unless they trust him enough to keep reading, so if that’s the reason why this anecdote is here, good on him.

Chapter 5. First Last Best Worst: Great for Long Car Rides, First Dates, and Finding Stories

In This Chapter

• A third practical story-finding technique

This chapter includes another new-to-me and pretty-darn-interesting story-finding exercise that is worth the entire cost of this book (second to the H4L exercise above).

This technique was adapted from an idea by The Moth’s artistic director, Catherine Burns.

It’s called, of course, “First Last Best Worst” like the title of this chapter indicates, and it works exactly the way it sounds:

First, you pick a word. Like “kiss.”

Then you ask yourself:

1. What was your FIRST kiss?
2. What was your LAST kiss?
3. What was your BEST kiss?
4. What was your WORST kiss?

…And see what memories you brin up and stories you generate from this.

Do this exercise with a variety of keywords and see if you have any memories that pop up more than once (the signal of a likely story) or if any of these memories could turn into anecdotes or full on stories of their own?

In this chapter, Dicks gives examples of tables where he asks himself these four questions for a handful of keywords and jots down answers in the boxes as a demonstration for readers how this works.

Basically, this exercise is like an improv game. It’s a helpful classroom exercise, as well. Not to mention using it to get to know other people better.

Why do this, though? Why find more stories from your life?

Dicks argues that finding stories fills out your mental map of life. “Moments that once lacked meaning and relevance can suddenly be recognized as critical and essential to your life story.” In other words, you can see your life in a new light.

So at the end of this chapter, Dicks summarizes the three tools for finding stories that he’s just covered in the last few chapters:

1. Homework for Life
2. Crash & Burn
3. First Last Best Worst

He recommends doing all three regularly and you will “find yourself drowning in stories before long.”

(Personally, I’m most impressed with exercises 1 and 3. 2 Isn’t as interesting to me, for some reason, but I’m already doing 1 and planning to do 3 at some point)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I spend a lot of time searching for stories. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

Closing: Your list of potential stories will grow beyond your ability to tell them all. What a wonderful problem to have. // Now it’s time to learn to craft a story.

OTHER COMMENTS

• I summarized/took notes on this chapter a bit out of order, putting the exercise itself up front.
• This chapter and the last are the most revealing of a portion of Dicks’ underlying worldview…which I disagree with and may comment on a little bit at the end of this analysis.

PART II. CRAFTING YOUR STORY

Chapter 6. “Charity Thief”

In This Chapter

• The story of how Dicks solved a gas money problem in an unconventional (unforgettable) way…

Now we move on from finding story ideas to turning those ideas into actual stories.

So in this chapter, Dicks shares a story he calls “Charity Thief.” You can read the whole thing in the book, but in short:

While driving home one day, Dicks pops a tire and has to buy one from a mountain man. This leaves him with no money for gas, so he decides to use his McDonald’s uniform from his job to scam locals for cash by pretending he is collecting money for the Ronald McDonald charities.

He finds an old widower to gives him money and proceeds to tell him about his lonely life now that his wife has died of cancer and his kids live far away and never call.

Dicks, who had been feeling alone and self-pitying realizes that he hadn’t understood what real loneliness is until this moment.

And that’s it for this chapter. Just the one story. But it is a key example for many of the techniques Dicks will be sharing in future chapters.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m starting part 2 of this book with a story because I’ll be using it to model the skills and strategies that follow.

Closing: I leave New Hampshire knowing that I know nothing about loneliness, but also knowing that I never want to know about loneliness the way that man understood it that day and will probably understand it for many, many days thereafter.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This is a great story if we’re talking purely about how interesting it is and how Dicks has crafted it. It’s a terribly sad story (on many levels) if we’re assessing it based on what happened.

Chapter 7. Every Story Takes Only Five Second to Tell (and Jurassic Park Wasn’t a Movie about Dinosaurs)

In This Chapter

• What Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark were TRULY about — it’s not what you think.
• What the Five Second Moment is, and why it matters.

This is another key chapter in the book that I found particularly valuable for storytellers and writers.

In it, Dicks argues that ALL stories are about “a five-second moment in a person’s life.”

This point is so important that Dicks repeats it twice at the start of the chapter.

What is the five-second moment, though?

Dicks’ answer: “The moments in your life when something fundamentally changes forever.”

You fall in or out of love, discover something about yourself or another person, dramatically change your opinion about something, reach forgiveness, acceptance, or despair and resignation — those are all five-second moments.

They are moments that “make great stories.”

“They are the moments that we seek when doing our Homework for Life. They are often small and sudden and powerful. These are the best stories. They are the only stories worth telling.”

(Side note, looking at it from this angle, I think H4L is like mining gold. Every now and then you find a flake, or a nugget, or an entire gold mine…that’s what keeps you digging)

In “Charity Thief,” the story from the previous chapter, Dicks’ five-second moment is when he realizes he doesn’t know the real meaning of loneliness, and never wants to experience the way that old widower did.

“It was the moment when I understood how truly stupid, self-absorbed, and self-centered I was. // That is the purpose of my story.”

(This is a great example of Dicks practicing what he preaches, about telling stories that make you vulnerable. It’s not usually something people do — talking openly about some of the worst aspects of themselves, and not trying to excuse it [too much] either. And yet we ALL have these shameful moments in life. The fact that Dicks is willing to go there is partly why he’s such a great storyteller)

Once Dicks realizes that this is the moment his story is all about, he crafts the rest of the story to point to it. Anything that contributes is polished up, anything that detracts is removed or toned down.

“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.”

(Put another way, you could call this the “theme” of a story)

Unless you are telling an account of some experience that fundamentally changed you in some way, something that will emotionally move an audience, you’re not telling a story, but just a romp — an entertaining, amusing anecdote.

Dicks then gives examples of the five-second moment in Jurassic Park, which ostensibly is about a dinosaur park gone wrong but really is about a paleontologist (Alan Grant) who hates kids but is in love with a paleobotanist who wants kids.

Through the course of the story, Alan is thrust into contact with a couple of kids and grows to like them, ultimately letting go of a once-precious dinosaur bone and protecting the kids instead.

This brief symbolic moment shows his transformation, his evolution. And that’s really what the story is about, not the dinosaur attacks.

(This reminds me of the Core layer of stories, in the Scylighter Schema)

Similarly, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark isn’t really about Indy’s adventures finding the ark, but Indy finding faith which he previously didn’t have. (Read the book to see Dicks’ full explanation of this)

Here, Dicks also previews another life story that he will expand on in more detail in future chapters, a story he calls “This is Going to Suck” about a car accident that almost killed him and the friends who stood in the place of his family to support him in the emergency room.

In other words, before you tell your story, dig for your five-second moment. Moments “when you felt your heart move.”

That is the core of your story.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: 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 — regardless of length or depth or tone — tell the story of a five-second moment in a person’s life.

Closing: That will be your five-second moment. Until you have it, you don’t have a story. // When you find it, you’re ready to begin crafting your story.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Interesting that he references his car accident story but doesn’t really present it in full until later in the book. I wonder if it would have been better if he just inserted the chapter here.

Story Break: This Book is Going to Make Erin Barker Very Angry

In this Story Break, Dicks talks about another storytelling champ, Erin Barker, who told her not to give away their storytelling secrets.

This tickled Dicks, who himself is a competitive storyteller. Which is why he’s won so many StorySLAMs.

And yet, here he is, sharing his secrets in book form.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: Sometime in the second year of my storytelling career, I’m sitting at the bar with Erin Barker, a two-time Moth GrandSLAM champion, one of the finest storytellers I know, and the host of the Story Collider, a storytelling show featuring scientists and science-related themes.

Closing: I wonder what Erin will think of this book. I’m giving away our secrets — or at least mine — in a big way.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Again, not exactly a story, here. He doesn’t even really say why he went against Erin’s advice (demand) and wrote this book. It’s just a slightly amusing anecdote. Perhaps a psychological trick to make readers feel like they are “in the know,”…or not.

Chapter 8. Finding Your Beginning (I’m Also About to Forever Ruin Most Movies and Many Books for You)

In This Chapter

• How to start a story effectively
• How to predict the endings of most movies and books you’ve never seen before

After figuring out your five-second moment, it’s time to figure out the start of your story.

And that will be the opposite of your five-second moment, which is basically your ending.

Knowing the ending informs everything else you do when crafting the rest of the story.

If your moment/ending is hopeful, start with despair. If it’s gratitude, start with ingratitude, and so on.

You can use the construction: “I once was X but now I Y” to figure out your opposites. As in:

• I once was uncertain but now I know.
• I once was afraid but now I am fearless.
• I once was lost but now I am found.
• Etc.

In fact, Dicks says, when you watch a movie, you can usually predict its ending by asking yourself what is the opposite of everything that happened in the first fifteen minutes.

(Giving away all the industry secrets, are we? No wonder Erin is not pleased…)

The thing is, though, a good storyteller can STILL spin a yarn good enough to grab readers’ attention even when they know the ending. That’s the magic of storytelling.

Now, when you’re telling your own story, you often have a mountain of potential beginnings to choose from. Don’t just pick the first thing that comes to mind but make a list and analyze them for “content, tone, potential for humor, and connectivity to the story” before deciding.

Because, as great storytellers know, “the first idea is rarely the best idea.” It may be the easiest to remember, but rarely the best. You need to “fight for your beginnings.”

In fact, Dicks says, he spends more than half of his time crafting stories, searching for the right beginning.

(This reminds me of the advice many bloggers get, about spending much more time than you think — like 50% of the time — coming up with a headline than writing the actual article. Beginnings matter a LOT).

Some tips for beginnings:

• Simplify it. Start as close to the end as possible. Limit time and space so you can better remember your story when you tell it.
• Start your story with forward motion whenever possible. Establish yourself (the main character of the story) as actually physically moving through space so the audience feels like they’re already “on their way” immersed in your story world.
• Don’t start by setting expectations. Statements like “this is hilarious” or “you’re not going to believe this” potentially sets the bar too high, and also ruins surprises.

And there you have it. How to start a story.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: So you’ve got yourself a five-second moment — a moment of transformation or revelation or realization. This is good.

Closing: There are ways to do this too. Ways to keep your audience’s attention firmly in place. Let me show you how.

OTHER COMMENTS

• I like how Dicks’ story tips are all really practical. Starting in physical motion is an idea I never thought about before, but now that I reflect on some past stories I’ve read and loved, he’s right. As is his reasoning for not setting expectations, and starting close to the end — especially for live storytelling.

Story Break: Thirteen Rules for an Effective (and Perhaps Even Inspiring) Commencement Address

In this non-story story break, Dicks includes 13 tips for writing a great commencement address. You can read the book for the full list but my favorites are:

1. Don’t make it about you. Be self-deprecating if you can do it authentically, but otherwise, don’t fake it.
2. Offer just ONE piece of memorable wisdom. It’s better to lodge ONE small, original, useful idea in the minds of your audience than anything. ← This advice Dicks himself highlights as the most important of all the rules.
3. Don’t ask rhetorical questions. They break momentum and displace your speaker authority. And if an audience member answers, it will interrupt you.
4. Speak as if to friends. Your language shouldn’t sound more formal than normal speech or you fail.
5. Don’t describe the world graduates will be entering. You don’t know what that world will be. Everyone has a different path.
6. Don’t quote others. Be quotable yourself. Create something new.

