How to Tell Better Stories
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Summary
In this episode, professional storyteller Matthew Dix gives us practical advice on how to craft and tell better stories, which can come in handy in a lot of situations: making a sales pitch, a job interview, on a date, or just hanging out with your friends.
Transcript
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Brett here. We're taking a break from a new episode for Christmas. We'll be back next week
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with a new episode. In the meantime, we're going to rebroadcast podcast number 462,
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How to Tell Better Stories with Matthew Dix. It's an A1 fan favorite, one of our most popular
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episodes ever. In it, professional storyteller Matthew Dix gives us practical advice on how
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to craft and tell better stories, which can come in handy in a lot of situations. You're
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making a sales pitch, job interview, you're on a date, or just hanging out talking with
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your friends. Hope you enjoy it. We'll see you next week, and I hope you have a very
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Humans
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are storytelling and story-listening creatures. We use stories to teach, persuade, and to
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make sense of the complexities of existence. So being able to craft and deliver good stories
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is thus a real advantage in all areas of life, giving you a foot up when doing job interviews,
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going on dates, interacting with friends, and making a sales pitch. Fortunately, good
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storytelling is a skill that can be learned by anyone. Here to teach us the art of storytelling
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is Matthew Dix, a writer, five-time Moth Grand Slam storytelling winner, and the author of
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the new book, Storyworthy, Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling.
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Today on the show, Matthew walks us through the nuts and bolts of how to craft a compelling
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story. We begin our conversation discussing ways to generate story ideas, why good stories
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don't have to be about big moments, and why he recommends a practice called Homework
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for Life. Matthew then tells us what we can learn from movies about making a story so
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engaging that people are waiting to hear what you say next. We also discuss the don'ts
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of storytelling, including how to never begin a story. And we end our conversation with a
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five-minute story from Matthew that showcases all the principles we discussed during the
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show. This show is literally packed with actionable advice, so take notes. After it's over, check
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out our show notes at aom.is slash storyworthy. And Matthew joins me now via clearcast.io.
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So you've got a new book out, Storyworthy. It's all about how to tell good stories. And
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you are, I would say you're a professional storyteller. You're an ace storyteller. How did
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that happen? How did you become a professional storyteller?
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It was honestly an accident that it ever happened. The Moth, the large storytelling organization
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who I owe all my success really to, they put out a podcast back in maybe 2009. And my friends
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started listening to it and they directed me to it. And we all sort of loved it. We're all
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writers or bookish people. And we just loved listening to people tell stories on stages,
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true stories from their lives. And my friends told me that I've had the worst life of anyone
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they know, so that I should go to New York and tell a story for the Moth, which is not
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true. I know people who have had far more difficult lives than myself. But I've had one of those
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unusual lives with a lot of odd circumstances. So I told them yes, without any intention of ever
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doing it, I was terrified. I had no desire to stand in front of 200 New York hipsters with
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man buns and side eye and frighten the hell out of me while I'm telling a story. But they
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didn't let up. And eventually, my friends sort of shamed me into going to New York to tell a story.
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And I told them it would be one and I'd never do it again. And it turned out,
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I took that stage that night and I loved it. And I've been doing it ever since.
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Well, I think telling a story, it's one of those skills that a lot of people wish they had. I wish
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I was a good storyteller. And this book was really helpful because it shed light on what I do bad
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with storytelling. So let's start with this. What makes a story even story worthy in the first place?
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Yeah, I think that a lot of times people think that stories are stuff that happened to me told
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in chronological order. And that's just never really a story. That's not compelling in any way.
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You know, I argue that a story is about a singular moment in your life. I call them five second moments
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because I really do believe that they happen over the course of about five seconds. They're either
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moments of transformation or realization. So that you've either, I was once one person and now I'm
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another person. Or I once thought something, but now I think a new thing. Those are the things that
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people really want to hear about. They don't want to hear about, you know, the food you ate last
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night or the vacation you went on or what you did over your weekend. Unless over the course of those
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events, something really happened that changed you in some fundamental way. Then you have a story.
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Then you have something people are going to want to hear and connect to emotionally.
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Gotcha. So those chronological stories, you call those drinking stories, right?
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Well, I think a good story can be told chronologically and there's nothing wrong with it. But yeah,
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I think the drinking stories or the romps, those are stories where I did something crazy. I didn't
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really fundamentally change in any way, but, you know, some crazy stuff happened. And they're fine
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to tell, but they're not the kind of stories that sort of sink into our hearts and minds and stay
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with us once the storyteller is gone. You know, they're just fun drinking stories or stories you
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tell your spouse when you get home at night, that kind of thing.
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Gotcha. One thing, you made a good distinction between stories and antidotes.
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I often think I feel like after reading the book, I feel like I was telling a lot of anecdotes,
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but not really stories. What do you think the difference is?
