Storyworthy

by Matthew Dicks

  It’s a story of a mother’s worry and love instead of a plane crash. The plane crash is like my car accident or the blown-out tire on my Chevy Malibu: simply a means to getting to what really matters.

  The best thing about big stories is that most people don’t have many of them. This is good, because they really are hard to tell.

  I have yet to tell the story of my trial for the crime I did not commit.

  I have yet to tell the story of the fellow drummer at band camp who had his leg blown open by the backfiring of a school bus.

  I haven’t told the story of my pet raccoon, Racket, or the time I agreed to a $15,000 surgery for my dog while sleepwalking, or the time I escaped the police in an exceedingly brief but very real high-speed chase. I haven’t told the story of my brother’s return from what we thought was the dead after he had disappeared for more than five years.

  All big stories. Why haven’t I told them?

  They are hard to tell.

  It’s taken almost two years for Monica to finally tell her airplane-crash story. Instead she’s told stories about an incredibly awkward second date and a Christmas morning when she felt like the worst mother in the world.

  Why? Plane-crash stories are hard to tell. Long, silent, awkward dates and parental missteps are stories that audiences connect to more easily. They are easier to tell.

  I’d much rather tell you the story of the time I danced with Clara to the Ramones in the dying light of a summer day and learned something about regret. Or the time I swallowed a penny as a little boy and couldn’t tell my parents. Or the time Elysha said to me (at least a month before we started dating), “If we start dating, we’ll never break up. We’ll get married and be together forever.”

  Smaller moments, to be sure. Tiny, even. Moments no one would have recognized had they witnessed them firsthand. But they are easier to tell and just as good as the big moments. Maybe better.

  STORY BREAK

  Brevity Is the Soul of Wit

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

  In storytelling, you should always try to say less. Shorter is better. Fewer words rule. The twenty-minute commencement address is almost always better than the forty-minute address. The thirty-minute meeting is almost always more effective than the sixty-minute meeting. The six-minute story is almost always better than the ten-minute story. And yes, the shorter sermon is always better than the longer sermon.

  As Blaise Pascal first said, “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” Brevity takes time, because brevity is always better.

  The longer you speak, the more engaging, amusing, and captivating you must be. That’s a tall order. Those are high expectations. Most people are not engaging, amusing, or captivating by nature.

  But that’s okay. As the sign says, you don’t have to be nearly as good if you can be quick. Shorter is also harder. I often tell storytellers that it’s easy to tell an eight- to ten-minute story. Almost anyone can find a way to get from beginning to end in ten minutes.

  But it’s hard to tell a five- to six-minute story. It means making difficult choices about what will stay and what will go. It requires careful crafting and clever construction. Words and phrases must be expertly manipulated. Your choices must be spot-on. But the results are often superior.

  One of the most popular stories that I tell is about four minutes long. Although the story is good and actually won a Moth StorySLAM, I remain convinced that audiences like it because it’s short. I pack a ton of suspense and humor and heart into four minutes, making the story seem exceedingly satisfying.

  I could easily turn that four-minute gem into a longer, more complex story, and I nearly did when The Moth asked me to tell it on their Mainstage. I began expanding the story, finding areas to explore in more depth, and while the results would have been excellent, I think the pace and hilarity of the story might have suffered greatly.

  Ultimately, we decided on a different story for that show, so I never had the chance to see the results of the longer story. But here is what I know:

  The longer you speak, the more perfect and precise you must be. The longer you stand in front of an audience — whether it be a theater or a boardroom — the more entertaining and engaging your words must be.

  So speak less. Make time your ally.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There Is Only One Way to Make Someone Cry

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

  On December 28, 2004, Elysha and I ascended the stairs in Grand Central Station, her self-described favorite room in the world. When we reached the top of the staircase, I pulled her to a stop. A police officer appeared almost instantly and told us to keep moving. “You’re blocking the stairs,” she said.

