Storytelling is the most underrated skill in history. An okay engineer with storytelling skills will get a job that a great engineer without them fails to get. To many employers, those hard skills are teachable; soft skills like storytelling are “unteachable”. 

Recently, I read one of the greatest books on breaking down the skills of storytelling – Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks. I wrote down detailed and structured notes while reading, and I hope you will find it helpful too. 

But before you dive in, and if you don’t plan to read the whole thing, just remember this: 

A story is about CHANGE. The main character MUST experience some sort of change. Without it, you don’t have a story. 

Now enjoy. And if you like, reach out on X and I’d love to discuss the book.

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Storyworthy Book Notes

Some requirements to ensure you are telling a personal story:

• Change:
  • Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new. The change can be infinitesimal. It need not reflect an improvement in yourself or your character, but change must happen. Even the worst movies in the world reflect some change in a character over time.
  • So must your story. Stories that fail to reflect change over time are known as anecdotes.
• Your story only:
  • You must tell your own story and not the stories of others.
    • This doesn’t mean that you can’t tell someone else’s story. It simply means you must make the story about yourself. You must tell your side of the story.
• Your story MUST pass the dinner test:
  • The Dinner Test is simply this: Is the story that you craft for the stage, the boardroom, the sales conference, or the Sunday sermon similar to the story you would tell a friend at dinner? This should be the goal.
    • Storytelling is not theater. It is not poetry. It should be a slightly more crafted version of the story you would tell your buddies over beers.

WAYS TO GET UNLIMITED STORIES FROM YOUR LIFE

Homework for life: If I had to tell a story from today — a five-minute story onstage about something that took place over the course of this day — what would it be? (a method to accumulate stories)

• As benign and boring and inconsequential as it might seem, what was the most storyworthy moment from my day?
• Don’t write a full story; write a snippet – just a sentence or two that capture the moment.
  • You can use an Excel spreadsheet (or Google), but must be succinct
  • You can also write down meaningful memories, in addition to your current events

Crash and Burn (a method to generate stories)

• Three rules of crash and burn:

1. Rule #1: You must not get attached to any one idea.
2. Rule #2: You must not judge any thought or idea that appears in your mind.
3. Rule #3: You cannot allow the pen to stop moving.

First, Last, Best, Worst

• How to: see the picture attached
• After completing my chart, I analyze it. Specifically, I ask myself three questions:
  • 1. Do any entries appear more than once (the signal of a likely story)?
  • 2. Could I turn any of these entries into useful anecdotes?
  • 3. Could I turn any of these entries into fully realized stories?

Write Your Story

Every story takes only 5 seconds to tell (and Jurassic park wasn’t a movie about dinosaurs)

• Every great story ever told is essentially about a five-second moment in the life of a human being, and the purpose of the story is to bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible.
• If we remove the city or building or anything out from the story, do you still have a story worth telling?
  • If the answer is no, then you probably don’t have a story. If the answer is yes, you might have something I want to hear.

Until you find your five-second moment, you don’t have a story. And once you find it, you are then ready to craft it.

• Your five- second moment is the most important thing that you will say. It is the purpose and pinnacle of your story. It’s the reason you opened your mouth in the first place. Therefore it must come as close to the end of your story as possible. Sometimes it will be the very last thing you say.

Finding Your Beginning

1. So how do you choose the right place to start a story? Simple. Ask yourself where your story ends.
   1. What is the meaning of your five-second moment? Say it aloud.
2. Once you’ve distilled your five-second moment down to its essence, ask yourself: What is the opposite of your five-second moment?
   1. Simply put, the beginning of the story should be the opposite of the end. Find the opposite of your transformation, revelation, or realization, and this is where your story should start. This is what creates an arc in your story. This is how a story shows change over time.

• I was once this, but now I am this.
• I once thought this, but now I think this.
• I once felt this, but now I feel this.
• I was once hopeful, but now I am not.
• I was once lost, but now I am found.
• I was once happy, but now I am sad.
• I was once uncertain, but now I know.
• I was once angry, but now I am grateful.
• I was once afraid, but now I am fearless.
• I once believed, but now I don’t.