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Well, an anecdote, I mean, first, it's going to be a lot shorter. That's just a simple thing. But
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I think anecdotes are really just those moments in our lives when something unusual or something
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unique or something special happens to us. But at the end of that moment, we're still fundamentally
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the same human being. So, you know, an anecdote, sort of like I climbed a tree and I fell out of it
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and I broke my leg. You'd tell your friends that story. But if the breaking of the leg doesn't
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fundamentally change you in any way, then it's just an anecdote. Then it's just something you
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tell your friends to let them know, sort of update your status in life. I am now a person with a broken
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leg. But it's not the kind of thing that they're going to want to tell other people about.
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You know, they're not going to want to run to their friends and say,
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you're not going to believe this amazing thing that someone just told me.
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So a story there, there has to be a change of some sort. Now, does this, does this change have
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to be big, like a life and death thing? Or can the change happen that those five second moments,
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can they be like really small thing? Yeah. Small is great. I prefer the small ones,
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to be honest with you. You know, I've, I've died twice in my life and been brought back to life
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through CPR. And I've been arrested and tried for a crime I didn't commit. And I was homeless for a
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period in my life. And that's the tip of the iceberg of like the big stories that I have in
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my life. But those are the stories I don't want to tell so much because people can't connect to
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those big moments. You know, if I tell you the story of, of dying, I don't meet very many people
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who can relate to that in any fundamental way. It's just not going to happen for them.
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And so I like the little moments. I like the moments where some tiny little thing happens
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and you suddenly understand yourself a little better than you did before. Those are my favorite
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ones. Okay. So let's talk about where do you get these ideas for your stories? I think a lot of
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people, they like look at their lives. Okay. Where, where are those moments that I had those changes
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where I thought one way, but then I thought something differently. Cause I think a lot of people,
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they're not very, we really don't pay attention to that stuff very well. So how do you, how do you
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start paying attention and start coming up with those moments in your life where there was a change in
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yourself that could be the fodder for a story? Right. So there's a, there's a bunch of ways I
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do it, but the primary way I do it is something called homework for life, which is an assignment
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I gave to myself about five years ago. I'm an elementary school teacher when I'm not doing
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the other things that I do. And so it made sense to just sort of give myself a homework assignment.
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And it's very simple. All I do is at the end of every day, before I go to bed, I sit down and I ask
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myself, what was the thing that made this day different than any other? Sort of what is the most
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story worthy moment from my day? Even if that moment isn't truly story worthy, even if it's sort of
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benign, if it's something I wouldn't even tell my wife about, whatever it is, I find the moment and I
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write it down. I don't write the whole thing down because I just don't think anyone would ever really
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do that over the course of time. I use a spreadsheet. And so I've got two columns in my spreadsheet.
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I've got the date on one side, and then I stretch that second column all the way across the screen.
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And in there, I write what my story is. So I can really write only two or three sentences
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a day about that moment. And my goal was to find maybe one story a month that I could keep getting
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on stages and telling to people. And what happened over the course of time in doing this was something
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really remarkable. I discovered that my life was full of stories. I have more stories to tell than I
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I have time to live at this point. And I think that's true for everyone. In fact, I know it is
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because now thousands of people all over the world do homework for life and they report back to me
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constantly that it's changing their lives. We just have these moments where we have a beautiful or a
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terrible or a memorable interaction with another person, or we see something and it suddenly changes
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our mind in some way. The problem is we just take these moments and we throw them away like trash.
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We just ignore them instead of collecting them and seeing them for what they are. And so those
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moments, I see them all the time. And so it is rare in a week that I don't find two or three moments
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that I could craft into an effective story that people want to hear. But it's just that process of
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asking yourself every day, what is the moment from this day that is the most story worthy? And
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eventually you'll just discover by honing that lens that there's more moments in your life than you
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could ever begin to imagine. Yeah. I thought one of the interesting insights you found that you talk
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about in the book that, okay, people do this to get ideas for stories, but what your students find
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because you teach how to tell stories is that it's actually improved their lives. Like their life has
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slowed down. It seems more meaningful whenever they can see this collection of moments or stories
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in this spreadsheet. Yeah. I hear that all the time. I did homework for life as a Ted talk one time
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and people will watch that even if they're not interested in storytelling. And it's so true.
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Even if you don't plan on ever taking a stage to tell a story, even if you're not planning on telling
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a story at a cocktail party, once you start seeing that your days are filled with moments of significance,
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time slows down and you never lose a day anymore. You know, so often you can go to someone and say,
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what did you do last Thursday? And unless they refer to their calendar or they really think hard,
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that day is forever lost to them. But if you're doing homework for life, you're marking every day
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with at least one moment that made that day different. I did a workshop a few years ago for
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my school district, actually, a bunch of principals. And about three months after the workshop, one of
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the principals came up to me and he said, do you know why homework for life works so well? You know,
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when I was thinking, yeah, I do. I spent a whole day explaining it to you. But I humored him and said,
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no, tell me why. And he said, since the workshop, he had missed three days. And he said, I feel like
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I've lost those three days forever. I can't remember a single thing from those days. And he said,
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I'm never going to miss another day again, because I understand the value of capturing every day and
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how it's already made me feel like my life has more meaning and that time moves by slower than I
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thought. I love that. And I mean, just that idea that it can make my life more meaningful, like,
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got me. I started like, I'm going to do this. This is a really cool concept. It's so easy.