  I dropped to one knee.

  “Oh,” the officer said. She smiled and stepped back.

  I was holding a book that I had been reading on the train. Wanting to take Elysha’s hands in my own, I turned and handed the book to the police officer. “Hold this,” I whispered. The officer nodded and smiled.

  I turned back to Elysha. Tears were already filling her eyes. “Elysha Green,” I said. “Will you marry me?”

  Tears ran down her cheeks as I removed the jewelry box from my coat pocket and lifted the lid, presenting her with an engagement ring. She wept as I put it on her finger.

  A second later, shouts erupted from the bottom of the stairs. About twenty-five of our friends, hiding in the holiday crowd, had witnessed the proposal firsthand. When they burst into cheers, they were immediately surrounded by National Guard soldiers. The country was on alert level extra-super-ultra-orange, and the soldiers were on high alert. One of my friends, a police officer, quickly defused the situation, and our principal and friend Plato, who would serve as the minister at our wedding two years later, charged up the stairs first, taking two and three steps at a time. He was pumping his fist in the air and cheering.

  Elysha saw him first. Still weeping, she said, “Plato? What are you doing here?”

  Soon we were surrounded by friends and family congratulating us. We all went to lunch and then walked to Rockefeller Center as snow began to fall so we could pose for photos underneath the Christmas tree.

  For the record, Elysha never said yes to my proposal of marriage. She only cried. To this day, I’m still waiting for an answer.

  The second time I made Elysha cry was about two years later. I was sitting at my desk, correcting papers alongside a student-teacher when my phone rang. I rarely receive calls during the school day, but since my students were in art class, I picked up the phone to see who was calling. A California number.

  “That’s weird,” I said to my student-teacher. “Who lives in California?”

  I answered the call. It was my literary agent, calling to tell me that Doubleday had made an offer on my first novel, Something Missing. I didn’t even know that she had sent the book to publishers.

  It was an offer for more money than I had ever seen in my life. More money than I could ever have imagined for a story that I had made up in my head. She explained the specifics of a deal. Negotiations were still ongoing. She wanted to retain international rights. But the basics of the deal were in place. The book was sold. I listened in disbelief. When I finally hung up the phone, I was shaking.

  “What?” my student-teacher asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” I told her. “Elysha has to be first.”

  I ran to Elysha’s classroom, only one door down from my own, but the room was empty. Her students were in music class. She was somewhere in the building. So began my frantic search through the school for my wife.

  As I ran past the office, Plato saw me. “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking worried.

  “Can’t say,” I said. “Elysha first.”

  I ran into Cindy and Justine, two women who had served as bridesmaids in our wedding the previous year. “What’s your deal?�
� Cindy asked as I charged past them.

  “Not now,” I said.

  I checked the lunchroom. The copy room. The music room. I finally found Elysha in a hallway behind the auditorium. “What’s up, honey?” she asked.

  “Stop,” I said. I took her by the shoulders. “Just listen.” I told her the news. I had spoken about two sentences when she collapsed to the floor in tears. The money wasn’t going to make us rich by any stretch of the imagination, but it was enough to clear our wedding debts and enable us to put a down payment on a home. She cried and cried and cried.

  Word quickly spread throughout the school that I had broken up with Elysha in the back hall of the school. After setting the record straight, we celebrated.

  That’s it. I’ve made her cry a total of two times in our almost fifteen years together. This is not to say that she hasn’t cried at other times over the course of our relationship. She cried throughout most of our wedding ceremony. She wept at the birth of both of our children. She cried upon the death of each of our two cats, Jack and Owen. She often gets teary-eyed while watching movies and television. Commercials can make her cry. José Saramago’s novel Blindness made her weep almost constantly.

  But when it comes to me, I’ve only made her cry twice. Why? And more importantly, how?

  The answer is simple: surprise.

  With my marriage proposal and the publication of my first novel, I surprised Elysha with unexpected information. Joyous information, but completely unanticipated.