There are other tips on mentioning weather (don’t do it), catering to parents (don’t do that either), and making your audience laugh (do it. Doesn’t say how, but do it).

Dicks ends this section with one “granular idea” that has stuck with him from a speech by Mo Rocca — the idea that today’s people live longer than those of the Greatest Generation, so don’t be afraid you’re out of time. It’s never too late to start somethign new — you have more time than you think.

(Comforting. Not sure it’s always true, but may be more true than we give it credit for)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: 1. Don’t compliment yourself. Don’t praise your accomplishments in any way. It is not your day.

Closing: This is exactly what you want from a commencement speech: one final lesson that graduates (and commencement-speech stalkers like me) can use.

OTHER COMMENTS

• I’m not sure what’s going on with these non-story story-breaks. Technically this could just be a chapter, even if it’s not exactly about storytelling. I figure it’s in here because a lot of his students actually need this information because they have to give something like commencement speeches.

Chapter 9. Stakes: Five Ways to Keep Your Story Compelling (and Why There Are Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park)

In This Chapter

• 5 strategies to infuse your story with stakes
• What purpose dinosaurs serve in Jurassic Park

Dicks begins by saying that Moth StorySLAMs are competitive, which is why the audience wants to stick around until the end, just to see who wins. But it also means that storytellers are more leery of participating for fear of that kind of public pressure.

But Dicks and his wife started their own show, Speak Up, where there IS no competition, so there is an endless supply of storytellers. More than they need.

The point Dicks is trying to make is that “stakes are the reason audiences listen and continue to listen to a story.” What are stakes though? Dicks says they answer questions like:

• What does the storyteller want / need?
• What’s at peril?
• What’s the storyteller fighting for / against?
• What will happen next / how will this story turn out?

For this reason, even though Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is thematically about a man with no faith who ultimately finds faith to save himself and the woman he loves, no one will go to see the movie unless you talk about how he has to “battle Nazis, snakes, booby traps, and evil scientists to save the world.”

Those, Dicks says, “are the things that keep our attention scene to scene.”

Boring stories either don’t have stakes, or the stakes aren’t high enough to hold your attention.

There are techniques storytellers can use to add new stakes or increase existing stakes in a story, and Dicks shares five in this chapter:

1. Elephant
2. Backpacks
3. Breadcrumbs
4. Hourglasses
5. Crystal Ball

ELEPHANT

Next, Dicks says that every story needs an “elephant,” something everyone can see. A “clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery” that tells you “where the story is headed.”

With movies, you almost always know something of what you’re getting into before you watch it. But storytellers “don’t have a trailer.” So you need to present a reason to listen very early on, or risk losing your audience entirely.

That’s your “elephant” — “a reason to listen, a reason to wonder” that “infuses the story with instantaneous stakes.” And as such, it needs to show up within the first minute of your story, ideally in the first 30 seconds.

As an example, Dicks gives two sample story openings. The first lacks the “elephant” the second one has it:

#1

My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum and civility…

#2

I don’t care how perfect my mother was. When I was nine years old, I wanted to disown her…My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum…

You need stakes and wonder to make the audience want to follow you.

(Huh. Just had a random thought. I think this applies to video-making as well. Perhaps more so than writing stories, in some ways, because people’s attention is much more fleeting when it comes to video content. The reason why Youtubers like Mr. Beast are so successful, for example, is he does exactly this — at the start of a video, he does a teaser showing viewers what they are in for, creating curiosity and awe and a desire to keep watching…)

The first opening is a bland character sketch of the mother, but the second opening gives the audience an idea of what the story is going to be, and also makes them ask questions like:

• Why did the person want to disown their mother?
• Will things be okay in the end?
• Was the mother to blame or was the storyteller to blame for this feeling?

As Dicks says: “Three simple sentences at the start of the story change our perception about everything that follows.”

You may think this advice sounds super obvious and simple, but just pay attention to the next time someone tells a story and you’ll see that most people talk for minutes without giving you a cue to where the story is going and why you should listen.

So yes, this strategy is simple, but it’s not obvious (or at least, not as much as one would think.)

Another thing:

Your elephant can “change colors” along the way. Dicks gives an example from his own story, “Charity Thief” (the one where he scams a widower whose wife died of cancer by pretending to be raising money for Ronald McDonald charities, in order to get gas money to reach home).

The story begins with him stuck in New Hampshire with a flat tire and so the stakes set up are: How will Matt get home with no spare tire or money?

But then as the story proceeds, the real point of the story is revealed to be that Matt learns something new about loneliness and how he isn’t the “worst-off person in the world.”

In other words, it’s not really a how-to-overcome-obstacle story at all.

“This is an excellent storytelling strategy: make your audience think they are on one path, and then when they least expect it, show them that they have been on a different path all along.”

“Note that I’m not actually changing the path that the audience is on. It’s the same path we’ve been walking since the start of the story. The audience just didn’t realize that it’s a much deeper, more interesting path than first expected.”

(This is one of the keys to writing a super clever story. Master this skill and you will write a truly satisfying story, whether it’s an overt mystery or some other genre. It makes me think of those roller coasters where people think they’re chugging along on a thick wide wooden track, and then you pick up speed and the “track” falls away to a thin steel rod that makes you feel like you’ve switched rides in the middle of the ride, except you haven’t.

(A couple literary examples that come to mind right away are Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Ender’s Game.

(With HP3, you think the main question is how will Harry escape and/or defeat the escaped convict Sirius Black, only to find at the last minute that Sirius is the good guy, and the real bad guy has been hiding under their noses — literally — this whole time.

(With Ender’s Game, the question seems to be how a group of kids led by one genius boy is going to save humanity from alien invaders, and then discover in the end that the culminating battle doesn’t take place in the expected way, and that the real point of the story is that the humans have misunderstood their alien enemies this whole time…)

According to Dicks’ wife, this is his favorite storytelling technique. She calls it the “laugh laugh laugh cry formula” — ie, the audience thinks they’re listening to a “hilarious caper” and then Dicks pulls the rug out from under them.

This method, he says, is particularly powerful if the end of your story is emotional, sorrowful, heartrending, heavy. To counterbalance all that, Dicks tries to make the start of the story more light, fun, hilarious, joyous. Like starting with a pink, polka-dotted Elephant and ending with one of “varying shades of blue.”

Dicks points to his “Storyworthy the Book” Youtube channel for a couple more examples of Elephants changing colors and asks the reader to see if they can spot the moment when the color changes. (The Promise, The Lemonade Stand)

Then Dicks gives an example from Die Hard, which is ostensibly about how “terrorists take over a skyscraper in Los Angeles, and only Bruce Willis can save the day,” but in reality is about a husband trying to save his marriage.

The filmmakers set up the story in a conversation the main character has with a cab driver where it’s revealed that the wife’s career has gotten in between them. By the end of the film, he saves his wife’s life by removing a rolex watch given as a reward by her boss, symbolically showing how that job is no longer in between them.

BACKPACKS

In Dicks’ words, “A backpack is a strategy that increases the stakes of the story by increasing the audience’s anticipation about a coming event.” The goal is to do 2 things:

1. Make the audience wonder what will happen next.
2. Make the audience experience the same emotion (or similar) that the storyteller experienced in the moment about to be described.

Hitting the first goal is easy, hitting the second is the real doozy.

Dicks gives an example from his “Charity Thief” story:

“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…So I rehearse my pitch, take a deep breath, and walk in.”

(Side note: Because I’ve been analyzing Hunger Games alongside this book, I’m noticing that his voice is somewhat similar to Katniss’. Not that they have the same voice, but that the way Dicks speaks in his stories, and the way Collins writes Katniss’ first-person narration both have that same difficult-thing-done-easily quality that the best performing artists have. You know, like if you’ve ever watched a talented dancer or athlete, they make really hard movements look deceptively easy? Yeah, that.)

At this point, Dicks says, the audience is mapping onto his hopes and fears, knowing the plan he’s prepared. So when the story goes on to show how he gets rejected, the audience feels the same disappointment that Dicks felt on that day.

(This also reminds me of something else I read in another writing book, I believe it was The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass, about how your goal as a writer is not to DESCRIBE emotions, but to EVOKE them in your reader.)

Again, Dicks refers to a movie — this time, Ocean’s Eleven — to demonstrate this. The audience learns what the robbers’ plan is before they make a move, so that you can feel their frustration, worry, suspense, etc., as the characters do.

And Backpacks are most effective when the plan DOESN’T work. That’s where the payoff lies. Because the audience wants the characters to succeed, but “it’s the struggle and strife that make stories great.”

(Boy. You can say THAT again!)

BREADCRUMBS

Breadcrumbs are about hinting at something in the future but only revealing 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.”

Here, Dicks gives an example from his “Charity Thief” story, where he tells the audience that he spots his crumpled McDonalds uniform in the backseat and has an idea.

What idea? He doesn’t say right away. But the answer is pretty unpredictable, and that makes it satisfying.

HOURGLASSES

Slow things down right when you’re about to get to the payoff part of your story.

“When you know the audience is hanging on to your every word, let them hang. Drag out the wait as long as possible.”

Dicks goes back to the “Charity Thief” story to demonstrate how he does this. After revealing that his McDonald’s uniform is going to be part of his plan, he stops the story by “describing things that don’t require a description,” like the look of the house where he’s about to knock on the door.

He also describes the McDonald’s uniform, including “a gray McDonald’s briefcase with a big M engraved on the front like a shield.”

(He includes the word “shield” in order to create a sense of danger, war, more stakes.)

Dicks knocks on the door, and an old man opens it. Dicks describes him too:

“He looks [like] he has all the wisdom of the world wrapped up in him, and in that moment, I know that he knows that I’m about to o something terrible.”

And again, Dicks chose the word “terrible,” because he wanted “a word that would suggest many things [and] cause the greatest wonder in my audience’s mind.”

He then summarizes what’s just happened to drag out the moment even more, and then he finally says the punchline: “Hi, I’m Matt, and I’m collecting money for Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities.”

“Find the moment in your story that everyone has been waiting for, then flip that Hourglass and let the sand run.”

CRYSTAL BALL

This is “a false prediction made by a storyteller to cause the audience to wonder if the prediction will prove to be true.”

In “Charity Thief,” Dicks talks about how, at one point, the man he’s speaking to goes inside the house, and he (Dicks) predicts “I know what he’s doing. He’s calling the police and they will come and arrest me for stealing money from McDonald’s.”

It’s not true, of course, but Dicks predicting his future arrest “establishes wonder about a future event” in his audience.

Crystal Balls work because “we, as human beings, are all prediction machines. So “when telling stories, recounting those in-the-moment predictions is critical.”

But be careful about when you deploy your Crystal Balls. Do it only when the prediction seems possible, the guess is reasonable, and the prediction “presents an intriguing or exciting possibility.

…

Dicks wraps up this section with a gentle warning that these five strategies above won’t save a boring story, but they can help improve boring aspects of an otherwise solid story.

And if you aren’t sure if your story has enough stakes raised high enough, Dicks recommends asking yourself three questions:

1. Would the audience want to hear your next sentence?
2. If you suddenly stopped speaking, would anyone care?
3. Are you more compelling than video games, pizza, and sex at this moment?

If the answer is no to any of the above, then raise the stakes, using any of the five strategies above, or one more element that doesn’t raise stakes, but keeps audiences engaged:

Humor.

Dicks addresses humor in more depth in Chapter 16, but for now, remember “the goal of a storyteller is not to tell a funny story. The goal is to tell a story that moves an audience emotionally.”