How to tackle the challenge of having too many potential beginnings to choose from:

• Don’t get too attached to the first idea (of your beginning of the story). The first idea is the most convenient idea, but it may not be the best.
• More than 50% of time will be on crafting the beginning of the story, and it is normal. Once you find it, the remaining of the story flows easily.
• Start the story as close to the end of the story as possible – in terms of both TIME and LOCATION.
  • Avoid unnecessary setup.
  • Eliminate superfluous details.

A couple more practical tips for choosing a beginning:

1. Try to start your story with forward movement whenever possible.
   1. Establish yourself as a person who is physically moving through space. Opening with forward movement creates instant momentum in a story. It makes the audience feel that we’re already on our way, immersed in the world you are moving us through. We’re going somewhere important.
2. Don’t start by setting expectations.
   1. Listen to people in the world tell you stories. Often they start with a sentence like, “This is hilarious,” or “You need to hear this,” or “You’re not going to believe this.” This is always a mistake, for three reasons.
      1. First, it establishes potentially unrealistic expectations.
      2. Second, starting your story with a thesis statement reduces your chances of surprising your audience.
      3. Third, these are simply not interesting ways to start a story. (Start with the story, not with a summary of the story. There is no need to describe the tone or tenor at the onset.)

Stakes: 5 ways to keep your story compelling (and why there are dinosaurs in Jurassic Park)

#1: The Elephant

• Every story must have an Elephant.
  • The Elephant is the thing that everyone in the room can see. It is large and obvious. It is a clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery. It signifies where the story is headed, and it makes it clear to your audience that this is in fact a story and not a simple musing on a subject.
  • The Elephant tells the audience what to expect. It gives them a reason to listen, a reason to wonder. It infuses the story with instantaneous stakes.
  • The Elephant should appear as early in the story as possible. Ideally, it should appear within the first minute, and if you can say it within the first thirty seconds, even better.

NO Elephant

With Elephant

My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum and civility. She served as PTO president and treasurer of the ladies’ auxiliary. She was the only female umpire in our town’s Little League. She baked and knit and grew vegetables by the pound.

I don’t care how perfect my mother was. When I was nine years old, I wanted to disown her. Leave home and never return. Forget she ever existed. My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum and civility. She served as PTO president and treasurer of the ladies’ auxiliary. She was the only female umpire in our town’s Little League. She baked and knit and grew vegetables by the pound.

• Elephants can also change color. That is, the need, want, problem, peril, or mystery stated in the beginning of the story can change along the way. You may be offered one expectation only to have it pulled away in favor of another.
  • Example: Charity Thief
  • The laugh laugh laugh cry formula: The audience thinks they are in the midst of a hilarious caper, and then they suddenly realize that this story is not what they expected.

#2: Backpacks

1. Backpack is a strategy that increases the stakes of the story by increasing the audience’s anticipation about a coming event. It’s when a storyteller loads up the audience with all the storyteller’s hopes and fears in that moment before moving the story forward. It’s an attempt to do two things:
   1. Make the audience wonder what will happen next.
   2. Make your audience experience the same emotion, or something like the same emotion, that the storyteller experienced in the moment about to be described.
      1. Example (Charity Thief)
   3. Backpacks are most effective when a plan does not work. If I had described my plan for begging for gas, and then the plan worked perfectly, there would have been no payoff for the Backpack.
      1. It’s an odd thing: The audience wants characters (or storytellers) to succeed, but they don’t really want characters to succeed. It’s struggle and strife that make stories great. They want to see their characters ultimately triumph, but they want suffering first. They don’t want anything to be easy.
         1. Perfect plans executed perfectly never make good stories. They are the stories told by narcissists, jackasses, and thin-skinned egotists.

#3: Breadcrumbs

1. Storytellers use Breadcrumbs when we hint at a future event but only reveal enough to keep the audience guessing.
   1. Example: Charity Thief
2. Breadcrumbs are particularly effective when the truly unexpected is coming. I am about to impersonate a charity worker in order to steal money from innocent homeowners. That is unexpected. The perfect moment to lay a Breadcrumb.

