Storyworthy

by Matthew Dicks

  You can listen to both stories on the “Storyworthy the Book” YouTube channel. See if you can spot the moment when I change the Elephant’s color.

  Filmmakers almost always present an Elephant at the beginning of their movies. Even a film like Die Hard, which one might describe as “terrorists take over a skyscraper in Los Angeles, and only Bruce Willis can save the day” is much more. It’s actually the story of a husband trying desperately to get back to his wife and save their marriage. He flies across the country to visit her for Christmas and convince her to return to New York and their former life together, but terrorists interrupt the reunion, forcing Willis’s character, John McClane, to fight a lot harder to get his wife back.

  The filmmakers present us with this Elephant very early on. McClane is carrying an unwieldy stuffed animal on the plane for his daughter, the kind a parent only buys to make up for lost time. McClane’s wife asks her nanny to make up the spare bed, “just in case,” making it clear that this husband and wife are not together in the traditional sense of the word. McClane then explains his situation to Argyle, the limo driver.

  MCCLANE

  She had a good job. It turned into a great career.

  ARGYLE

  That meant she had to move here.

  MCCLANE

  You’re very fast, Argyle.

  ARGYLE

  So, why didn’t you come? Well? Why didn’t you come with her?

  MCCLANE

  Because I’m a New York cop. I got a backlog of New York scumbags I’m still trying to put behind bars. I can’t just go that easy.

  That’s it. The Elephant. Yes, there will be terrorists and explosions and lots and lots of glass, but in the end, it’s a story about a disconnected husband and a wife. It’s no surprise at the end of the film when McClane saves his wife’s life by removing from her wrist the Rolex she had received earlier from her boss for a job well done.

  The wife’s new job in Los Angeles is the reason that the couple is divided. We learned that at the beginning of the story. At the end of the story, her new job is no longer an obstacle. Removing the watch symbolizes this unspoken reality.

  And it all started with a stuffed animal, a spare room, and a conversation with a limo driver before a shot was ever fired. It started with an Elephant.

  Backpacks

  A 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.

  The first goal is fairly easy to achieve if a Backpack is used properly. If you can accomplish the second goal, that is really something.

  In “Charity Thief,” I stick a Backpack on my audience when I describe my plan for begging for money before entering the gas station. I say:

  So I make a plan. I’m going to beg for gas, because it’s 1991. Gas is eighty-five cents a gallon, so eight dollars is all I need to get me home. I’ll offer my license, my wallet, everything in my car as collateral in exchange for eight dollars’ worth of gas and the promise that I will return and repay the money and more. Whatever it takes.

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

  At this point the audience is loaded with my hopes and dreams. They know the plan, so when the kid behind the counter refuses to give me gas for my car, the audience experiences the same kind of disappointment that I felt that day. They knew the plan. They wanted it to succeed.

  When I tell this story onstage, I watch my audience carefully at the moment when the kid behind the counter refuses my request. It’s always the same. When the kid says no, shoulders slump. Chins dip to chests. The audience looks frustrated. Angry. Some audibly sigh. They were hoping, just as I was, that my problem would be solved. By putting a Backpack on them, I allowed my audience to enter the gas station with me, wondering what would happen next. I turned my plan into their plan. They’re now invested in the outcome.

  These are stakes. The audience must hear the next sentence.

  This is why heist movies like the Ocean’s Eleven franchise explain almost every part of the robbers’ plan before they ever make a move. If you understand their plan to rob the casino, you can experience the same level of frustration, worry, fear, and suspense that the characters feel when their plans go awry. The filmmakers put the audience on Danny Ocean’s team. They know the plan, so they feel as if they are a part of the heist themselves.

  You’ll see this in films constantly. A group of teens is trapped in a haunted house. They devise an escape plan. Their plan fails. One of their group disappears in the process. He is presumably dead. Then our heroes regroup to make a new plan. Each time characters in a movie regroup and make a new plan, the audience is given a new Backpack. This makes them wonder what will happen next. It allows the audience to become emotionally connected to the results of the characters’ plan, or, in the case of storytelling, emotionally connected to you as the storyteller.

  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. The scene would fall flat. If I go through all the trouble of explaining my plan beforehand, and then I say, “The kid agrees to lend me the gas,” the audience is oddly unsatisfied. They are left wondering why I went through all of that explanation only to find out that things turned out fine.