So he recommends using humor only if you can’t raise the stakes in some other way.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: There is a good reason that hundreds of people attend Moth StorySLAMs once a week in New York City (not to mention around the world), but only about fifteen or twenty of them put their names in the hat to tell a story: // Stakes.

Closing: Humor is optional. Stakes are non-negotiable.

OTHER COMMENTS

• The title case of some of these chapter titles are oddly inconsistent. Like capitalizing “are” here, but not “About” in Chapter 7…

Story Break: Zombie Brother

In this story, Dicks talks about how his brother Jeremy quit his job, changed his phone number, and disappeared in 2007.

In 2012, while Dicks was getting ready to perform, he felt a tap on his shoulder and discovered that it was Jeremy, come back to life.

Apparently, a woman who’d read Dicks’ first novel heard about his missing brother, and just so happened to work for Jeremy. She convinced Jeremy to attend Dicks’ show and reconnect.

Later, Dicks and his brother had dinner together with the woman who reconnected them, and at the end of the night, when Jeremy bent to hug his niece, Dicks’ daughter Clara, Dicks warned him that Clara cried whenever anyone other than her parents hugged her.

But Jeremy gave Clara a hug and she didn’t cry. “It was a damn miracle,” Dicks says.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: My brother, Jeremy, went missing back in 2007.

Closing: You never know who you’re going to meet at a storytelling show.

OTHER COMMENTS

• It’s interesting to try to apply the lessons learned so far to all of the stories that Dicks tells in between the chapters.

Chapter 10. The Five Permissible Lies of True Storytelling

In This Chapter

• Just what the title says. “5 permissible lies” in storytelling
• Also, why storytellers HAVE to lie

Dicks begins this chapter with a surprising statement:

“Charity Thief” is full of lies. You may argue by the end of this chapter that they aren’t really lies, but I like the word lie because it grabs people’s attention. I’m a storyteller. Words matter.

But before he jumps into the “five permissible lies in storytelling,” Dicks gives 3 important caveats:

1. Storytellers only lie for the audience’s benefit, not personal gain.
2. No story is totally true because memory is slippery. Every time you review a memory, you alter it a bit. (This is why Dicks often contacts relevant people when preparing a story)
3. Storytellers never add something to a story that wasn’t already there.

Now, that said, here are the Five Permissible Lies of Storytelling.

1. OMISSION: “If you were to tell every single thing in the story, it would never end.” Side note: People (who aren’t relevant to the story) are the most often omitted.
2. COMPRESSION: When storytellers push time and space together to make the story easier to “comprehend, visualize, and tell.”
3. ASSUMPTION: If there’s an important detail you need to specifically include, but forgot, you can make a reasonable assumption about what it is.
4. PROGRESSION: This is when a storyteller changes the order of events in a story to make it “more emotionally satisfying or comprehensible to the listener.”
5. CONFLATION: Push all the intellectual and emotional transformation of an event into a single time frame to make them more entertaining.

OMISSION

For “Omission,” Matthew Dicks reveals that the real story was very different from the version he shared earlier. In reality, he knocked on three doors, and the old man widower behind the blue door was his third attempt (attempts 1 + 2 were successful, too. He already had enough money from his first two victims).

The reason why he knocked on the third door is because he actually picked up a hitchhiker named Randy who encouraged him to do it (Randy didn’t make it into the final story because while he’s a funny character, he takes away from the point of the story — those details “don’t make you understand [Dicks’] understand my five-second moment any better.”

Not just that, but in Dicks’ story, he felt guilty for ripping off three people, so he started collecting dollar bills in change, and paid back his debt several times over until one day his wife asked what he was doing and he told her the story and she told him to let it go and he did.

Dicks didn’t end the story here because “the real ending of that story…is terrible,” which he learned when he lost a storytelling contest by including that real ending. Later that night, the founder of The Moth, George Dawes Green, found him and told him “You ruined that story!…No one wants redemption. Everyone wants the clown.”

Why?

Because “a story is like a coat…Our goal is to make that coat as difficult to remove as possible.” Dicks says he wants the story to linger in people’s minds and hearts. And when he ends with his “redemption” it “makes it easy for the audience to remove the coat.” Because they feel like Dicks did a terrible thing, but he made up for it, all debts are paid.

But if Dicks’ “leaves the world broken,” by not telling the ending, he doesn’t clean up those loose ends and keeps the audience “tossing and turning over my story.”

Similarly, Dicks tries to end his story “about ten pages before the reader would want the book to end” to keep the story alive in their hearts and minds long past the last page. Because “the best stories are a little messy at the end….[and] give rise to unanswered questions.”

(Interesting. I am not sure how much this applies to written stories, though, because unclosed loops could make people give up on a book or author. Think about the controversial TV series — Lost)

Two years later, Dicks retold the “Charity Thief” story at another competition, and left out the “redemption ending”

(To be strictly honest, I’m not sure paying back the money counts as a redemption, although he keeps calling it that in the book. Because what he stole from the people wasn’t so much the money, as it was their trust, and that is something that is near impossible to replace — which is why Dicks’ paying back the initial amount did not assuage his guilt, and he continued to send money after paying the actual money.

(At least he should have gone back and apologized to the people face to face, but he didn’t do that, which is why there’s still something left undone here. But he’s right, dragging out the story wouldn’t have helped it, structurally.)

COMPRESSION

“Placing scenes closer together…heightens the drama and suspense of a story,” Dicks writes.

You can compress both time and geography, because “there is never room for needless complexity in a story.”

Especially when you’re telling your story in real time. Because those stories are like rivers — they keep flowing even if your audience is struggling to understand what’s going on, so for their sake, simplify as much as you can.

ASSUMPTION

Dicks relates a story where he and his brother were playing in a rusted car. He couldn’t remember what car it was anymore, but he made a reasonable guess that because the story took place in the 1970s, it was probably a station wagon.

PROGRESSION

Here, Dicks retells another speaker’s story about asking to spread her brother’s ashes on the Baltimore Oriole’s ballpark, Camden Yards. After an emotional conversation with the groundskeeper, he allowed her to spread some of the ashes at the foot of the dugout “so that every time a player runs onto the field, he would carry a little bit of her borther with them.”

She also spread his ashes in two other locations, but none were as resonant as the Camden Park one, so she rearranged the story to make that one last, and one of the more ridiculous locations first, because “it’s always better to make people laugh before they cry. It hurts more that way.”

(How sadistic!…but effective, for a storyteller ;D)

“Change the order of the story if the real-life order did not adhere to narrative expectations. The world does not always bend to serve our stories best, so we must sometimes bend reality instead.”

(This reminds me of the quote attributed to Mark Twain, something like: “Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t”)

CONFLATION

As an example of this “storytelling lie,” Dicks shares how he developed a crush on a girl named Heather in sixth grade, joined the marching band and track team with her in seventh grade, tried to get her attention in eighth and ninth grades, was in biology class with her in tenth grade, and beyond.

But when he tells the story, he stops with biology class and says that he did everything he could to be obnoxious to his teacher to get Heather’s attention, but it didn’t work, of course, and that’s when he realized he would never win Heather.

The truth is, that feeling had been coming on for a long time, and he kept trying for a while to reach Heather even after tenth grade, but instead of saying all that, Dicks condenses it into ONE moment of realization.

Movies do this all the time, for example: “A lot of stuff is often crammed into one or two days of movie time, when in real life, no one ever has days so packed with action.”

Take Ocean’s Eleven, for example. A real-life heist would take years of planning. But as Dicks says: “years are boring. Days are thrilling.”

In other words “Shorter stories, onstage and in real life, are always more entertaining.”

…

The only caveat with using these “permissible lies” in storytelling is if someone who was in the story is listening to you. Dicks says that his wife Elysha often interrupts his retelling of stories to point out details he deliberately missed.

Of course she does it because she doesn’t want her memories to be altered by his retellings, but as Dicks says, these “lies” are permissible in the service of telling better stories.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: It’s time for me to come clean: I lied to you.

Closing: I want my memories of that day to remain accurate too. Except when I’m telling stories.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Interesting that he calls these lies. In fiction, it’s often jokingly referred to as “lies” as well. But I wonder if it is fair to actually call storytelling lies. Lies seems to also imply some kind of volition. This may be a philosophical question beyond my scope right now, however…

Story Break: Doubt is the Enemy of Every Storyteller

Five times in his life, Matthew Dicks has had people doubt the veracity of his story.

These moments were hurtful for Dicks, because he’s dedicated his life to telling his stories. “To doubt my stories is to doubt my life,” calling into question “the struggle and pain and terror and embarrassment that I have suffered…it hurts more than you could imagine.”

Dicks himself, when he hears a story he doubts, just keeps his mouth shut about it because he knows how much it hurts to be doubted, and how much courage it takes to share your most private, painful moments in public.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: For me as a storyteller — and perhaps a human being — one of the worst things that can happen is to have someone doubt my story.

Closing: Words rarely hurt me anymore. A lifetime of fight and struggle have blunted most of their power over me. But these words of doubt — these small moments of skepticism — are piercing and permanent.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Ironic that this section on “audience unbelief” comes right after his chapter on “permissible lies.”

Chapter 11. Cinema of the Mind (Also Known as “Where the Hell Are You?”

In This Chapter

• How and why to create a sense of setting for your audience.

“A great storyteller creates a movie in the minds of the audience.”

Or at least, that should be the goal. To “create a cinematic experience [for] every listener.”

Again, Dicks emphasizes that this tip is not as obvious as one might thing — “if it were, storytellers would do this all the time.”

Instead, Dicks notices that many storytellers make themselves the center of attention rather than the story.

How? By cracking jokes, inserting amusing or observational non sequiturs, stepping outside the story’s time line, asking rhetorical questions of the audience, etc.

In other words, they don’t “present a fully realized cinematic experience.” Instead, they “give a scene here or a scene there, intersected by unnecessary or poorly formatted exposition that ruins the flow.”

Or they start stories by “pontificating and proselytizing.” And here, Dicks gives some examples:

“Love is a beautiful thing when it isn’t killing you.”

“There are two kinds of toddlers in this world: those who raise your hopes for humanity and those who belong in a cage.”

“I used to think that I understood my mother better than anyone in the world, but now I know that mothers are like oceans: deep, dark, and full of secrets.”

(These are actually pretty well-written sentences, I think Dicks came up with them himself. They’re both eloquent and amusing)

The problem is, stories are NOT supposed to “start with thesis statements or overwrought aphorisms.”

Your goal is to tell a story that listeners can “see in their mind’s eye at all times.” And in order to do that, there is one rule to follow:

Always provide a physical location for every moment of your story.

Because “if the audience knows where you are at all times within your story, the movie is running in their minds.”

If the audience can’t visualize what’s happening, where, you’re no longer storytelling, but lecturing. Or reading an essay. If you’re being funny, you’re doing stand-up comedy.

Here, Dicks gives an example by telling a story about his grandma twice. Once with location details, once without.

The only difference between both stories is just that he adds: “I’m standing at the edge of my grandmother’s garden, watching her relentlessly pull weeds from the unforgiving soil…”

With the location addition, it sounds more like a story than an essay.

Think of it as if you were a movie director. Without the detail about the garden, the movie would open on a black screen with a voiceover about the grandma. Because there’s nothing going on.