#4: Hourglasses

• There comes a time in many stories when you reached a moment (or the moment) that the audience has been waiting for. Perhaps you have paved the way to the moment with Breadcrumbs and Backpacks, or maybe you’ve used none of these strategies because you’ve got yourself a stake- laden story, and now you’re approaching the payoff. The sentence you’ve been waiting to say. The sentence your audience has been waiting to hear.
• This is the moment to use an Hourglass. It’s time to slow things down. Grind them to a halt when possible. When you know the audience is hanging on your every word, let them hang. Drag out the wait as long as possible.
  • Example: Charity Thief

#5: Crystall Balls

• A Crystal Ball is a false prediction made by a storyteller to cause the audience to wonder if the prediction will prove to be true.
  • Example: Charity Thief
• In storytelling, deploy Crystal Balls strategically:
  • Only when your prediction seems possible. Only when your guess is reasonable. And only when your prediction presents an intriguing or exciting possibility.

How to make sure your story has stakes:

Ask yourself:

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

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you need to raise the stakes. Use these strategies to engage your audience and bring them to the edge of their seat.

The Five Permissible Lies of True Storytelling

Three important caveats before we proceed with the five types of permissible lies in storytelling:

• Important Caveat #1: We lie in our stories only when our audience would want us to lie — only when the story is better for our doing so.
• Important Caveat #2: Memory is a slippery thing, and as storytellers, we must remember this. Research suggests that every time you tell a story, it becomes less true.
• Important Caveat #3: As storytellers, we never add something to a story that was not already there. Making something up is cheating, and great storytellers are not cheaters.

The Five Permissible Lies of Storytelling

1. Lie #1: Omission: We all omit elements from our stories, but great storytellers do this strategically and for a variety of reasons.
   1. Eliminate people from stories when they serve no purpose. Pretend they aren’t there. Ghost them.
      1. Example: Charity Thief
   2. No one wants redemption. People want the clown. A story is like a coat. When we tell a story, we put a coat on our audience. Our goal is to make that coat as difficult to remove as possible. I want that coat to be impossible to take off. Days after you’ve heard my story at the dinner table or the conference room or the golf course or the theater, I want you to be thinking about my story. I want that coat to cling to your body and mind. The longer that story lingers in the hearts and minds of our audience, the better the story.
      When I write novels, I try to end my story about ten pages before the reader would want the book to end. The best storytellers omit the endings that offer neat little bows and happily-ever-afters. The best stories are a little messy at the end. They offer small steps, marginal progress, questionable results. The best stories give rise to unanswered questions.
      1. Example: Charity Thief
2. Lie #2: Compression:
   1. TIME: If the first scene of your story takes place on a Monday, for example, and the next scene happens on Friday, and you are concerned about the audience wondering about Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, you simply push time together and turn your Monday-through-Friday story into a Monday-through-Tuesday story. Placing scenes closer together also heightens the drama and suspense of a story. It makes the world seem more visceral and cinematic.
      1. Example: Bike Off Roof
   2. GEOGRAPHY: Geography can also be compressed for the sake of comprehension and visualization. There is never room for needless complexity in a story. Remember that stories are like rivers. They continue to flow even as your audience struggles to understand a time line or attempts to construct a complicated mental map in their minds. For this reason, simplicity should be prized at all points. Compression can often be helpful in this regard.
      1. Example: The Basin
3. Lie #3: Assumption:
   1. Storytellers use assumption when there is a detail so important to the story that it must be stated with specificity, so the storyteller makes a reasonable assumption about what the specifics may be. This does not mean that a storyteller should assume all details. It is only when the forgotten detail is critical to the story that an assumption should be made.
      1. Example: Batman and Robin
4. Lie #4: Progression:
   1. A lie of progression is when a storyteller changes the order of events in a story to make it more emotionally satisfying or comprehensible to the listener.
   2. This is the least common lie told.
      1. Example
5. Lie #5: Conflation:

Cinema of the Mind (Also Known as “Where the Hell Are You?”)