  Similarly, if Danny Ocean’s complex and clever plan for robbing the casino goes off without a hitch, you have a terrible movie.

  It’s an odd thing: The audience wants characters (or storytellers) to succeed, but they don’t really want characters to succeed. It’s struggle and strife that make stories great. They want to see their characters ultimately triumph, but they want suffering first. They don’t want anything to be easy.

  Perfect plans executed perfectly never make good stories. They are the stories told by narcissists, jackasses, and thin-skinned egotists.

  Breadcrumbs

  Storytellers use Breadcrumbs when we hint at a future event but only reveal enough to keep the audience guessing.

  In “Charity Thief,” I drop a Breadcrumb when I say:

  But as I climb back into the car, I see my crumpled McDonald’s uniform on the backseat, and I suddenly have an idea.

  During a workshop, sometimes I’ll stop the story right there and ask my students what they are thinking. Their responses are hilarious.

  The most common response is “I thought you were going to find a McDonald’s and work at it for a few hours to earn the money you needed.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Because this is how McDonald’s restaurants work. You can don a uniform and work in any restaurant at any time that you’d like, and you’ll be paid in cash at the end of your self-determined shift.”

  The second most common response is “I thought you’d sell your uniform at a thrift shop.”

  “Yes,” I say, “Thrift shops are always looking for used fast-food uniforms. Also, how was I supposed to locate a thrift store a hundred miles from home with almost no gas in my car?”

  I know these guesses seem silly, but who can blame the respondents? The real answer is almost impossible to predict, and that’s why I love this Breadcrumb. All I care about is that my audience is wondering what will happen next. Even if they haven’t made an actual prediction in their mind, they are wondering: What will Matt do with that uniform? How is that going to help him get the gas he needs to escape New Hampshire?

  Stakes. The audience needs to hear the next sentence.

  The trick is to choose the Breadcrumbs that create the most wonder in the minds of your audience without giving them enough
to guess correctly. Choose wisely. 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.

  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.

  In “Charity Thief,” that moment occurs as I am knocking on that blue door. The audience knows that I’m about to do something to attempt to solve my problem. They know that a McDonald’s uniform is involved (my Breadcrumb), but they probably can’t imagine what my solution might be.

  They want to know. They need to know. So what do I do?

  I stop the story cold. I bring everything to a halt. I start by describing things that don’t require a description. I say:

  An hour later, I’m standing on the porch of a small, red-brick house on a quiet, residential street. I’m knocking on a blue door.

  I’m wearing my McDonald’s manager’s uniform.

  We all know what a McDonald’s uniform looks like. Everyone has seen one, either in real life or on the multitude of McDonald’s commercials that plaster the television screen daily. Even if an audience member has never seen one before, knowing what it looks like is irrelevant to the story. There is no need to describe this uniform in any detail, yet I choose to describe it anyway, in the greatest detail. It is the longest bit of description in the entire story, and I’m describing the last thing in the word that needs to be described. This is because I have my audience now. I own them. They cannot wait for that blue door to open so the unknown can become known.

  What the hell is Matt planning to do?

  Why is he wearing his McDonald’s uniform?

  I want this moment to last as long as possible. I want to milk it for every bit of suspense. I say:

  Blue shirt. Blue pants. Blue tie. Gold name badge. I’m holding a gray McDonald’s briefcase with a big M engraved on the front like a shield.

  This story has come to a complete stop. Think about it: I say the word blue in this passage three times.

  I also use the word shield intentionally. A shield is used in battle. I want to hint at the possibility of danger. Violence. War. More stakes. Then I say:

  I knock on that blue door again.

  When the door opens, a man is standing in front of me. He looks about fifty, but he might as well be five hundred. He’s one of these guys who looks as if he has all the wisdom of the world wrapped up in him, and in that moment, I know that he knows that I’m about to do something terrible.

  That is a lot to say about a man whom I’ve seen for exactly three seconds. That’s a lot of assumptions. But once again, I’m grinding this story to a halt. Making my audience wait for the sentence they want most.

  I use the word terrible intentionally too. It was a word chosen carefully. I considered many alternatives. I wanted a word that would suggest many things. I wanted a word that would cause the greatest wonder in my audience’s mind.

  After much deliberation, I settled on terrible. I think it’s perfect. Then I say:

  But it’s two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. I’m standing on his porch in a McDonald’s uniform. It’s one of those moments when you realize that the only way to get out of a terrible situation is to go through with it. So I take another deep breath and say . . .