As Dicks points out: “It’s almost impossible to imagine my grandmother, because there is no place to imagine her in. At best you might picture an ethereal image of her floating in space. More than likely, you’re not picturing anything at all. You’re [just] waiting for [the storyteller] to engage your imagination more fully.”

The story Dicks goes on to tell about his grandma is that she was a mean woman who pulled his loose teeth in a cruel way. So starting in the garden makes sense both because that’s where she spent a lot of time, and also because her pulling weeds foreshadows how she pulls his teeth later.

Again, this is an easy tip, but it can be a bit tricky at times. For example, in the “Charity Thief” story, Dicks needs to give a lot of background info to the audience. he does this by situating himself in a parked car in a New Hampshire Citgo gas station, and thinking through those details.

And halfway through his list of background info thoughts, he “resets the location” by mentioning it again, “in case the audience has forgotten where I am.”

There’s no real action happening in this scene, but at least there’s “something to look at because you know exactly where I am. You can see me. I’m a young man sitting behind the wheel of a motionless vehicle, staring into a future that is bleak at best…the film never stops.”

A lot of inexperienced/ineffective storytellers give necessary background info with intro sentences like:

• “You have to understand what was going on in my life at the time…”
• “Let me tell you about my finances in 1991…”
• “It would have been nice to be able to call friends and family for help that day, but I couldn’t. Here’s why.”

(What I like about this section is how Dicks shows not only what TO do, but also what NOT to do.”

In movies, as Dicks points out, narrators don’t appear on screen to fill in backstories in the middle of scenes. They use flashbacks instead. Or dialogue, voice over, dream sequences. Either way, the camera is still focused on a specific place in the story.

That’s what you want to do with your story too.

Dicks relates how he once had a student who needed the audience to understand photosynthesis in order for his story to make sense. But stopping the story to give a science lecture ruined the experience. So Dicks advised him to teach the audience about photosynthesis by telling the story of the first time he learned it himself, or a time he taught it. Use a flashback, in other words.

In other words:

“Make sure that every moment in your story has a location attached. Every moment should be a scene, and every scene needs a setting.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’ve talked about movies a lot so far. Perhaps you’ve noticed. There’s a good reason.

Closing: It’s the simplest, most-bang-for-your-buck strategy that I have to offer.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This idea of painting a visual image in your story is one I’ve heard before, but Dicks’ interpretation of it is clear and helpful.

Chapter 12. The Principle of But and Therefore

In This Chapter

• Why “and” is not good connective tissue for storytelling

As a fifth grade teacher, Dicks created an exercise called “One-Sentence Weekends,” because his students want to share their weekend experiences, but he doesn’t have time to hear all their stories (nor does he want to).

So by teaching the kids to condense their weekends into one-sentence, five-second moments, he’s teaching them to discover what is or isn’t interesting to other people, to improve their grammar, and to listen actively to each other.

“It was while I was listening to one of these stories that it finally occurred to me why I despise so many of them: the word and.”

And Dicks has found that even experienced storytellers will sometimes do this too.

Instead, the ACTUAL “connective tissue” in any story should not be “and.” It should be “but” or “therefore.” Or some variation thereof.

Because stories that connect events with “and” have “no momentum.” Things just happen as if on a treadmill. But when storytellers use “but/therefore,” they signal change, and allow their stories to zig and zag in interesting way.

Here are a few other synonyms for but/therefore:

• Instead, except, instead of, therefore, because, so, as a result (and these can be implied as well. As in: “they called the police. [As a result] we got in so much trouble.”)

Here, Dicks retells his “Charity Thief” story yet again, bolding the connective tissue words to show where they are and how they add to the story.

The point is to make the sentences, paragraphs, and scenes either oppose the previous [sentence/paragraph/scene] as in: “it was this but now it’s this,” or they “compile the previous [s/p/s] into a new idea, as in: “this plus this equals this.”

He gives a quick example of this:

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

The first example feels more like a story. In one sentence, Dicks takes people up a mountain (I loved Heather since sixth grade), pauses at the top (but as much as I loved her), then falls down the back of the metaphorical mountain (she was never mine).

As Dicks taught this technique to his students, one said:

“I feel like I know where to go next in my stories. When I’m stuck, I just look for the but and the therefore.”

Later on, Dicks was directed to an online video of the creators of South Park who described discovering this principle in a writing class at NYU.

“If the words and then can be placed between any two scenes…You’re f**d.”

Because it’s the “causation between each scene that makes a story…it’s the interconnectedness of moments that brings meaning to an otherwise linear collection of events connected only by time and space.”

(This quote is more profound than just its immediate application to live storytelling. It applies to our lives as well, philosophically, teleologically. Having a reason for being, understanding conflict, that’s what makes our lives feel less random and worthless and more purposeful and weighty).

Stories, Dicks says, are not “simple recounting of events” or a report of “moments over time.” They are about crafting a “representation of events that are related in such a way to demonstrate change…in the life of the teller.”

And now Dicks moves to another principle: The Power of the Negative.

“Oddly, the negative is almost always better than the positive when it comes to storytelling.”

In other words, it’s better to say what something or someone is NOT than what they ARE.

For example:

• I am dumb, ugly, and unpopular

Does not work as well as:

• I’m not spmart, I’m not at all good-looking, and no one likes me.

Why?

Because the second sentence “contains a hidden but.” It presents two possibilities, a binary — the potential of being smart and not smart, and so forth.

It’s really saying “I could be smart, but I’m dumb…” As Dicks points out:

“By saying what I am not, I am also saying what I could have been, and that is a hidden but.”

This may seem like a little thing, but it makes a significant difference when you’re telling stories.

There are some times it’s better just to use a simple, positive statement, like “Heather despised me,” if you’re using it akin to a punchline at the end of a joke, or when you’re answering simple questions, but for other things, see where you can use the Power of the Negative to your story’s advantage.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: Every Monday morning, I invite my fifth-grade students to share their One-Sentence Weekends.

Closing: The audience feels as if they’re going places as they climb and descend the hills of possibility.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This is actually a fairly popular piece of writing advice, shared by everyone from Brandon Sanderson to Lisa Cron to Jennie Nash, and so on — the idea that in stories, events must be linked together through a cause-and-effect chain, rather than the word “and.”
• But it’s good for Dicks to repeat it here because there’s no way of knowing how well-versed his audience already is in the storytelling literature, and it’s a very important point.
• It’s also helpful that Dicks keeps using “Charity Thief” as his example story to demonstrate all his techniques. By now we are familiar with the overall tale, having seen it referenced so many times, which makes it easier to focus on the demonstration.

Story Break: Storytelling Makes You Just Like Family

Once, when Dicks was hired to perform for a company party, the CEO of the company that had invited him picked him up at the airport, and invited him to a family Christmas party that he had just come from.

Dicks agreed, and when he arrived, the partygoers greeted him enthusiastically. They knew more about him than he’d expected, and Dicks realized that as a storyteller, “you develop an inverse relationship with your audience.”

The more stories you tell, the more people get to know you, and this means that “you can find yourself celebrating Christmas with a [friendly] family” of strangers.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I flew into Chicago on a stormy day in December 2016 to perform for the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District holiday party.

Closing: It also means that you can find yourself celebrating Christmas with a family in Illinois, who welcome you in like one of their own, while you struggle to keep track of who is who.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This is so true. It’s called parasocial relationships and has been happening a lot more in this generation thanks to Youtube, which has jumped over the usual famous-people gatekeepers and turned anyone with a camera and some charisma into celebrities with power and influence sometimes greater than the most famous stars of yesteryear.
• It’s easy to come to like people you see on screen, even if they have no idea who you are. They put their personalities and opinions and daily lives out there, and you easily feel closer to them than even your real-life friends, who you don’t spend as much time with, nor “know” as much about (granted, everything we see on screen is curated, and we know that, intellectually, but subconsciously, I’m not sure it matters).

Chapter 13. “This is Going to Suck”

In This Chapter

• The story of Dicks’ near-death experience which actually isn’t about the near-death experience itself

In this chapter, Dicks relates the story “This is Going to Suck” (which can be found on his youtube channel) because he plans to reference it in following chapters.

The story is about the time Dicks was buying a Christmas present for his friend, and an acquaintance found it odd that he was a “guy buying a present for another guy,” because “guys don’t do that.”

But on his way home, Dicks is hit by a car and ends up in the emergency room, having died briefly and been brought back in the ambulance on the way there. His deadbeat parents check on the car instead of him, so they don’t make it to his side.

But just before Dicks is wheeled into surgery, his friends show up, and they fill up the waiting room, standing in the doorway shouting their love and encouragement to him as he’s rolled into the operating room.

And Dicks realizes that it is perfectly appropriate to give your friends Christmas presents because that’s what you do when your friends are the family that you can count on.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m going to tell you another story now.

Closing: You can give your friends surprise Christmas presents, because they give me the best one I’ve ever received. They give me family, and until I meet my wife fifteen years later, they are the only family that I have. And it turns out they’re the only family that I need.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Dicks really has the most poignant stories. It’s not JUST that he is great at the craft of storytelling, but he’s had experiences that not many others have had (and thank God for that), which make for great (if tearjerking) stories.

Chapter 14. The Secret to the Big Story: Make It Little

In This Chapter

• The difference between big and small stories
• The reason why big stories are harder to tell than small stories

Dicks says that the “big stories” — the ones about dying from a car wreck and being brought back to life — are actually hard to tell. Because the goal of storytelling is to connect with your audience, and few people have had such experiences in their own lives.

The point of storytelling is “about bridging the gap between you and another person by creating a space of authenticity, vulnerability, and universal truth” and big stories get in the way of that connection, because “the big parts of these stories are often singular in nature. Unusual. Unique. Hardly relatable.”

Here, Dicks runs through a list of the crazy situations he’s been through as an example of “unrelatable incidents”:

• He was stung by a bee at age 12 and his heart stopped. Paramedics had to resuscitate him.
• At age 14, he was awakened by firefighters who carry him from his home which is on fire.
• At age 22, he was arrested and jailed for a crime he didn’t commit.
• At 36, he was attacked online by a person who compared him to the Virginia Tech killer and tried to get him and his wife fired by contacting the mayor, town council, school board, and 300 families in his district.

But as Dicks reveals, none of the above stories are about those purported incidents. They all have underlying “real stories,” just as the story of his car accident is not really about the accident, but about “his friends in the waiting room.”

The story is not about his “near death experience” in the ambulance, because he was unconscious and couldn’t remember that “experience,” anyway.

Instead, it’s a story about the friends who loved him (in contrast to the family that let him down) when he needed them most.

And that is something pretty much all people CAN relate to.

“This is the trick to telling a big story: it cannot be about anything big. Instead, we must find the small, relatable, comprehensible moments in our larger stories. We must find the piece of the story that people can connect to, relate to, and understand.”

Dicks has told this story many times, he says, and people cry almost every time. But they don’t do it while he’s describing the accident. They do it when he talks about his friends filling the waiting room outside the emergency room, and standing in the doorway, cheering him on.

Even Dicks has a hard time not crying when he gets to that part of the story.

“Little moments hidden inside big moments. That’s what we need to find to tell a big story well.”

(This piece of advice is worth its weight in GOLD. That’s not literally possible, but you know what I mean. It makes you want to go through all the stories you’ve ever loved and search for the “little moments” like that.)

You can tell any story, dicks says, “if you find a way to make the story smaller than it seems.” Which is hard to do.