• A great storyteller creates a movie in the minds of the audience.
• ❌NEVER open stories by pontificating and proselytizing:
  • Stories are not supposed to start with thesis statements or overwrought aphorisms.
    • Examples
• HOW TO create a movie in the minds eyes of audiences: Always provide a physical location for every moment of your story. If the audience knows where you are at all times within your story, the movie is running in their minds.
  • Example #1: My grandmother’s name is Odelie Dicks, which probably explains why she is who she is. She’s a crooked old lady in both body and mind. She wears only dark colors and likes to serve food that has stewed in pots for days. I like to imagine that there was a time in her life when she smiled — or at least didn’t scowl — but if that time existed, it was long before me.
  • Example #2: I’m standing at the edge of my grandmother’s garden, watching her relentlessly pull weeds from the unforgiving soil. My grandmother’s name is Odelie Dicks, which probably explains why she is who she is. She’s a crooked old lady in both body and mind. She wears only dark colors and likes to serve food that has stewed in pots for days. I like to imagine that there was a time in her life when she smiled — or at least didn’t scowl — but if that time existed, it was long before me.

The principle of BUT and THEREFORE

• Use But and Therefore; don’t use AND
• the negative is almost always better than the positive when it comes to storytelling, because it contains a hidden but.
  • I am dumb, ugly, and unpopular. vs. I’m not smart, I’m not at all good-looking, and no one likes me.
• A short, positive statement at the end of a paragraph of description can often serve as an amusing button to a scene.
  • Heather laughed at me when I wasn’t trying to be funny. She refused my offer of a birthday cupcake, claiming she’d already had a cupcake that day, even though it was only 9:30 AM. She chose to walk five miles home from school, even though I offered her a ride and she lived next door to me. Heather despised me.
• Simple, positive statements are also preferred when answering questions.
  • In answer to the question, “Who is Heather?” a statement like “my ex-girlfriend” is more effective than “She was once my girlfriend.”

The Secret to the Big Story: Make It Little

• Here’s the surprising thing: despite what most people think, these are the hardest stories to tell.
• The goal of storytelling is to connect with your audience, whether it’s one person at the dinner table or two thousand people in a theater.
  • Storytelling is not about a roller-coaster ride of excitement. It’s about bridging the gap between you and another person by creating a space of authenticity, vulnerability, and universal truth.
• 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.
  • The story of my beesting is really the story of the death of my mother, and of my hope that we might still be connected, even though she is no longer alive.
  • The story of firefighters rescuing me from my home is really about the greatest “I told you so” of my life.
  • The story of my arrest is really the story of my struggle with faith and of an unexpected plea to the Almighty, and the story of my subsequent jailing is really about missing a second date with a girl I liked a lot.
  • The story of the robbery is really the story of my ongoing, persistent existential crisis and its impact on my relationship to my children.
  • The story of the attempt to destroy my reputation and get me fired is really the story of the power of the anonymous assailant but the greater power of public support.

There Is Only One Way to Make Someone Cry (The answer is simple: surprise.)

• When it comes to storytelling, I believe that surprise is the only way to elicit an emotional reaction from your audience. Whether it’s laughter, tears, anger, sadness, outrage, or any other emotional response, the key is surprise.
  • Example: This is going to suck

Common mistakes that storytellers make that ruin surprise include:

1. Presenting a thesis statement prior to the surprise.
   1. This often takes the form of an opening sentence that gives away all that is surprising about the story.
      1. “This is a story about a time in my life when my friends became my family.”
      2. “This is a story about a car accident so serious that it took my life, if only for a moment.”
      3. “This is the story of a waiting room full of surprise guests.”
   2. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but this is done all the time, both onstage and in less formal situations. People feel the need to open their stories with thesis statements, either in an effort to grab the audience’s attention with a loaded statement or (more likely) because this is how they were taught to write in school: thesis statement, followed by supporting evidence and details.
   3. But storytelling is the reverse of the five-paragraph essay. Instead of opening with a thesis statement and then supporting it with evidence, storytellers provide the evidence first and then sometimes offer the thesis statement later only when necessary. This is how we allow for surprise.
2. Failing to take advantage of the power of stakes to enhance and accentuate surprise.
   1. Take advantage of the STAKES in the story
      1. If you are using a BACKPACK tactic – tell a plan that will eventually fail
         1. Example: Charity Thief
      2. If you are using a BREADCRUMB tactic – give a brief hint of what you might do but DON’T describe the plan, then surprise the reader
         1. Example: Charity Thief
3. Failing to hide critical information in a story.
   1. As storytellers, we must hide pertinent information from our audiences to allow the surprise to pay off later. I often refer to this as planting a bomb in a story that will explode when the time is right.
   2. Method #1:Hiding the Bomb in the Clutter
      1. We hide these important moments by making them seem unimportant. We do this by hiding critical information among other details. We make the important information seem no more important than the rest of the information by pushing it all together.
         1. Example: This is going to suck
   3. Method #2: Camouflage
      1. Laughter is the best camouflage, because it is also an emotional response, and audience members assume that the laugh is the result of the storyteller’s wanting to be funny. This is never the case. Comedians want to be funny. Great storytellers want to be remembered. For this reason, they deploy laughter strategically.
         1. Example: This is going to suck