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So besides the homework for life, what are some other things you use to help generate some ideas
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that are pretty easy? One of my favorite things is something that I actually got from
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the director of The Moth. She told me that when she's working with people who can't find stories
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or are having a hard time finding stories in their lives, she does this, which is first, last,
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best, worst, which is the idea that oftentimes the first time, the last time, the best time,
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or the worst time we ever did something, those are often excellent story-worthy moments.
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So, you know, in workshops, I use things like your first kiss, your last kiss, your best kiss,
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your worst kiss. And you can do it with almost anything. There are some topics that are much
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easier than others. You know, if you use pets and cars and vacations and things like that,
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those are all going to work great. But truly, there's not a single thing in the world that I
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can't play first, last, best, worst with that I can't probably find something to talk about.
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And oftentimes it's a story. So that's a game I used to play with my wife, if I'm being honest.
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And then she got sick of hearing from me. You know, when you live with a storyteller, eventually
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you don't want the storyteller to talk anymore. And so she won't play it with me, but I'll play it
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with my students. I play it in workshops. And honestly, sadly, I play it with myself all the time.
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And I just find, I find something in the room and say, first, last, best, worst, and go. And I,
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I, I always find a story. Yeah. I can see how that would generate stories like first kiss. Like
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there's definitely a change there. You go into that thinking one thing, but then after it happens,
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you're probably like, well, that wasn't what I thought it was or something like, so I can see
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how that would, that would be a great fodder for story. All right. So you got ideas with these,
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you can generate ideas with these, these games or these tools, but ideas aren't stories. So what's the
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first step in crafting those ideas into a story? I always tell people to start with the end of
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their story first. They sort of need to know where they're going or what they're aiming at.
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They need to know what that five second moment is. What is that moment of transformation or
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realization? If you don't have it, crafting the story is sort of like, you know, walking in a dark
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room, not really knowing what to do, not knowing what direction you're supposed to be aiming at.
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I always say that storytelling is nothing more than the process of making good
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choices. Cause I think most people, when they tell a story, they just say the next thing that
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pops into their head. And that's why their stories are oftentimes terrible. Frankly, there's just a
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lot of terrible storytelling in the world because people just don't really make choices. They don't
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even think that a story is comprised of choices. It's just sort of the first thing I think of is the
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first thing I'm going to say. And so if I start at the end and I ask myself, what is the purpose of
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the story? What is the moment of transformation and realization? Then from there, I can begin
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at the start of my story by making choices that will eventually lead me to the end in the best
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possible way. Cause we tell the, we tell the truth as storytellers, but we don't tell the whole truth.
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We leave things out of stories all the time that don't help the story in any way or confuse the story
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or just slow the story down in a way that it doesn't need to be. So I always say, start with the end.
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You have to know what you're aiming at before you start moving forward and crafting the thing.
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All right. So the end is that five second moment of change. That's kind of what you're leading up
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to, right? Yes, exactly. Okay. So how do you, how do you keep the story compelling? Right? So
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well, let's talk about, okay, so you know what the ending is. How do you start a story? Or here's a
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better question. How should you never begin a story? Well, both of those questions are good. I would
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say that I start the story by asking myself, what is the opposite of the ending of the story?
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So whatever my moment of realization or transformation is, let's say I have suddenly
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discovered that my mother was right all along. I should not marry that girl, right? If that's the
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end of my story, the realization that my mother is smarter than I ever thought she was, the beginning
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of my story, if I really want to show change is I don't think my mother is very smart. I think my
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mother is giving me bad advice. And so over time, I will discover that my mother is actually the smart
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one in our relationship. So I just, I find that opposite. It's not always a clear opposite. Sometimes
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it's an approximation of what the opposite is. It's a cousin of what the opposite would be. But I have
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to find that because if I don't have the opposite to start with, I can't really show change. And then
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once I'm, once I've figured out that spot that I want to start my story in, the thing I always want
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to do is I want to start the story right away. So often when people start stories, they instead
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start with lists. So, you know, if the story is about my grandmother, they will start with a list
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of all the characteristics of a grandmother, which is not compelling in any way whatsoever.
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It's just a list about my grandmother. So I always say, start the story, get things moving.