As another example of “the small within the big,” Dicks tells the story of the birth of his son, which was a dangerous, messy event. But the real story isn’t about the travails of his wife and son, it’s actually about “the horror and the beauty of the unexpected.”

Because, as Dicks tells it, before his son Charlie was born, his three-year-old daughter Clara wanted a sister desperately. Despite her parents warning her that it might be a boy, Clara wanted a baby sister so badly that when Charlie was born (after the aforementioned dangerous travails), she “collapsed in wails of genuine agony and sadness.”

But then her father picked her up and introduced her to her baby brother in their mother’s arms, and…

“…without warning, this ball of rage and anger melted in my arms, and she fell instantly in love with him.

“It was the first and only time in my life that I witnessed love at first sight. I will never forget it.”

(This is such a well-crafted line. Dicks truly has a way with words. It’s another thing that makes him a great storyteller.)

The point of the story is that Charlie’s birth was unexpected in some ways. His father wasn’t expecting how difficult the birthing would be, and his sister wasn’t expecting him to be a boy. But the unexpectedness of his arrival turned out to be both horrific (his dad) and beautiful (his sister), and that dichotomy of the unexpected is a universal experience and truth many people can relate to.

Dicks ends by relating a list of “big stories” that he hasn’t yet told, because they’re “hard to tell.”

Small stories are easier.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: “This Is Going to Suck” is what I call a big story.

Closing: Moments no one would have recognized had they witnessed them first-hand. But they are easier to tell and just as good as the big moments. Maybe better.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This is another story tip I have heard several times before, but it’s a good reminder here!

Story Break: Brevity is the Soul of Wit

Dicks kicks off this story break with an amusing church sign he once saw, which said:

“Come hear out pastor. He’s not very good, but he’s quick.”

The point is, shorter is better. Because:

“The longer you speak, the more engaging, amusing, and captivating you must be. That’s a tall order.”

(Side news: I’m currently using a comprehensible input method to learn a language, and as part of that process, listening to a LOT of personal stories told in the target language. He’s absolutely right. Anything over 10 minutes tends to cause my mind to wander, especially if the speaker isn’t keeping Dicks’ storytelling techniques in mind — which they almost always aren’t. It’s a great lesson to be reminded of.)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: One of my favorite church signs that I’ve ever seen says: “Come hear our pastor. He’s not very good, but he’s quick.”

Closing: The longer you stand in front of an audience — whether it be a theater or a boardroom — the more entertaining and engaging your words must be. // So speak less. Make time your ally.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Okay, this may be nitpicky but…this section isn’t a story. There’s an anecdote about a funny church sign, but that’s it. So I feel utterly deceived and disappointed that it is called a “Story Break.” It is more like a “Storytelling Short (Literally Short) Tip Break.”
• (Just kidding. It’s fine, I just wanted to point that out ;D)

Chapter 15. There is Only One Way to Make Someone Cry

In This Chapter

• The power of surprise, and how to create it (gave that one away)

Dicks begins this chapter by talking about the two times he made his wife cry:

1. When he proposed to her in her favorite place — Grand Central Station.
2. When he broke the news of selling his first book and receiving a significant advance for it.

Both of these moments, he said, made her cry because of the element of surprise.

Actually, all emotional moments come from surprise, Dicks argues. In real life, emotional reactions can come from other things, like:

• Grief (ie, the death of a neglectful mother)
• Prolonged periods of nervousness or excitement (ie, watching your favorite sports team win the game after a season of anticipation)
• Physical pain (ie, a tooth cracking open)
• (These parentheticals are all Dicks’ own examples in the book, by the way)

But in stories, you only have words, which you must use strategically to “create and enhance surprise” for the audience.

How do you enhance surprise?

Contrast.

By “contrast,” Dicks means making the “punchline” as different as possible from whatever precedes it. In “This is Going to Suck,” his story about his near-death experience and his friends showing up in the waiting room, he does this by painting a picture of the snowy, pure December world right before his car crash.

“I’m establishing expectations so I can quickly upend them.”

(This is something I’ve been thinking about with storytellers. Nothing should be an accident.

(As a personal example of this, I recall rewatching the Disney movie Mulan years ago and realizing that there is one line where Mushu the mini dragon is arguing with Cri-kee the lucky cricket, and he says something like:

(“Oh yeah? How about I pop off one of those antenna and then we’ll see who’s the fool, me or you!” …only when he says this, he points to Cri-kee, and then to himself. In other words, his pointing is going the opposite direction from what he’s saying. It’s quick, it’s subtle, and it was hilarious when I saw it.)

Another contrast Dicks creates in the story is the contrast between his parents and his friends.

Before getting to the accident, he describes himself carrying the present and walking alone in the December day, reflecting on his evil stepfather and neglectful mother. After the accident takes place, he talks about how the nurses don’t know his name, his parents check on the car before checking on him, it’s two days before Christmas and he feels utterly alone.

So when Dicks zags in the story and says: “But I’m not alone, because…” sometimes audience members will start crying before they even hear the reason just because he’s “primed the pump for surprise.”

HOW TO RUIN A SURPRISE

But, Dicks observes that people tend to ruin surprises in their stories, and here are the common ways they do that:

1. Present a thesis statement prior to the surprise
2. Failing to take advantage of the power of stakes to enhance/accentuate surprise
3. Failing to hide critical information

Here’s how those three mistakes happen:

1. Thesis statement.

If Dicks had opened his story with “This is a story about a time in my life when my friends became my family” or “This is a story about a waiting room full of surprise guests,” that would have ruined the emotional impact of his story completely.

And yet, Dicks observes, people do this all the time, in an effort to grab people’s attention with a loaded statement or because that’s how school taught them to write: thesis statement, then supporting evidence and details.

Storytelling, on the other hand, is the opposite: You’re supposed to start with evidence and MAYBE include the thesis statement AT THE END, only if necessary.

(As an example of this, Dicks tells the story of how his grandmother brutally pulled out his loose tooth by yanking it off by hand with a string. In one version, he starts with the thesis statement: “My grandmother was a sadist.” In the second version, he ends with the same line.

(The second version is much better because audience members don’t know where he’s going with the story until the grandmother yanks the tooth, and that thesis statement then becomes a rather funny punchline.)

“In storytelling, our job is to describe action, dialogue, and thought. It’s never our job to summarize these things.”

(And there you have it. The difference between a story that “preaches” at you, and a story that compels you to see its worldview much more convincingly)

2. Power of stakes.

Another mistake storytellers make is not accentuating their surprise using stakes.

In the “Charity Thief” story, Dicks enhances the surprise of having his request to borrow gas denied by starting with a detailed plan to beg for gas. Without this detail, the audience would default assume that no gas station attendant is just going to give a random stranger gas just because he asked.

But knowing the plan ahead of time (plus Dicks’ hopes and dreams) makes the audience root for Dicks, which sets them up to experience the disappointed surprise that Dicks himself felt when the attendant refuses.

In the same story, Dicks talks about seeing the crumpled McDonalds uniform in his car and “coming up with an idea,” but he doesn’t REVEAL the idea until the last minute. Because blurting out his idea right there ruins the surprise.

3. Hiding critical information.

Moving on to the next surprise technique: Conceal key information by…

1. Hiding the Bomb in the Clutter: Aka, smothering it in irrelevant details.
2. Camouflage: Using laughter to distract the audience.
3. Distance: Place the key info as far from the payoff as possible.

With “hiding the bomb” in “This is Going to Suck,” Dicks needs to convey a crucial piece of info — asking the nurse to call in to his workplace at McDonalds to let them know he can’t make it.

This is the call that alerts Dicks’ friends to his predicament and gets them to start a phone tree, rounding up all his other friends to show up at the emergency room.

But Dicks doesn’t want the audience to know that yet, so he buries this information in a litany of other details, about nurses picking glass from his forehead, surgeons wiring his teeth, a nurse asking for his contact info, etc.

He makes the call request sound like “another medical professional doing another job.”

Regarding “camouflage,” he hides the crucial call request by making his request funny:

“I ask the nurse to call McDonald’s…[and the nurse] looks at me as if I’m crazy, which I kind of am. I was dead twenty minutes ago and now I’m worried about work, but that drive-through does not run well without me, and they’re going to have to get someone in.”

This makes people laugh and think that this is just the storyteller’s attempt at a joke.

(In reality, Dicks says, storytellers never actually want to be funny. They want to be REMEMBERED. It’s the comedians who want to be funny.)

Dicks gives another example of humor hiding the key point by telling the story of how an ex-girlfriend’s father fed him (Dicks) his own pet rabbit in a rabbit soup.

Before getting to that story’s punchline, Dicks cracks jokes about trying to win girls over by adopting a rabbit to make himself seem more nurturing. He also uses the rabbit to try to impress his girlfriend’s dad, who owns a whole hutch of rabbits.

What Dicks didn’t know was that the man was raising the rabbits as food, not pets, but this detail is hidden in the hilarity of his attempts to impress the girlfriend and dad.

This creates horror and surprise in the audience when he finally tells them what became of his rabbit, whom he gave to the girlfriend’s father after getting tired of raising the rabbit himself.

And Dicks adds another story, about his divorce from his first wife, and his realizing how no matter how bad he has it, someone else has it worse. He disguises the point of the story by talking about a funny anecdote where a newly-wedded couple name their dog Matti, after him.

When that couple breaks up, the bride runs off with the best man and keeps the dog, moving into the apartment right under Dicks’ apartment. That’s when he realizes: “perhaps I didn’t have it so bad after all. Somewhere in the world there is a man who has lost his wife, his best friend, and his dog.”

(A pretty terrible-sad story, it turns out, just like the rabbit one, but I can see how he’s using both contrast and humor to punch up the surprise of the punchlines. Side note, I recently listened to dozens of “stories with surprising endings,” which one guy collected from multiple sources, and the vast majority of them have kind of dark/sad/negative endings. It’s interesting that psychologically maybe either we’re drawn to darker stories and/or it’s easier to make darker stories surprising and memorable)

Another way he makes this story work is by increasing the distance between the dog and the final reveal/payoff. The dog being named after him is placed near the start of the story, and the bride moving in with the best man is at the end so that the audience doesn’t realize that the dog is a key detail in the story, and instead “realize that it’s Matty the dog at the last possible second, only after I’ve identified the woman who is moving into the apartment as the bride.”

The idea is:

“Matty the dog is moving in below Matty the man. This moment usually gets a laugh.

“But the surprises aren’t over yet, though the audience thinks so. It’s not until I fail to see the groom but rather spot the best man that the audience puts two and two together and the laughter quickly transitions into audible groans. Emotional response achieved by preserving the surprise in the story and maximizing it to its greatest effect.”

Dicks wraps up his story with a handy summary:

1. Avoid thesis statements
2. Heighten contrast between surprise and moment-before-surprise
3. Use stakes to increase surprise
4. Hide important info to pay off later (like bombs) by:
   Obscuring them in irrelevant details
   Placing them far away from the surprise
   Build a laugh around them to camouflage their importance

(The sub-topics in number four isn’t listed in the order they’re presented in this chapter, but oh well.)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’ve made my wife cry twice in my life.