  All I’ve done here is summarize what has just happened. It’s unnecessary. It’s redundant. Under any other circumstances, I would argue that this section needs to be cut. But this is not any other circumstance. I have my audience dying for the next sentence, and I know it. This unnecessary bit of summary slows things down and raises the tension even further. It’s the final delay before the sentence that everyone is waiting for. The sentence that will cause people to either laugh or groan (and your reaction says a lot about you as a person).

  “Hi, I’m Matt, and I’m collecting money for Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities.”

  In addition to adding in superfluous detail and summary, I’ll slow my pace as I approach this sentence. I will reduce my volume. I want the audience on the edge of their seats, desperately awaiting those twelve words.

  It’s the perfect time to use an Hourglass.

  Stakes. The desire of an audience to hear the next sentence, made greater by the deliberate slowing down of action and pace.

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

  Crystal Balls

  The Crystal Ball is the easiest of the strategies to deploy, because you already use Crystal Balls in everyday life. 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.

  In “Charity Thief,” I say:

  [The man] points his finger at me and says, “You stay right there.” Then he walks back into his house, and I know what he’s doing. He’s calling the police, and they will come and arrest me for stealing money from McDonald’s.

  This does not happen, of course, but when I present this very real possibility, the audience wants to know if it will happen. By predicting my future arrest, I’ve established wonder in their minds about a future event.

  We use Crystal Balls in everyday life because we, as human beings, are all prediction machines. We are constantly trying to anticipate the future, so when telling stories, recounting those in-the-moment predictions is critical.

  You might tell your significant other, “The boss called me into her office this morning, and as I walked down the hall, I just knew I had done something wrong and was getting fired. This was it. The end of the road for me. It was the longest walk of my life. When I stepped into her office, she told me that I was being promoted.”

  Or “I was sure that my boyfriend forgot my birthday again, but when I got home, he had a surprise party waiting for me.”

  Or “For the first four decades of my life, I thought brie was disgusting simply because of the way it looked. But tonight I tried brie for the first time, and I can’t believe what I’ve been missing.”

  That last one is real. It took me forty years to taste brie. I’m an idiot.

  We spend our lives predicting our future. Anticipating what will come next. Often these predictions about future events are incorrect, and quite often they become part of the stories we tell. We want people to know what we were thinking as well as what we were saying and doing.

  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.

  The idea that the police might be coming to arrest me in “Charity Thief” meets these requirements well.

  Remember, the best way to ensure that your story has stakes is to choose a story that has stakes. Elephants, Backpacks, Breadcrumbs, Hourglasses, and Crystal Balls will only get you so far. If your story is boring, it will always be boring. But if your story has some potentially boring parts — sections that need to be told but simply aren’t compelling — these strategies will help a lot.

  Every single one of the stories I have told onstage has an Elephant. They all begin with a clear sense of the want or need or peril or problem or mystery. Sometimes that Elephant changes color, sometimes not.

  Many of my stories only use an Elephant. When you’re taking your clothes off in the crew room of a McDonald’s or donning cardboa
rd armor to battle a vicious cat or riding your bike off a barn roof, you have all the stakes you’ll ever need.

  If you’re not sure about the level of stakes in your story, simply 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.

  There are certainly other ways to raise the stakes in a story, but these five strategies are easily learned and easily deployed. With a little practice, these will get you far. In addition to these five strategies, I want to mention one more way to keep your audience’s attention.

  Humor

  Humor doesn’t actually add to or raise the stakes of a story. It doesn’t give your audience a reason to listen for the next sentence. It doesn’t increase the level of suspense or peril or mystery. But it’s a way of keeping your audience’s attention through a section of your story that you think might be less than compelling.

  Chapter 16 will address the effective use of humor, but just know that in the absence of possible stakes, humor can substitute for a time. But also remember that the goal of a storyteller is not to tell a funny story. The goal is to tell a story that moves an audience emotionally. That means a story can contain humor, but if it’s all funny, then the story operates on a single emotional plane and is ultimately forgettable.

  Humor will keep your audience listening, but use it for this reason only when you’re unable to raise the stakes in any other way.

  Stakes are essential in a story. Stakes are the gears that make stories work. If your story lacks stakes or lacks meaningful stakes, there is nothing you can do to make that story great.

  Humor is optional. Stakes are nonnegotiable.