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And then after things are moving, then start revealing some of the things that we need to
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know before we get to the end. Stories are just like movies, like the stories that we tell
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out loud. We're just creating movies in the minds of our audience and pay attention to the way movies
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are constructed. Oftentimes movies begin with action. Things are moving right away. Someone
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is chasing another person or someone is walking down a street or, you know, Star Wars classically
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begins with a big spaceship shooting at a small spaceship. You know, it doesn't begin with someone
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saying Darth Vader is a bad guy and Princess Leia is a good guy. And in a minute, we're going
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to see this space battle take place. No, we're in the middle of the battle. And then we learn about
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the characters. That's how stories should be. You want to grab people by starting it right away.
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One thing, when you talk about how you should never start a story, one tip, and I've broken
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this rule all the time, is saying like, I've got the crazy, you never say, I got the craziest story
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or like, I've got the funniest story. Yes, that's terrible because you set such an unrealistic
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expectation for yourself. You know, you hear it all the time though. People say,
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you're not going to believe this. I've never heard really anything that I don't believe,
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you know, after that statement. It's always something that is going to be less than what
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you've proclaimed it to be. So don't start off with any expectations.
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Gotcha. So, but start with the action, start right away with the action. Start from one opposite
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of your ending. And yeah, I love the insight you gave there about movies. Like you said,
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start paying attention to movies because movies do this. You gave the example of Jurassic Park,
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of the paleontology guy. Like in the beginning, he hated kids. And at the end, like he liked kids
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like that. I was like, oh my gosh, that's so obvious. Now I get this. So now you've ruined movies
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for me because I've been looking for that. Well, it's true. My wife doesn't allow me to speak during
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movies anymore. But you know, even that, that's Spielberg and he's brilliant because he knows that
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if I called you up and I said, hey, do you want to watch a movie about a man who doesn't really
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love children? So he can't fundamentally be with the woman he loves, but over the course of time,
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he's going to learn to love children and therefore his relationship will be stable.
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You would never go to that movie with me. So Spielberg takes a true and real story that will
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sort of touch our hearts and he surrounds it with dinosaurs. Those are what I call the stakes of the
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story. The reason that we want to hear sentence by sentence by sentence, the thing that we're worried
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about and concerned about and wondering about. So Spielberg understands, I have to give you a real
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story, you know, the story of a man learning to love children, but I can't give it to you
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without something to hang that story on. And for him, it's dinosaurs and it works so beautifully.
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And so many of his movies operate on that level. There's a real story happening. And then there's
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the thing that brings you into the movie theater in the first place.
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Well, so you mentioned that idea of stakes. That's what keeps people engaged with the story. So you have
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your beginning, which is the opposite of how you're going to end. You have your ending. And then the
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stakes in the middle can be things that just like, you think things are going to go a certain
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direction, but then they just fall flat. I mean, it just keeps people on edge, right?
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Exactly. I'm always asking myself, is my audience wondering about something right now? And if they're
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not wondering, if they're not worried or concerned or in suspense, that means I'm losing them. And so
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whenever I think that my audience has stopped wondering about something, I have to find a way to
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create that drama, that suspense. There's lots of tricks that I talk about in the book
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to just sort of punch up moments, to make the same moment just more appealing and more filled
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with wonder than how it might normally be presented.
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Gotcha. And so one of the tactics that I liked was like the backpack, where you have all, you pack a
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metaphorical backpack full of things that you could possibly use to solve the problem.
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And you start unpacking them in the story, but none of them work.
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You want to keep seeing like, what's the next thing that's not going to work?
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Right. All the Ocean Eleven's movies, they're all just backpacks, which is we're going to tell you
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how we're going to rob the casino, and then we're going to go rob the casino, but it's not going to
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work in the way we planned. But if we don't know what the original plan was, then we can't experience
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the fear and the frustration and the agony of our characters when the plan starts to go wrong.
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So anytime in a movie, when sort of a group of people regroup after a disaster,
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and make a plan, really what's happening is the writers are putting a backpack on the audience.
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We're letting the audience know what the characters' hopes and dreams are. So now you
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carry those hopes and dreams as well. And as those things start to go wrong, you feel something akin
00:20:48.800
to what the people in the movie are feeling. And that's just the best kind of storytelling is when
00:20:53.480
your audience's feelings match your feelings from the moment you're describing.
00:20:58.080
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:21:02.280
And now back to the show. Now, there's a lot more high-level things that people can do to really
00:21:06.920
make stories engaging, but just the things we've talked about now, like knowing your ending, that
00:21:10.920
five-second moment of change, beginning with the opposite, and then adding stakes in the story,
00:21:16.040
like that can make your stories better than 90% of the stories out there, right?