Milk Cans and Baseballs, Babies and Blenders: Simple, Effective Ways to Be Funny in Storytelling (Even If You’re Not Funny at All)

1. Humor should never be at the end.
   1. If you want your story to linger with your audience (and that should be your goal), you should end in a place that is moving, vulnerable, or revealing, or establishes connection with the audience.
   2. Save your laughs for the middle, when you want to keep your audience engaged. Allow them to carry your audience to the end. But end your story with something bigger than a laugh.
2. 4 types of humors in stories:
   1. Start with a laugh. (to have full control of the stage, if it’s a live event)
   2. Make ’em laugh before you make ’em cry. (make readers experience the emotion more intensely)
   3. Take a breath. (from some very intense emotion)
   4. Stop crying so you can feel something else.

The two easiest ways to achieve these humorous surprises are through Milk Cans and a Baseball, and Babies and Blenders.

1. Milk Cans and a Baseball: Milk Cans and a Baseball refers to the carnival game where metallic milk cans are stacked in a triangular formation and the player attempts to knock them down with a ball.
   1. In comedy, this is called setup and punch line. The milk cans represent the setup, and the ball is the punch line.
   2. The more milk cans in your tower, the greater potential laugh. The better you deliver the ball, the more of that potential will be realized. The trick is to work to the laugh by using language that carefully builds your tower while saving the funniest thing for last.
      1. Example: Homeless and the goat
   3. Specificity is funny. Oddly specific words are also funny. It’s funnier for me to say, “I’m pouring water over Raisin Bran because I am too stupid and lazy to buy milk” than it is to say, “I’m pouring water over a bowl of cereal.”
2. Babies and Blenders: Babies and Blenders is the idea that when two things that rarely or never go together are pushed together, humor often results.
   1. Example: hungry as a boy
   2. Example: grandma
   3. Example: swallow of a penny
   4. Example: Sesame Street
3. Exaggeration (another form of Babies and Blenders): We push an unreasonable description against something that doesn’t normally fit that description, and a laugh is the result. But this only works when everyone agrees that you’re exaggerating. If I’m falsely exaggerating in the attempt to make my audience believe that my exaggeration is accurate, that is not an exaggeration. It is a lie — an unacceptable one in my book.
   1. Example: Xmas Tree

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

1. Stories can never be about two things. I explained to my students that even though that moment in the bathtub came to mean two different things to me, the story that I tell onstage someday about that moment can only be about one of those things.
   1. This is because of what you already know:
      1. The ending of the story — your five-second moment — will tell you what the beginning of your story should be. The beginning will be the opposite of the end.
2. This does not mean that I can’t tell both versions of this story. In fact, as a storyteller, I’m thrilled to have two stories that center on the same moment. Those two stories, which have yet to be fully crafted, will start entirely differently but will ultimately converge on the same moment in the bathtub.
3. Ask yourself “WHY” and often you will find meanings previously undiscovered.