Closing: When possible, building a laugh around them to further camouflage their importance.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Dicks takes a long time to tell the examples of how he made his wife cry, but he does it in such a great storytelling way that it is a pleasure rather than a chore to read through them. Basically all the stories he includes in this book.
• Also, I’m not sure I agree that ONLY surprise in stories makes people cry. I distinctly remember the last time I cried while reading a story was on the anniversary of 9/11, when someone posted on X the story of Todd Beamer and the other passengers of United Air Flight 93 — the plane that was attacked by terrorists, just like the two that crashed into the World Trade towers — but whose brave passengers decided to sacrifice their own lives by taking down the terrorists rather than allowing them to reach their destination.
• I’d read the story before, so it wasn’t surprising, anything that I read that day. And it wasn’t like I was anticipating an emotional reaction — in the busy-ness of life, I’d actually almost forgotten it was the anniversary of 9/11. But the story made me cry because I felt sorry that the courage and love of Beamer and the other passengers were not rewarded in this life, that they made the ultimate sacrifice and saved God-knows-how-many other people by their actions, and all we have here now is the memory of them, rather than the people themselves. It was bittersweet.
• Another random thought: Taking notes on this chapter makes me realize I don’t like the way the second half is structured.
• All was going well during the setup, when he’s talking about making his wife cry twice…
• But then Dicks starts by talking about ways to make surprise work using “contrast”…then suddenly transitions to how people make it NOT work, instead of following the original pattern. It’s jarring, like breaking sentence parallelism. I’d say, pick one and stick with it.
• I’d go with the “how people make it NOT work” in the spirit of what he talked about earlier on how “not-something” is more effective than a simple “something.”

Story Break: The Return of Mathieu

In this story, Dicks relates an incident from his student-teaching days.

As a TA for a first grade class, he had one student who was particularly difficult. The boy’s name was Mathieu, and his mother had died earlier that year. But in a fit of exasperation, Dicks once told him: “If you don’t stop it, I’m going to call your mother!”

He had forgotten about the boy’s mother’s death in his anger and was sorry for it.

Later on, Dicks told this story at an event, and a man came up to him and said he knew Mathieu. Long story short, he got Dicks back in contact with Mathieu, who didn’t remember the incident or Dicks himself.

“So much for leaving an indelible mark on those kids. Still, my fear that I had somehow scarred Mathieu for life was gone. That burden had been lifted.”

Dicks lost the storytelling competition that night, but he felt that what he had gained from the experience was worth much more.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: When you stand on a stage in front of hundreds of people and tell a story, strange connections can be made.

Closing: I lost by a tenth of a point, which always stings. But I had won something much greater that night.

OTHER COMMENTS

• It’s so interesting that Dicks is now telling stories and telling stories, and the results and experiences those experiences brought him. Very meta.

Chapter 16. Milk Cans and Baseballs, Babies and Blenders: Simple, Effective Ways to be Funny in Storytelling (Even if You’re Not Funny at All)

In This Chapter

• How to be funny, and why it’s not super important if you’re not

Dicks starts by saying he can’t make you (the reader) funny, but the good news is:

• Good stories don’t need to be funny
• You can still craft a story with funny moments even if you’re not a “funny person.”
• Sometimes stories are just naturally funny even if “you’re not funny at all.”
• Stories should NEVER only be funny, anyway. You want the listener to go through a range of emotions over the course of the story, and you can’t do that if people are just laughing the entire time.

As Dicks points out, people who attend comedy events rarely remember the jokes they heard by the next day, and certainly not a week later.

“A story, however, can stay with you for the rest of your life.”

(SO true. And this is one of the reasons why I’ve been compelled to be a writer, I think. The way other stories have impacted me and the understanding of story power in general)

In other words: “Humor is an enormous asset in most stories, but it is not required and should be used strategically whenever possible.”

Then he transitions to how and why to actually include humor in your stories:

1. Start with a laugh
2. Make them laugh before you make them cry
3. Take a breath
4. Stop crying so you can feel something else

START WITH A LAUGH

A laugh within the first thirty seconds of a story does 3 things, Dicks says:

1. Signals to the audience that you’re a good storyteller and know what you’re doing
2. Serves as an “unspoken signal that you have the floor…control over the space” which can stop potential interruptions from the audience
3. Regardless of how intense the story may be, the storyteller is (you are) okay now, it was in the past, and it’s going to be okay

In general, laughter early on puts everyone at ease (including you).

LAUGH BEFORE CRY

Another good place to make people laugh is right before “collision” so that “the resulting violence hurt[s] more.”

Because contrast is king in storytelling, and laughter is a great contrast to something awful.

TAKE A BREATH

Another time to make the audience laugh is right after the accident.

Dicks gives an example of this with his story about the car accident, where after the impact, a guy from a third car takes a look at him and says “Dude, you’re f**d.” And Dicks comments on the guy’s line with: “It is the most accurate medical assessment that I will receive that day.”

The point is to break the tension and let the audience take a breath, reset.

There were a lot more reactions to his accident that day, but Dicks deliberately chose the funny one because it worked for the story he was trying to tell:

“That’s the job of a storyteller. Make good, strategic choices, and then make the most of those choices.”

STOP CRYING TO FEEL SOMETHING ELSE

You can use laughter to make the audience stop crying if you need them to cry again for another reason. In Dicks’ story, the audience is primed to cry when…

• Hearing that his friends are in the waiting room instead of the parents who abandoned them
• He ends the story by saying “you CAN give your friends surprise Christmas presents, because they give me the best one I’ve ever received.”

The second moment touches on the universal theme Dicks wants to share: “People can pick you up when you’re down. They will fill in the gaps left by others, however large those gaps may be. Just because your family lets you down doesn’t mean you’re alone.”

Not to mention, you don’t want your audience weeping for a long time anyway. So implement that humor strategically!

Humor can also help you seem more likable, camouflage something you need to bring out later, and keep an audience engaged. But the important thing in your story is not the humor, it’s the heart.

“You must end your story on heart,” not a laugh. Because “we listen to stories to be moved.”

As for how to be more funny? Dicks hasn’t figured out how to teach humor perfectly, but it has something to do with delivery, at least. Also, it’s based entirely on surprise.

So here are two ways to achieve humorous surprises:

1. Milk Cans and a Baseball
2. Babies and Blenders

MILK CANS & BASEBALL

This is referring to the carnival game where they stack a triangle of milk cans for people to try to knock down with a ball. It’s Dick’s way of talking about setups & punch lines.

The more milk cans in the triangle, the greater potential for a laugh. Also important — how you deliver the ball.

The key is to save the funniest thing for last, not blurt it out first.

As an example of this, Dicks uses a story called “Homeless and the Goat,” where he talks about his homeless days and how he lived with a Jehovah’s Witness family that owned a pet goat.

Just mentioning the goat is funny because it’s unexpected. So when Dicks describes his living situation with the JW’s, he saves that for last:

“I sleep in a pantry off their kitchen that they’ve converted into a tiny bedroom. I share this room with a Jehovah’s Witness named Rick, a guy who speaks in tongues in his sleep, and the family’s pet goat.”

Even the last three words are a kind of milk can setup. When Dicks says “indoor” and “pet,” people’s brains are already predicting dog, cat, hamster, etc., so the goat is surprising and much funnier than whatever they’re anticipating.

Another example of a great setup is when Dicks once compared his mom’s car to a “box of Pop-Tarts.”

Pop-Tarts is much funnier than another vehicle. Because it’s a food item, and thus unexpected. Plus the word itself sounds funny.

• Words with a K sound generally sound funny.
• Oddly specific words are funny (Raisin Bran instead of cereal)

BABIES & BLENDERS

This is the idea of pushing together two things that rarely or never go together.

For example, Dicks describes his young son by starting with how precious and adorable he is, and then says: “But when it comes to food, my sweet, angelic, three-year-old boy is a little a**hole.”

The contrast of three-year-old with the insult is unexpected, so it gets a laugh. Same with Dicks’ story about his grandmother pulling his teeth, and him describing her as a “sadist.” Grandmothers and sadism rarely go together, so it’s funny.

The basic idea is to play the game “One of these things is not like the other.”

As an example, Dicks cites a storyteller named Steve Zimmer who describes how his family was not invited to the neighborhood Hawaiian luau, so they hosted their own family barbecue, featuring: “Zimmers, pineapple-flavored ham, and despair.”

Another example of Babies and Blenders is exaggeration (oh goodie, another leech word that I always have trouble spelling… >.< ;D)

Dicks gives the example of describing a Christmas tree his wife chose as “seven feet wide and three feet tall.”

Dicks notes that exaggeration may be easy, but still requires some thought and intention to execute well. He found, for example that 7 ft wide x 3 ft tall is funnier than 9×4 or 5×2.

(I like how Dicks constantly reinforces the importance of craft, intention, not going with the easiest thing or first idea. This is a common theme in this book, and a good one, because readers need the reminder).

Comments & Analysis

Opening: First, some hard truth: I can’t make you a funny person.

Closing: Humor is optional. Heart is non-negotiable.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Humor is one of the trickiest things to do well. I’m glad Dicks addresses it here. And yes, surprise is key to humor. It’s actually interesting he cites surprise as the key for both crying and laughing. There’s probably a philosophical though in there somewhere, but I’m not equipped to suss it out just yet…

Chapter 17. Finding the Frayed Ending of Your Story (or, What the Hell Did That Mean?)

In This Chapter

• How to conclude your story

This chapter begins with Dicks’ account of participating in a competition marching band, attending band camps every summer and getting hazed every year (“John Hughes got it right. These were not times of unity and acceptance in public high schools.”)

During one hazing incident, three boys cornered 14-year-old Dicks, put him in a bathtub, and started to smother him in flour and water in a process called “doughboying.”

Dicks couldn’t fight back physically, so he started insulting his attackers, resulting in him getting even more badly beaten by a particularly sadistic bully named Eddie while the other two guys walked away.

Then he interrupts this story to talk about how he sometimes does a workshop with students which begins with him letting them pick a story idea from his list of 500+ ideas (which he’s accumulated from years of H4L). Then he turns that idea into a full-fledged story before their eyes.

“It’s the most highly rated part of my workshops: Students have the opportunity to watch me work on a brand-new story, just as I do in real life.”

(Yes. This is a really good point. people LOVE to see behind the scenes. That’s part of the reason why I loved Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood reruns as a kid before Youtube took off, and how Studio.com got its start and became successful — it’s not just teaching people how to do XYZ like the MasterClass online course platform, but actually showing students the way pros do their thing, from start to finish.)

This process, however, isn’t Dicks’ favorite, since he has to create a “shitty first draft” in front of a watching audience, and it’s a messy process.

And now Dicks brings this back to the opening story “Eddie in a Bathtub” by saying that one year, his students chose this story for the live demonstration. It made him groan inwardly because this story was a five-second moment, a memory that lingered, but he didn’t know why.

In that kind of situation, what do you do?

Dicks advises telling the story aloud “as honestly and completely as possible…the overly detailed version” which can help you discover its meaning.

In Dicks’ case, he figured out that the story meant two important things:

1. It was the first time he’d learned that “people will turn their backs int he face of evil and walk away rather than taking a stand.”
2. It was the first time he felt that “the world was a fundamentally unsafe place” where people will hurt you for “traditions and payback.”

Problem is, stories can’t be about two things. (Or “have two meanings,” as Dicks puts it)

(This is an interesting point. I think it’s particularly true for the kind of stories Dicks tells, whereas in a novel you have more time and space for multiple themes. But even then, it’s better to focus and condense).

Dicks had to pick one, make that the ending, and then use that to come up with his beginning.