00:21:21.620
Yes. I fully believe that if you choose a good beginning and a good ending, and it's actually
00:21:26.540
a moment of realization or transformation, and you think even just a little bit about making sure
00:21:32.780
that your audience continues to be interested in what you're saying, you're better than 95% of the
00:21:37.580
storytellers in the world. I really believe that because most people just never consider any of
00:21:42.660
these things before they start telling a story. And if you practice it in the way that I have,
00:21:47.300
now it's just automatic for me. So if I'm going to play golf with my buddies, I don't get up early
00:21:52.500
and plan my stories for the golf course. When someone says, what happened yesterday? I automatically
00:21:58.180
land on a moment of realization or transformation. And I automatically think about what the opposite of
00:22:03.740
it is. And that's where I start my story. It's become a process that is just totally normal for me
00:22:08.940
because I've practiced it so much. How long should a story be? Does it just depend on the situation
00:22:14.240
you find yourself in? Yeah, it does. I mean, ideally, a story of five to six minutes is
00:22:21.020
fantastic. And that's the length that the moth uses in their slams. But sometimes I have a story
00:22:27.480
that is two minutes long because it's only worth two minutes. It's not something meaningful and huge.
00:22:33.420
And then there are stories like there's a guy named Ron who told a story in our show recently.
00:22:37.340
We produced a show here in Connecticut. And his story was about in the 1980s,
00:22:41.540
he had to go to Russia to help refuseniks who were starving because the Soviet Union wouldn't
00:22:47.060
allow them to have jobs, but wouldn't allow them to leave the country. And so he had to buy VHS tapes
00:22:52.280
and give them to the refuseniks because that was what was valuable in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
00:22:58.440
So that story was like 14 minutes long because it needed to be because I didn't know anything about
00:23:03.720
the Soviet Union in the 1980s without Ron giving me a lot of background. So a lot of it depends on what
00:23:09.860
you're saying, whether your story requires more time or not. But I always say the shorter story
00:23:15.460
wins. People who can speak concisely will always be preferred over someone who is long-winded.
00:23:21.340
So you refer to this a little bit earlier, but the idea of embellishing stories, should a good
00:23:27.600
storyteller embellish or lie? Some people want to call that for the sake of a good story.
00:23:35.160
I always say that I have never in my life added something to a story that was not already in the
00:23:41.600
story. What I do instead is I remove things from stories all the time, people especially. People
00:23:47.420
come out all the time if they don't actually play a role in the story. And by removing things that are
00:23:53.040
unnecessary, they allow the things that still exist in the story to shine. I just think that so often
00:23:59.240
people feel like they have to say everything. And really, we only have to say the things that get
00:24:05.160
us to that five-second moment. So embellishment for me is the removal of material that my audience
00:24:11.860
doesn't want to hear and doesn't serve my story very well. Or it might be sort of the compression
00:24:16.680
of time. So a story that takes place on a Saturday and a Sunday for me, I might jam into one day, just a
00:24:23.520
Saturday. Because it's easier for an audience to understand a story that takes place on one day
00:24:28.720
versus two. And they don't need to know that like I went to bed and then I woke up the next morning
00:24:33.340
and things continued. So that's the kind of embellishment that I believe in.
00:24:37.240
Yeah. I mean, if you think of a movie, movies don't do that. Sometimes you don't even... Days
00:24:41.560
could pass and you have no clue because they just cut to the three days later and you don't know it's
00:24:48.640
So, but yeah, I guess embellishment becomes unethical when you start adding stuff that didn't happen. So if
00:24:53.020
you didn't die and you said you died, like that would be unethical.
00:24:58.000
Yeah. It doesn't make any sense to me either. I mean, I'm a novelist. I write novels for a living
00:25:02.580
and those are all completely fictional. And when I think about storytelling, stories from my life,
00:25:09.760
I always think of it as a puzzle, which is kind of why I love it. Because I'm forced to work with
00:25:15.180
the material that is in front of me. I can't make up any information. You know, I'm stuck with what
00:25:19.880
I've got. And so I love how I have to fight with that material and get it into the order that works
00:25:27.060
best for the purpose of the story. Whereas when I'm writing a novel, anything is available to me.
00:25:32.020
I'm not saying writing a novel is easy. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of challenges in
00:25:36.180
writing a novel. But the one challenge I don't have is I'm not limited by, you know, the content that is
00:25:42.060
available to me. I have an infinite content, amount of content available to me when writing a novel.
00:25:46.560
So I don't know why anyone would want to embellish a story that way. I just think it's so much fun to
00:25:50.580
fight with what you've got. You said one of the downsides, though, of embellishing your stories
00:25:55.160
or changing the stories that if someone was there with you when it happened, they can ruin it for
00:25:59.300
you because they'll be like, no, that didn't happen like that. You're like, you ruined the story.