The Present Tense Is King (but the Queen Can Play a Role Too)

1. the magic of the present tense is that it creates a sense of immediacy.
   1. Example: Charlie needs to pee on an Amtrak (Even though you are reading these words in bed or by the light of a roaring fire or perhaps naked in your bathtub, a part of you, maybe, is on this train with me, staring at a little boy who desperately needs to pee.)
2. You can tell a backstory in past tense.
3. Stories cannot have two or more events that took place at different times happen in the present time of the story.
   1. Example: Charlie needs to pee on an Amtrak
4. If you want to bring your readers to the scene, use present tense; if you don’t want to bring them to the scene but keep them at distance, use past tense. The important thing is to choose intentionally.
   1. Example: Charlie needs to pee on an Amtrak

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

1. failure is more engaging than success.
2. Nevertheless, there are times when you might want to tell a success story, and when you do, there are two strategies that I suggest you employ.
   1. Malign yourself.
   2. Marginalize your accomplishment.
   3. First, human beings love underdog stories. The love for the underdog is universal. Underdogs are supposed to lose, so when they manage to pull out an unexpected or unbelievable victory, our sense of joy is more intense than if that same underdog suffers a crushing defeat. A crushing defeat is expected. An unbelievable win is a surprise. Example: Bring Me a Shrubbery
   4. Second, human beings prefer stories of small steps over large leaps. Most accomplishments, both great and small, are not composed of singular moments but are the culmination of many small steps. Overnight success stories are rare. They can also be disheartening to those who dream of similar success. The step-by-step nature of accomplishment is what people understand best. This is how to tell a success story: Rather than telling a story of your full and complete accomplishment, tell the story of a small part of the success. Tell about a small step. Feel free to allude to the better days that may lie ahead, but don’t try to tell everything. Small steps only. Example: Bring Me a Shrubbery

Storytelling Is Time Travel (If You Don’t Muck It Up)

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

Here are some rules to avoid popping this mystical bubble (aka ruin the time travel experience:

1. Don’t ask rhetorical questions.
   1. Actors in movies never ask rhetorical questions of their audience (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off being the only exception I have found so far), and neither should you. Asking a rhetorical question causes the audience to devise an answer in their mind. You have just turned your story into a Q&A session. You’ve reminded them that you exist, they exist, and this moment that you and they are occupying exists.
2. Don’t address the audience or acknowledge their existence whatsoever.
   1. Avoid phrases like “You guys!” for the same reason you shouldn’t ask rhetorical questions. When a storyteller says something like “You guys, you’re not going to believe this!” the bubble is instantly broken. Time travel has abruptly ended. The audience is keenly aware that someone is standing in front of them, speaking directly to them and the people sitting around them.
3. No props (道具). Ever.
   1. Example
4. Avoid anachronisms (时代混乱).
   1. An anachronism is a thing that is set in a period other than that in which it exists. It’s a microwave in the Middle Ages. A refrigerator during the Renaissance. The internet during the Inquisition.
   2. If you’re telling a story about something that happened in 1960, but at some point you say that your mission was as unlikely as the moon landing, you’ve created a temporal impossibility in the story and likely popped your time-traveling bubble.
5. Don’t mention the word story in your story.
   1. Phrases like, “But that’s a story for another day,” or “Long story short” serve to remind our audience that we are telling a story. If your audience knows that you’re telling a story, then they’re not time traveling.
6. Downplay your physical presence as much as possible.
   1. When I tell a story onstage (or even in a workshop or at a conference), I wear blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and a hat. I wear this every time. It’s my uniform, chosen because it suits me as a person and is fairly nondescript.
   2. My goal is to downplay my physical presence. I want to increase the likelihood of becoming a disembodied voice in the mind of my audience. I want them to completely forget that I’m standing in front of them.

Words to Say, Words to Avoid

Profanity

1. Avoiding swearing. In most cases, a swear word can be replaced by a better word or phrase. The swear word is easy and may engender a laugh, but it’s rarely the best word to choose.
2. That said, there are times when I think it is appropriate to swear:
   1. Repeated dialogue: The kid who arrives at my car accident swears. He says, “Dude, you’re fucked.” It’s his words, repeated exactly.
   2. When a swear is simply the best word possible: There is no better way to describe my former stepfather than asshole, so that is the word I choose every time.
   3. Moments of extreme emotion: There are certainly times in our lives when the best way to capture the heightened emotion of a moment — particularly when it comes to anger and fear — is with profanity.
   4. Humor: Though I would never rely solely on profanity for humor, there are moments when a well-placed swear word makes a perfect punch line to a joke.