• If he chooses “the world is fundamentally unsafe,” his beginning needs to start with how “people are basically good and the world is safe.” (Innocence to cynicism)
• If he chooses the “people turning their backs” realization, he will have to start with “people can be depended on in times of need.” (Faith to loss of faith)

(This is a lot like what Lisa Cron has writers do in Story Genius, regarding “the lie” that the main character must face and overcome in their story. This is also an element in the Story Grid process. There truly is nothing new under the sun. Only things that are new to you).

Actually, though, Dicks can tell both versions of the story, just not simultaneously. From this one incident, he can create two different stories which start and end differently and include different highlighting details.

The point it: Telling a story can often help you figure out your own life and psychology as you work on the story to help it make sense for others.

Re-immersing yourself in the moment and recounting everything you can recall can help you “find the meaning behind those nagging moments from…life.”

Dicks then tells people about something he does with his dad: they write letters, and Dicks always keeps one letter unopened until he gets the next one. Why?

“It wasn’t until Elysha asked me what was in my father’s letter that it occurred to me that my ritual with his letters was odd. Something that I was unwilling to tell her about. Something that I didn’t understand.”

He says that when he asked himself “Why do you do the things you do?” He realized it was because his dad left him early in his life and every time he shows up again, he fears it will be the last time. But “if I keep an unopened letter from my father, he can never leave me again.”

This process has led him to understand himself a little better, and also stumble on universal hidden truths that can make a great story.

Like Dicks, you can tell yourself a story to understand your own behavior and personal history.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I was a member of the Blackstone Millville Regional Junior Senior High School marching band.

Closing: The solutions often make for great stories and provide us with opportunities to more fully understand ourselves. To make meaning out of who we are from the stories we have lived.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This is why storytelling matters. To some extent, it helps you make meaning out of your life, to make sense of memories that you still have, but don’t know why you have.
• But also: This chapter is purportedly about endings, but actually the main point of the chapter isn’t REALLY that much about endings. He already talked about how to do the ending earlier, with the five-second rule.

Story Break: Reconnecting with My Mean Old Elementary School Principal

Dicks once told a story involving his third grade principal. He’d stolen a classmate’s stamp catalog and had to confess and be punished for his crime.

He uses that incident now as a story about speaking a difficult truth or admitting to a mistake.

After telling the story, Dicks heard from a former classmate that the principal was still alive and well, and Dicks contacted him.

His principal didn’t remember the event, but filled him in on some other details. Dicks reflects that stories have the power of bringing people back into your life. So tell stories, because you never know what might happen.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: In 2016, I told a story at a Moth GrandSLAM at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn about a time when I had to face down the principal as a third grader.

Closing: Tell your stories. On stages or in living rooms or at dinner tables. Share them with friends and family and people willing to listen. You never know what might happen.

OTHER COMMENTS

• This story is similar to some of the previous ones, specifically the Mathieu one. It reinforces the “why does it matter” of storytelling, but not as powerfully as some of the other examples.
• Still, it’s nice to hear that his principal still remembers him (although not the incident — which is a good example of how different people remember things differently because we have our own perspectives and biases affecting the way we see things)

PART III. TELLING YOUR STORY

Chapter 18. The Present Tense is King (but the Queen Can Play a Role Too)

In This Chapter

• What POV to use in your stories.

Chapter 18 begins with Dicks’ story of going on a trip with his family in a train. His five-year-old son Charlie needs to pee, but psychologically can’t do it in a train restroom, they are too gross for him.

He tries four times, but keeps failing, which makes him feel bad about himself.

Dicks interrupts the story to show the reader how he’s making them feel the suffering of father and son by relating the story in present tense, but later when he tells of teaching Charlie to pee standing up, he uses past tense instead of present, because it’s a flashback/backstory. So he needed to shift tenses to indicate that.

Basically, present tense helps when recounting moments of heightened emotion/increased gravity, backstory is better with past tense, which creates a sense of distance.

In other words, try telling your story in present tense, and see if you can do it well naturally. But if it feels awkward, it’s okay in past tense as well.

Dicks ends the chapter with a call-out box warning readers not to practice telling stories in front of a mirror.

It encourages attention on your physical appearance, which you DON’T want. Instead, practice in front of other people, or pictures of people.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m writing this chapter on an Amtrak train from Washington, DC, to Hartford, Connecticut.

Closing: Better to tell your story well from the past tense than poorly (or unnaturally, or stressfully) from the present tense.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Oh boy. I just analyzed a book by Orson Scott Card on POV, it’s interesting to hear Dicks’ take on this.
• Also: when I write a novel, it’s often in third person past. BUT my first step is to “tell myself the story” which I do in third person present. Interesting.

Story Break: A Storyteller and a Magician

This is Dicks’ story about meeting David Blaine, the magician.

He was at a Moth Ball in 2015 and was introduced to the magician who wanted to record his story in his phone.

Dicks almost didn’t realize it was David Blaine, at first, but when he did, he got a free card trick, and Blaine’s contact info for more chatting about storytelling. His wife missed the meeting and is still sore at him about it.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: Elysha and I are dancing at The Moth Ball in 2015 when a Moth staffer approaches and asks for me to follow her.

Closing: We say good-bye, and I go and find Elysha. I tell her what she just missed. She’s still angry to this day.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Moral of the story: Storytelling can get you in close proximity with other interesting people.
• Reminds me of the line from Proverbs 22: “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” It makes you think about what kind of work you would like to be skilled at…?

Chapter 19. The Two Ways of Telling a Hero Story (or, How to Avoid Sounding Like a Douchebag)

In This Chapter

• How to tell a personal success story without bragging unattractively

Telling a story about your success is hard to do well, because “the truth is this: failure is more engaging than success.”

(A universal truth — story listeners are sadists. No, not necessarily, of course. The thing is, people prefer listening to negative stories because stories help us learn how to live our own lives and we want to learn how to avoid making the dumb mistakes others make…)

But if you want to tell a success story, Dicks advises doing two things:

1. Malign yourself
2. Marginalize your accomplishment

Why?

For one, people love underdog stories. Plus it’s more surprising. (Remember what we said earlier about surprise?)

“A crushing defeat is expected. An unbelievable win is a surprise.”

You want your audience to root for you, to expect you to lose but hope for you to win. Which is why Bruce Willis is “outnumbered and barefoot” in Die Hard, for example, or why “Jack is from the wrong side of the tracks in Titanic.”

Another thing:

“human beings prefer stories of small steps over large leaps.”

Because overnight successes can be disheartening for listeners. So instead of talking about a massive and complete accomplishment, try telling the story of a SMALL part of the success, one step.

As an example of this technique, Dicks relates a quick story about connecting with one of his shy students (a girl named Lisa) through a Monty Python quote.

1. He maligns himself first, by starting the story with an incident of accidentally hitting a student in the head with a shoe
2. He also marginalizes his accomplishment by pointing out that he only accidentally stumbled on one of Lisa’s favorite things, and that he had failed other shy students in the past.

Even a really cool accomplishment like climbing Mount Everest should be about something else — learning to trust others, finding inner peace, discovering a previously unknown source of strength, etc.

That way you can NOT come across as arrogant, and better connect with your audience.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: No one likes a braggart. // If you’re religious, perhaps you know Provebs 27:2 “Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth.”

Closing: Summiting Mount Everest is an adventure story. Changing your life by summiting Mount Everest is a great story.

OTHER COMMENTS

• They say writers are suckers for punishment. I think live performing storytellers are more that. Being vulnerable and telling personal stories, especially in this age of internet, ubiquitous cameras, and hyper-connectivity takes a lot of chutzpah!

Story Break: “Fine” is Apparently Not a Good Way to Describe My Sex Life

Dicks tells the story of how he met Dr. Ruth Westheimer at a speaker’s event. The doc asks him about his sex life and then gives him tips for improvement. His wife is not impressed.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m backstage at a TEDx conference at Kripalu Institute for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Closing: She sounds annoyed. She’s clearly not as excited about this as I am.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Literally, this story is about as short as the above summary of it is.
• Also: See comment below in wrap up section.

Chapter 20. Storytelling is Time Travel (If You Don’t Muck It Up)

In This Chapter

• Six tips for creating story magic

Dicks starts by saying he is not spiritual or mystical, but the one thing he is a little hokey on is, of course, stories:

“Here is what I believe. In its best form, storytelling is time travel…my goal as a storyteller is to make my audience forget that the present moment exists.”

Your goal as a storyteller is to transport them into the world of the story.

But suspension of disbelief is a fragile bubble you don’t want to pop. Here’s how to avoid bubble popping:

1. Don’t ask rhetorical questions.
   (Think how movies never do this. Don’t turn your storytelling into a “Q&A session”)
2. Don’t address the audience or acknowledge their existence.
   (Avoid lines like “you guys, you won’t believe this!” Storytelling isn’t call-and-response)
3. No props, ever.
   (They pop the bubble of suspended disbelief)
4. Avoid anachronisms.
   (For example, when using metaphors)
5. Don’t mention the word “story.”
   (So avoid common lines like “That’s a story for another day” or “long story short”)
6. Downplay your physical appearance as much as you can.
   (Try to “increase your likelihood of becoming a disembodied voice in the mind of the audience”)

Dicks says that an audience member once told him: “Listening to you tell a story is like listening to an audiobook.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I am not a spiritual person. Nor am I one drawn to mysticism, transcendental planes, or otherworldly notions.

Closing: An audience member once told me, “Listening to you tell a story is like listening to an audiobook.” Exactly what I wanted.

OTHER COMMENTS

• All great tips, and some are usable in writing as well, which is what I’m primarily interested in.
• Good stories make magic. Magic is best served through sleight of hand. Don’t let people see how the trick works.

Story Break: I Berate Storytellers at the Worst Moments

Dicks talks about giving too much unwanted advice to a newer storyteller.

She complains that he is berating her too much, then does well at the storytelling event, and Dicks says it is “not thanks to him.”

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m sitting in the wings with storytellers at one of our biggest Speak Up shows of the year.

Closing: She performs brilliantly. Truly. She is vulnerable and hilarious and heartbreaking. She is beautiful. But it isn’t any thanks to me.

OTHER COMMENTS

• A good lesson — don’t teach those who don’t want to be taught. Either because they’re not ready to hear it, or because they’re right and you aren’t the right one at the right time to teach them.

Chapter 21. Words to Say, Words to Avoid

In This Chapter

• How to cover your you-know-what as a storyteller

This chapter begins with Dicks’ story about being attacked by a small group of anonymous people who clipped the lines out of context from his blog posts, created a 37-page packet of accusations, and demanded that he and his wife both be fired.

Dicks was placed on administrative leave for three days to conduct an investigation. He was eventually cleared, but that summer, the packet was sent to 300 families in his district. It created a firestorm in his town and threatened both his and his wife’s careers.

Ultimately, the parents of the children in Dicks’ class were given the option to pull their children from his class or not. But all 23 families chose to stay. And 20 more families requested their children be added to his class.

Dicks says that his students’ parents knew and trusted him. And even his blog, which sometimes was controversial, never included anything vulgar or named his school.

That’s what saved him.

And in storytelling, you need to be careful of these things as well.

So here’s a bit of advice from Dicks about what NOT to do when telling stories:

1. Avoid profanity
   (Unless you’re quoting someone, it’s “simply the best word possible,” in moments of extreme emotion, or for humor. Otherwise, swearing is lazy)
2. Avoid vulgarity
   (Don’t repulse your audience)
3. Try not to mention real people’s real names
   (Change names to protect identity…Unless you want to call out a truly bad person, which Dicks does when he names his evil stepfather, Neil McKenna)
4. Avoid celebrity / pop culture references
   (It dates you, alienates part of your audience, and pops the “time travel bubble”)
5. Don’t do accents
   (You run the risk of seeming racist. Unless you are mimicking the accent of a parent or grandparent, or an accent from the culture in which you grew up. When in doubt, eschew the accent!)