00:26:04.180
Right. Even if you're doing what I'm doing, which is dropping people out of stories or
00:26:08.420
compressing time, that'll annoy your friends. You know, they've heard me tell stories and someone
00:26:13.320
will come up to me and say, but I was there too. You didn't even mention me. And I'll say, well,
00:26:17.080
you didn't do anything. Like if you want to be in my story, be interesting. Otherwise, you're just
00:26:21.780
a third wheel that's like not necessary in my story. So even if you're not adding things, people
00:26:27.500
don't like it when they're left out of stories either. But that's just something they have to
00:26:31.040
You got to deal with it. So do stories need to be funny or sad? Or should you even like think about
00:26:37.020
that when you're crafting a story? Because I think a lot of people think stories need to be funny or
00:26:43.600
Right. You know, I don't think they have to be funny. I mean, I tell a lot of stories that
00:26:47.340
are not funny at all. And I also tell many stories that are very funny. I don't think that any of
00:26:53.540
those things are necessarily required. You know, ultimately, I want to be entertaining. That is the
00:26:58.900
first thing I want to do with every story I tell. And then I want to connect with people. I want to find
00:27:03.580
something that they will consider interesting or make them feel closer to me or reveal some part of
00:27:10.700
themselves that they didn't see before. And then after that, you know, if it's funny, that's great.
00:27:16.260
And humor, I think in storytelling is a strategy. You know, I do stand up as well. And when I do stand
00:27:21.800
up, I have to be funny all the time. Everything I say has to be working towards a laugh. But in
00:27:26.500
storytelling, I always use humor strategically. In fact, my funniest stories are the stories I least
00:27:33.080
like to tell because there's no emotional journey in those stories. They're just funny all the way
00:27:38.880
through. People love them. But I don't feel like people connect with me as deeply as they do in
00:27:44.640
the stories that move them in a variety of emotional ways. So you don't have to be funny.
00:27:50.120
I work with a lot of people who are tragically not funny in any way whatsoever. But they're still
00:27:54.500
great storytellers and they can be really effective.
00:27:57.380
So let's say you got the story. You start crafting these stories. You have them in your pocket. How do you
00:28:02.540
how do you get a story going? Right? Like say you're at a party or your dinner and you have a
00:28:07.740
story that's related to the topic of conversation. Like you just say, I've got a story or what do you
00:28:13.320
what do you do for that? Because like with the moth, it's like, okay, you're just there to tell
00:28:16.060
stories. But I'm talking about just storytelling in everyday life. How does that work?
00:28:20.120
I think the best thing to do is to actually be a great listener. The thing that I say to people most
00:28:25.120
is tell me a story. Or so often in life, people have stories they want to tell. But for whatever
00:28:31.580
reason, they've been convinced that no one has the time to listen to them or the inclination to
00:28:36.840
listen to them. Or worst of all, they don't think they have anything good to say. And I think they
00:28:42.100
do. So I've sort of learned to listen for those cues when someone says, oh, that happened to me
00:28:47.340
once and they trail off. That's a moment when I jump in and I say, really, tell me that story.
00:28:52.280
If you sort of get other people telling stories, if you open up a space for them and allow them to
00:28:58.940
speak for as long as they need to speak, oftentimes that will then create a space for you as well.
00:29:05.100
And suddenly you'll have a chance to tell a story too. So start by being a good listener. Start by
00:29:09.720
being someone who wants to hear stories. And then people will want to hear your stories as well.
00:29:14.700
And how do you think telling better stories can make people better parents, better teachers,
00:29:21.800
Well, I mean, in a myriad of ways, really. The number of people or the variety of people who I
00:29:28.300
work with now consulting and teaching workshops, you just can't imagine the people who walk into
00:29:34.540
my workshops or who call me and ask me to work with them. If you're a business leader, I was just
00:29:38.960
working with a CEO yesterday. Being able to communicate the mission of your company and talk
00:29:45.480
about what your people are doing in an engaging and entertaining way, a way that doesn't force you to stick a
00:29:51.420
PowerPoint up on a wall every time you speak. That's a tremendous skill. And if you're a teacher
00:29:57.140
and you can tell stories throughout the school day, which is something that I do with my students all
00:30:01.500
the time, then you're an engaging person who people are going to want to listen to. You know, I work with
00:30:07.440
clergy members on their sermons so that they can be more interesting. I work with politicians who are
00:30:13.640
trying to craft stories and are really, politicians are the worst. They're the worst in terms of
00:30:18.900
storytellers. They're the ones who need the most work. But whoever you are, dating is a big thing
00:30:24.320
now. Storytelling for dating. People take my workshops because they can get a first date with
00:30:29.440
someone, but it turns out that whatever they're saying on the first date is so terrible that they
00:30:34.620
can't get the second date. And so if you can tell a good story about yourself, you know, something that
00:30:39.580
demonstrates humility and humor and self-awareness and is just engaging and entertaining, people are going to
00:30:46.700
want to spend more time with you. And so whatever you are, whoever you are, and wherever you are,
00:30:52.400
storytelling can help you. It'll make you a better human being to spend time with.