Vulgarity

1. Vulgarity is the description of events that are profane in nature. This includes actions of a sexual nature, anything involving bodily fluids, and the like.
2. The rule with vulgarity is simple: If you are speaking about a topic that would be awkward to talk about with your parents or grandparents, tread lightly. Take care of your audience.

Other People’s Names

1. I’m often asked how to handle using real people’s names in my stories. I tell storytellers that changing the names of people to protect their anonymity is perfectly reasonable. When you change the name, however, I always suggest that you choose a similar name to make it easier to remember.
   1. Barry becomes Bobby.
   2. Sally becomes Sandy.
2. Sometimes we just don’t tell certain stories. Speaking them aloud might irreparably damage relationships with loved ones. You may expose someone else’s secret. You may put your job or your company in jeopardy. Sometimes it’s just not worth the story.

Celebrity / Pop Culture References

1. In general, don’t include.
2. When we refer to celebrities in our stories, we make three mistakes:
   1. We risk alienating half of our audience, who might not be aware of the reference. While one side of the room nods and laughs in recognition, the other side of the room feels foolish or lost.
   2. Comparing a person to a celebrity sticks that celebrity into the story and pops that mystical time-traveling bubble. I once heard a storyteller say that her father looked a lot like Ronald Reagan. As a result, Reagan was now playing the role of her father in the story, and having a former president walking around her cruddy little apartment made no sense. It’s impossible for an audience to picture someone looking “kind of like Ronald Reagan.” They will just use Reagan, turning a formerly sensible story into something dreamlike and strange. Just don’t do it.
   3. It’s lazy. We gain very little by saying “so-and-so looks or acts like so-and-so.” It’s shorthand, but it doesn’t reveal much about character.

Accents (when you are telling a story in person)

1. Don’t.
2. There is one exception to this rule: you can always do the accents of parents and grandparents. Parental love conquers the potential hazards of racial stereotypes.
3. I also think that you can imitate the accents from the region where you grew up, particularly if you share a race with the people who you are imitating. For example, I grew up near Boston and had a Boston accent. I’ve lost much of it after living in Connecticut for almost twenty-five years, but I could reproduce the accent for a story if I wanted, and it occasionally creeps into my speech.
4. When in doubt, don’t do an accent.

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

1. Don’t memorize your story.

1. It’s hard to be authentic and vulnerable when you’re reciting lines. It’s also obvious to an audience when a storyteller is simply reciting a story instead of telling a story.
2. Instead of memorizing your story word-for-word, memorize three parts to a story:
   1. The first few sentences. Always start strong.
   2. The last few sentences. Always end strong.
   3. The scenes of your story. Example: This is going to suck
      1. Some Tricks:
         1. Some people remember their scenes in a list, but I actually remember these scenes as circles in my mind. The size of the circle reflects the size of the scene. The color of the circle reflects the tone and tenor of the scene. This is not something I do purposefully. It’s just the way I have always remembered my stories. I tell you this because for some people, this method has been exceptionally helpful.
         2. I try not to have more than seven scenes in a story. The phone company uses seven digits in our phone numbers because they determined that seven bits of information is the most that the average person can retain at one time. Seven feels right to me. I have some stories that only have three scenes — even better. I have a story composed of just one scene. But seven is my max.

2. Make eye contact.

1. Find a person on your left, a person on your right, and a person dead center who likes you. These will be the people who are smiling. Nodding. Laughing. Use these three people as your guideposts.

3. Control your emotions.

1. A trick to stay calm: When I was a kid, I played video games in arcades. One of these games was a car-racing game. I would sit behind the wheel and race against other players behind other wheels. The game had an A and a B button to the left of the gearshift. If you pressed the A button, the screen displayed the road as a driver would see it through the windshield. If you pressed the B button, your perspective shifted to outside and above the car, looking down upon it. As the moment of heightened emotion approaches in a story, I press the B button. I shift my perspective from seeing my story through my eyes to seeing my story from above.

4. Learn to use the microphone.

Learning storytelling will make you a superhero

1. So do it.