The MOST important part of any story (it’s probably not what you think!) (5/5 in the story series)
I put the CD into the player and felt my stomach fizz with excitement. After months of stillness, finally, I was going to bring the room to life! I pressed play and looked up, expecting to see all the seniors bopping along. Instead: nothing.
No movement. One old lady eventually looked at me and furrowed her brow.
“This is The Beatles?” she asked.
“Yes!” I replied.
“Huh.”
She went back to her newspaper.
I was volunteering at the day centre for seniors with dementia, and I wanted to move them with music. But they had other ideas…
That’s one way to begin this story. Here’s another:
This is a story about the power of music, and surprising yourself – about the time I made a CD for the seniors that I work with, thought they didn’t like it, and then got shocked by an old lady, who danced the jitterbug with me like she was 16 again.
It all started when I first put the CD on. After months of stillness, finally, I was going to bring the room to life…
I ask people (during client calls or storytelling workshops), “Which is the most important part of any story?”
Here’s what they usually guess:
The narrative
The detail
The ending
The climax
In fact, the answer is…
How to edit your stories but still make them compelling (4/5 in the story series)
As I opened the email, my heart started racing. It was even more exciting than I’d anticipated!
Two months earlier, I’d booked my ticket for Portland’s World Domination Summit – a conference full of do-gooders trying to change the world (like me!). I’d never been before, but knew WDS was a big noise in my industry.
The month before, they’d put out a call for Attendee Storytellers. By this point, I’d been running my live storytelling show for about a year and a half (and coaching all of the storytellers), so I figured I had a good shot. After all, there were, what, 500 people at this conference? So probably 30-odd would apply, and they’d choose around 25 of us.
They needed an inspiring story with a message. I wondered what I’d ever done that was inspiring… and then remembered. Oh yeah. My solo marathon. Two years before, after Hurricane Sandy led to the cancellation of the New York City Marathon that I was due to run, I’d made up for it by running one on my own, in London.
I pitched my story to WDS – starting in an action scene – and sent it off.
“CONGRATULATIONS!” came the email. “You’ve been selected to tell an attendee story on stage!” This was nice to hear, though not unexpected. BUT THEN:
“Hundreds of people applied, and you were one of only twelve selected!”
Well, THIS was exciting! Immediately, I jumped onto Facebook, to my local business group of business ladies.
“GUYS!!!!!” I told them, “Hundreds of people applied to tell a story at WDS, and I’m one of 12 selected!!! I’m going to be telling my story to 500 people!!!”
“Dude,” one of them replied. “The WDS audience is THREE THOUSAND”.
Oh.
Crap.
After getting over the fear of speaking to a room that enormous, I had another problem:
I had to get the whole story – Inspirational Message included – down to one and a half minutes.
As I talked about in part 1 of this blog series, when you’re telling a story, you need as much of it as possible to be action scenes. And, as I told you in part 2: action scenes require detail.
So how do you get the narrative of a very eventful 42 kilometer run – that, in the end, took over 7 hours – into a minute and a half?
First…
You’re ruining your best stories. Here’s how to stop (3/5 in the story series)
Kneeling on the floor next to her armchair, I lay my head in my Granny’s lap. As the thick wool of her skirt skritched against my cheek, she stroked my hair, and sang to me in Russian.
“Mne nekuda bolshe speshut!
Mne nekovo bolshe lyubit!
M’sheek, ni gani, loshadey”
Three years earlier, when I was 18, my…
Make every story captivating, using this Hollywood tip (2/5 in the story series)
The young man looked at me, his eyebrows raised in a question. He was handsome, though surely fifteen years younger than me. Stood below him, I flushed, and felt the small grip of panic in my chest. I knew what I wanted, but I had no idea how to tell him.
“S-s’il vous plait…” I stuttered, taking a deep breath…
How to Combat Facebook Envy (and Save Lives)
We all walk around, all day every day, thinking that everyone else has their sh-t together.
We all think that everyone else has a normal background, and normal parents, and a normal, successful career and successful relationships.
Then we get on Facebook and it compounds it. “This person’s getting married!” “That person has a happy family with kids!” “this person doesn’t have kids and so they went on vacation to Costa Rica!” “That person’s making six figures in her business!” – and it just COMPOUNDS that feeling of, “Everyone else has their sh-t together but me”.
That feeling is shame. And what shame does, is builds this metal fortress around you, cutting you off from everyone else.
But then, someone…
What REALLY happens when you disable your Facebook account
“A year ago, I shut down my Facebook account.” One of the things my clients often worry about, is that their story is not exciting enough to be told. They believe that, for anyone to want to keep reading or listening, there has to be HIGH DRAMA – life-threatening illnesses, helicopter chases and/or bears. My…