00:30:57.200
Well, Matthew, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place people can go to learn more
00:31:03.920
Well, if they go to my website, MatthewDix.com, they can learn about all the things that I'm doing
00:31:08.900
there. They can find my book wherever you get books. It's available on Amazon as well. So,
00:31:13.780
wherever you're buying your books, you can probably find it there as well.
00:31:16.660
My wife and I also produce a podcast called Speak Up Storytelling. And in that podcast,
00:31:21.540
we air one of the stories from the shows that we produce. And then we pull that story apart and tell
00:31:27.140
people what's working in the story and what could be improved. And we talk about homework for life in
00:31:32.380
every episode. I give one of my homework for life moments from the week and talk about how that could
00:31:36.580
be crafted into a story. So it's a good way to sort of take a deep dive into storytelling once a week with
00:31:41.380
us as well. Fantastic. And I don't know if you're up for this, but do you think you'd tell like a
00:31:44.880
really short story? It's okay if you're not game for it, but I'd love for people to get a sample of
00:31:49.880
a story that's sort of an example of what we've been talking about.
00:31:55.740
I don't know. Up to five minutes. It could be shorter than that.
00:31:58.960
Yeah. All right. I'll give you the quick version of something.
00:32:02.180
Okay, great. All right. So I'll tell you, I'm going to choose a very small moment. This is
00:32:05.780
about the smallest moment that I can think of to illustrate the point. So I'm leaving the gym
00:32:11.240
just a few months ago, this happened. I'm leaving the gym and as I'm coming down the stairs and I'm
00:32:16.860
feeling really good about myself because I've just exercised for 45 minutes and I have not yet eaten
00:32:21.160
a cheeseburger. So it's this unique time in my life where I have done something really good for my body
00:32:26.720
and have not defiled it with fat and carbohydrates yet. I will. I'm on my way actually to a cheeseburger
00:32:32.360
on this day. But this little time in between, I feel good about myself. And I'm heading towards the
00:32:38.520
door and my keys fall out of my hand. My hands are all sweaty, so they slip out. And as they fall,
00:32:44.380
they sort of land on my foot, like half on my foot and half off. And before I can even bend over to pick
00:32:50.620
them up, this woman coming into the gym, walking in the opposite direction, bends over, picks my keys
1.00
00:32:56.740
up off my foot, puts them in my hand, and then just keeps walking. And I can't believe it. I would
00:33:04.520
never pick the keys up off someone's foot. Like I would never pick up anyone's keys, I don't think.
00:33:10.340
I have a friend who's in a wheelchair and if he dropped his keys, I honestly would do sort of the
00:33:15.020
trigonometry to determine if he can get his own damn keys or do I have to help him. And this woman has
1.00
00:33:20.700
done this for me. She picks up my keys and then she goes into that little room where she's going to
0.93
00:33:24.820
ride a stationary bike to nowhere while some authoritarian in spandex is going to shout at
00:33:30.000
her for not going nowhere fast enough. And she hasn't waited for a thank you or a gift or a parade,
00:33:36.920
all of which I would have expected had I done something so selfless. And so I'm standing there
00:33:42.240
in front of this smoothie bar with my keys in my hand and I am thinking about what a horrible person
00:33:47.340
I am and how just in the last hour, how horrible I have been. Before I got to the gym,
00:33:53.960
I went to the supermarket to get a Gatorade. And as I was walking in, the Boy Scouts were set up in
00:33:59.400
a little table by the door selling candy bars. And I hate that. I hate that they sell candy bars
00:34:03.900
because there's already candy bars in the grocery store too. So it's like putting a hat on a hat.
00:34:09.560
Why are you selling me something that I could get for cheaper inside the store?
00:34:14.540
And so when I walk up to them, I used to be able to tell them I don't have any cash on me.
00:34:19.420
I would say, oh, sorry, I only have a credit card. But now they have phones. And they say,
00:34:23.720
oh, no, we can take your credit card. No problem. And so now what I do is I pretend that I'm on a
00:34:28.860
phone call. This is what I did on this day. I put the phone to my ear and I pretend I'm talking to
00:34:33.460
my wife and that I'm in this really serious conversation. So as I walk by them, I can sort
00:34:38.200
of wave them off by pointing at the phone and letting them know this is really serious.