And that’s it for this chapter.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: In 2007, a small band of terrible human beings excerpted about ten years’ worth of my blog entries and created a thirty-seven-page packet designed to make me look like a violent, sexually deviant person who was unfit to teach children in a classroom.

Closing: When in doubt, don’t do an accent.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Very helpful advice, no doubt garnered from real world experience. Most of it is common sense, but as they say, common sense is not that common.

Story Break: The Weather Sucks, So Don’t Talk about It

Talking about weather is boring and not entertaining. Don’t do it.

As Dicks says: “One of my primary goals in teaching storytelling is to make the world a more interesting place.” And talking about the weather is “the antithesis of this ideal…the enemy of interesting”

(This is actually a really interesting motivation, and a good one)

Comments & Analysis

Opening: As I write this, it is snowing outside.

Closing: My humble suggestion: Avoid these conversations at all costs. Change the subject. Do not engage. Walk away if necessary. You will be the happier, and the more interesting, for it.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Again, not a story. Could have been included in the chapter preceding, not sure why they decided to make it its own story break.

Chapter 22. Time to Perform (Onstage, in the Boardroom, on a Date, or at the Thanksgiving Table)

In This Chapter

• How to perform your story

There’s a difference between telling a story to yourself, and telling it to a real audience on stage.

Dicks recounts telling a story where he lost a little of his emotional control, turning angry, and completely blacking out after the telling (not literally, he just couldn’t remember the experience afterwards).

His therapist explained that he hadn’t “mentally prepared” himself to tell that story to that audience.

Dicks remarks that he has seen storytellers freeze up on stage, painfully, but that The Moth’s artistic director, Catherine Burns, once told him that she never worried about him freezing up like that because “you could certainly mess up your story, but you never stop talking, so I know you’ll eventually find your way back.”

“As long as a storyteller keeps telling a story, all is well.”

(I feel really bad for people like this. Having been a performer in my previous life, freezing on stage is one of the most horrific experiences and biggest fears you have)

Part of the issue for people who freeze is nervousness. Which isn’t all bad. Sometimes a bit of the jitters can serve you well. Help you connect with the audience. Make them root for you.

(As a music teacher once told me: “nervous” is not in your dictionary. It’s “excitement.” You’re using it to perform better)

But here are some tips for performing:

1. Don’t memorize the story
2. Make eye contact
3. Control your emotions
4. Learn how to use a mic

DON’T MEMORIZE THE STORY

You’re not an actor who has to memorize lines. It’s hard to be authentic that way. Instead, just focus on three parts:

• The first few sentences
• The last few sentences
• The scenes in between

Dicks says he doesn’t memorize his stories, but rather the places where the story takes place.

(This is a lot like the Memory Palace technique. Human memory is great with locations, above other things)

Dicks usually doesn’t have more than 7 scenes in a story.

MAKE EYE CONTACT

You don’t have to eyeball everyone in the audience, but pick at least one person to your left, right, then center, people who are smiling, nodding, laughing. Make eye contact with them and the people around them will feel like you are connecting with them too.

CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS

Don’t relive your story so much that you get too emotional. A little is okay. Weeping outright is not.

Dicks also recommends repeating certain emotionally powerful sentences over and over to “inoculate yourself” against them.

LEARN YOUR MIC

If you know how to use your mic, you can cut through the noise with your voice, control the pace of the performance.

Find and expert and practice, Dicks recommends. Here are some quick tips:

1. Even with a mic, you need to project. Try to talk to the back of the room.
2. Adjust the mic on the stand before you start. Don’t rush the process.
3. If given the option to use a mic or not, do it.

And that wraps up this chapter.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: As I’ve said, I’ve only been nervous while performing twice in my life.

Closing: I simply assume that there is a hearing-impaired person in every audience, so if asked if I want to use a microphone, I always say yes.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Straightforward, short tips. Not much to say here.

Story Break: The Solitude of the Storyteller

This is the story of how Dicks accidentally terrifies a newbie storyteller by saying how alone they are on stage, with no fellow theater actors to support you.

Luckily, she performed fine.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: I’m standing onstage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

Closing: I win my fourth GrandSLAM that night, but I’ll always wonder if that storyteller thought I was messing with her head. // I wasn’t. I really am an idiot.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Yep, writing is solitary too. Just in a different way.

Chapter 23. Why Did You Read This Book? To Become a Superhero!

In This Chapter

• Final encouragement from the author

Dicks paraphrases a memoir by filmmaker Kevin Smith, who said “anytime a person is speaking to a group of people, in any context, the speaker has a duty and an obligation to be entertaining.”

But it’s not just an obligation. It’s an opportunity.

Dicks once consulted with an engineering firm whose CEO told him he’d rather have a bad engineer who communicated well than a good engineer who couldn’t. Because engineering is more teachable than communication skills.

“You must entertain, engage, and inform. every single time…When you are entertaining, people learn better. You convey informatio more effectively. You will become a better teacher, presenter, coach, salesperson, trainer, CEO, professor, parent, and dinner companion.”

Ask yourself — what is your hook, your reason for people to pay attention to you?

“Every lesson requires a hook.”

(Every piece of communication requires a hook, really)

As a teacher, Dicks says, storytelling helps students trust and connect with their teachers: “When your students love you, they will learn, even if they despise the subject.”

Dicks also talks about how after telling his stories, he’s had people come up to him and tell him their secrets. Your willingness to talk about vulnerable stories is what makes others feel safe to tell you their own secrets.

Storytelling is a superpower, especially in these highly distractible times. They can “inspire and inform,” make people “see the world in a new way…feel better about themselves.”

And now, this superpower is offered to you. All you have to do is practice by collecting and telling your own stories.

Comments & Analysis

Opening: In his memoir Tough Shit, filmmaker Kevin Smith writes that anytime a person is speaking to a group of people, in any context, the speaker has a duty and an obligation to be entertaining.

Closing: All you need now is to practice. Begin collecting stories and telling stories. // Become the storyteller I know you can be.

OTHER COMMENTS

• Final sentence a bit weak, but suitable.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Why I Rated This Book 5 Stars

I use this criteria to rate every book (out of 6 points per category):

Star ratings:
1 star = Basically, trash. Or worse.
2 stars = Only worth it if you really like the topic.
3 stars = Average.
4 stars = Quite Good.
5 stars = Worth re-reading more than once.
6 stars = Life-changing.

3. Craft ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍ ✍

Is this work is well-written, and are the ideas clearly and skillfully presented?

Really great. Not mind-blowing (6 stars) but really great, even outstanding (5 stars, maybe 5.5 except I don’t do half points with my ranking system).

There were a few moments where the structure of a chapter had me scratching my head a bit, but other than that, Dicks really is the consummate storyteller. The stories he includes in his book are all super-well-crafted and well-told.

All in all, an easy (that is, non-burdensome) read, well done.

2. Concept 📖📖📖📖📖📖

Is this an interesting concept, well-executed? (Are implicit and explicit promises paid off?)

LMA/LDB: This is a LEARN + DO book. But DO is the primary thing.

This is one of the most helpful and practical books on storytelling I’ve read in a long while. And definitely the best I’ve read on live performance personal storytelling.

Dicks really condenses some of the most valuable and useful lessons in these few hundred pages, with very little fluff.

Also, I love the way he interweaves actual stories within this book, so that you see both theory and practice. He tells readers what to do, then shows how he does the thing himself, with his own personal stories.

It’s fantastic show-and-telling.

My one teeny tiny complaint with structure is that many of his so-called “Story Breaks” aren’t stories. They’re random bits of loosely related ideas or anecdotes or advice.

I don’t mind them being there, but the fact that they’re called STORY breaks bothers me a little. Just not enough for me to take off a star because the rest of this book is so helpful.

1. Core ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Are the worldview, themes, and arguments of this work true, edifying, and worth learning?

By default, any useful book on storytelling for me has a solid core, because I think stories are a hugely important part of a meaningful life, and so any book which aims to teach others how to tell better stories is a book I appreciate.

Humans are teleological, despite loud voices to the contrary, and our penchant for story demonstrates that. Meaning anyone who genuinely teaches others about story, storytelling, and how to be better storytellers, is doing a real service for that person’s life and view of self, others, and their world.

But one (not insignificant) thing:

There are certain worldview issues in this book that I disagree with because I believe they are fundamentally untrue to reality. The primary one is the casual way Dicks deals with sexual issues.

It probably won’t affect most readers of this book, however, because most people (including myself, to a troubling degree) have developed a blind spot to this after years of pop culture conditioning, which is sad.

The world tries to disciple everyone into thinking that sexuality is just another merely-physical largely-inconsequential bodily function like eating or farting, but everyone knows deep down it’s not.

The problem is, too many people have spent way too long living as if it is, and therefore they’re blind to it now, blind to how tragic and disturbing it is that so many people DO live this way, as well as the myriad and overwhelming negative consequences of that kind of attitude and lifestyle.

A few people manage to scrape together a relatively healthy life in spite of it all, but so many (especially young people, and including myself) have been deeply and permanently hurt and damaged by this worldview.

So let’s just say that this is not a book you want to hand to your younger child, if you have one who reads and wants to tell stories. Just summarize it for them and that should be good enough. And if you’re an older reader, take the storytelling nuggets and don’t let the ubiquitous casual attitude toward sexuality allow you to start treating it casually yourself.

LED Assessment

How did this book Lighten, Enlighten, or Delight the reader (that would be moi, in this case, since I’m writing this review ^^)?

I would say this book was enlightening (very much so) and delightful (quite a bit). The former more so than the latter. It was lightening as well, in some ways — by sharing his own vulnerable, often painful, stories, Dicks really does lighten readers’ loads by making them feel a little less alone.

In some cases, this might be a bit OVER done, because his early life is so awful it could make readers feel like they have no right to feel bad about the things they have suffered through in their own lives — which has its pros and cons.

But overall, I would say this book has been primarily enlightening for me, especially in the area of writing, which is a rare find.

*Side note: How did this book change my life before I even read it?

Well, I first heard of Matthew Dicks on a podcast, and in it, he summarized one of the key lessons from the book, the idea of Homework for Life.

The idea struck me like a two-by-four and I immediately recognized this as a practice I wanted to try. Ever since then, I’ve been taking the time to jot down at least a line or two each day of my life in my journal, and it’s been a literally life-changing practice.

Not in the sense that I’ve become a 100% completely different person, but it changed 1% of something I do every day as a writer, and that matters.

It took me a few more months after that podcast to pick up Dicks’s book and actually read it, and I found so many more useful tips and ideas in it besides the Homework for Life.

However, so far, that’s been the one that instantly changed my behavior, which is why I say this book changed my life before I even read it.

Writing Tips & Practical Application

Because learning doesn’t happen until you change something you do…

• Mine your life for stories: Pick a number, and think of that number of times in your life when something important changed — something you thought or were or did. And then use Dicks’ techniques to see if you can craft a short punchy story with it.
• Apply to writing: Take a written story you are working on or have written in the past and see if you can apply Dicks’ story techniques to tighten and strengthen it.

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