00:34:43.560
And then when I leave the grocery store, I actually leave from the opposite way and I walk
00:34:47.000
all the way across the parking lot. I do a full circle just to avoid these kids. And I was a Boy
00:34:52.900
Scout for all of my childhood. Boy Scouts saved my life in a million ways. And yet I'm not willing
00:34:58.260
to give these kids $1 so they might get to a summer camp someday. And then when I got to the gym,
00:35:05.280
I was walking in and I saw this woman coming sort of diagonally to me towards the door. And I realized
0.74
00:35:11.660
that I was going to get to the door about 10 seconds before she was, which was going to require
00:35:16.940
me to hold the door for her. And I hate this too. I hate when I'm ahead of people in the world and
00:35:22.580
then I have to stop and hold doors for them. It makes me crazy. And so what I did to avoid this,
00:35:28.240
I did again, some mental trigonometry. And I realized if I quicken my pace, I can get to the door
00:35:33.620
maybe 15 or 20 seconds before her, and then I won't be required to hold it anymore. And so that's what I
00:35:38.940
did. I walked faster and slipped through the door and avoided holding a door for another human being.
00:35:45.380
And then when I was done on the treadmill that day, I had to wipe the treadmill down,
00:35:49.760
which makes me crazy. I feel like I've just run for 45 minutes. I've done God's work.
00:35:55.420
I don't want to have to wipe this thing down. And honestly, according to the golden rule,
00:36:00.840
you're supposed to do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. I don't care if anyone ever wipes
1.00
00:36:06.240
the treadmill down. And so if I don't want people to wipe down the treadmill, I shouldn't do it either,
00:36:10.740
the golden rule. But I know I have to, because I know there's like people watching and there's
00:36:14.720
probably no one watching, but in my mind, everyone is always watching me. And so I wipe the treadmill
00:36:19.380
down that day, but I do a bad job of it. I do like a passive aggressive slight wipe down just to make
00:36:25.920
myself feel a little bit better about doing the thing that I don't want to do that I should do.
00:36:30.760
And then I leave and drop my keys and this angel picks them up off my shoe. And I think about what a
00:36:37.660
horrible and selfish person I am just in that last hour, all those bad things I've done. And so I leave
00:36:44.440
the gym feeling terrible about myself. And so the next day I pull into the gym and it's pouring, it's cats
00:36:51.820
and dogs. And as I'm pulling in the spot closest to the gym door, there's someone backing out of it.
00:36:59.620
And I'm so excited because I'm not going to get wet. My kids call it the best spot in the lot.
00:37:04.620
And so I stop and I wait for that car to back out so I can take the best spot in the lot.
00:37:10.260
And as I'm waiting, I see headlights behind me, another car who's pulling in, waiting for me to
00:37:15.860
move out of the way so that they can park probably like nine miles away at the back of the parking lot.
00:37:20.080
And then as I look back down, I see my keys in the ignition. And I think about the day before
00:37:27.120
with the angel who picked them up. I swear I can still see some of her like angel dust on my keys.
00:37:33.920
And so when that car clears the parking spot and it's my turn to take it, I drive by the parking
00:37:39.880
spot and I park nine miles away. And I give that spot over to whoever's behind me, probably a serial
00:37:46.400
killer. But whoever it is, they get the spot that day because I decide to be a slightly better person.
00:37:53.200
It doesn't mean I've changed my life in any way. I still hate wiping down treadmills and I still hate
00:37:58.120
holding doors and I still dodge the Boy Scouts at every chance that I get. But when I'm holding my
00:38:03.360
keys in my hand, when I'm looking at them, I want to be a slightly better person. And for me,
00:38:11.360
that's at least a good start. So that is a story of a tiny little moment that when it happened a few
00:38:17.780
months ago, as soon as it happened, I ran home and I told my wife, I have a great story because
00:38:22.840
some woman just picked my keys up off my shoe and it made me realize what a jackass I am. And she said,
1.00
00:38:28.340
okay, that's great. But it's a story that I just love to tell because it's a tiny little moment
00:38:33.360
where I'm illustrating something about myself. And when I tell that story, I won a moth slam with it.
00:38:38.880
And I thought I would, because when I tell about the things that I've done that are especially
00:38:43.100
terrible, people love those stories because everyone's sort of going through life being
00:38:47.980
terrible in some way, being selfish and not being their best self. But not often do people talk
00:38:54.300
about it. So when they hear someone talking about it, it just makes you feel a little more human,
00:38:58.360
like, oh, I'm not the only awful person. Other people are doing awful things too that they're kind
00:39:03.100
of ashamed about. I'm not really as bad as I once thought I was. And so people love those kinds
00:39:08.860
of stories. And it's a tiny, tiny little thing that happens to us all the time.
00:39:12.720
Matthew, that was great. Thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
00:39:17.340
My guest today was Matthew Dix. He's the author of the book Storyworthy. It's available on
00:39:20.720
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at
00:39:24.140
matthewdix.com. Also check out his podcast with his wife, Speak Up Storytelling. Find that on
00:39:29.060
iTunes or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also check out our show notes at
00:39:32.240
aom.is slash storyworthy. We can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic.
00:39:49.680
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:39:54.120
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. We got over 4,000
00:39:58.060
articles there. If you haven't been there, check it out. As always, thank you for your continued
00:40:01.400
support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.