  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.

  This is unlike real life, where many things can give rise to an emotional reaction, and surprise is not always required.

  Like Elysha, I cried at the birth of each of our children, not because of surprise (though we waited to be surprised about the sex of each child) but because I was overwhelmed by the instantaneous love I felt for these two new human beings.

  Like Elysha, I cried at the death of our cats. I was overcome with grief and sadness for these two beautiful boys who gave us so much love and affection for so many years.

  I frequently leap into the arms of total strangers in Gillette Stadium when the Patriots win a close game or score an especially awe-inspiring touchdown. This is almost always the result of a prolonged period of hope, anticipation, nervousness, and excitement.

  I wept throughout much of my mother’s funeral. I was overcome by the personal loss as well as by the knowledge that she would never read one of my books or meet any of my children.

  Elysha doesn’t know this, but I recently wept in pain over a wisdom tooth that had cracked wide open. The nerve was exposed, but because of bad timing, I had to wait five days for surgery. In the middle of the night, the pain became so unbearable (even with the Vicodin) that I crept downstairs to cry. I didn’t want to worry her.

  In real life, there are many reasons to experience an emotional response. But in storytelling, we don’t have the ability to overwhelm an audience with grief. We can’t create prolonged periods of nervousness or excitement. We can’t cause physical pain. We can’t recreate these depths of experience. All we have is words. We must use our words strategically to create and enhance surprise for our audience.

  Think about the moments of emotional response in “This Is Going to Suck.” All of them are generated through surprise.

  Audiences react with shock and sympathy when my car collides head-on with the Mercedes, mostly because, as terrible as they suspect a head-on collision can be, they don’t expect to discover that my entire bottom row of teeth would be knocked to the back of my mouth or that my head would crash through the windshield. They don’t think my legs would be as ravaged as they are. It’s a surprise. As bad as they may have predicted the accident to be, it’s rare for someone to expect this level of violence and gore.

  I enhance this surprise through contrast. I paint a very different picture of the world right before the collision. I talk about my hopes for a perfect Christmas. I describe the picture postcard–like appearance of the homes that I pass. I turn the snow, which will prove to be the cause of my downfall, into something beautiful, blanketing the lawns in white. All of this is done specifically to enhance the surprise of the collision. I’m creating contrast between the moment just before the collision and the moment immediately after. I’m establishing expectations so I can quickly upend them.

  Audiences become emotional and often cry upon learning that my friends have filled the waiting room outside the emergency room, because this is also a surprise. They never see it coming. Part of the reason is that I hide important information in the story (more on this in a moment), but it’s also because I accentuate the surprise by stressing the idea that I am alone. I paint the picture of a boy who is badly hurt and completely alone in a place where no one even knows his name. I’ve primed the audience for an emotional response by playing upon their sympathy, empathy, and outrage.

  My parents decide to check on the car before checking on me.

  The nurses don’t know my name.

  It’s two days before Christmas.

  I feel utterly alone.

  When I say the words, “But I’m not alone, because . . .” audience members will sometimes start crying even before they hear the reason. I’ve primed the pump for surprise.

  Audiences also laugh several times during “This Is Going to Suck,” even though it’s not a funny story at all, and in each of these cases, the laughter is an emotional response resulting from a surprise. I’ll explain each of these moments in the next chapter on humor.

  How to Ruin Surprise

  For you as a storyteller, this means that you need to build surprise into your stories. There must be moments of unexpectedness so that your audience can experience an emotional response to your story.

  You may argue that I was able to surprise my audience in “This Is Going to Suck” because my story had surprises already built in. Head-on collision. Death. Friends suddenly appearing in the waiting room.

  But this is not true. I will grant that the story contains moments of potential surprise, but almost every story ever told has this kind of potential. It’s up to the storyteller to ensure that these moments are as surprising as possible.

  Storytellers often mitigate or even ruin surprise by making some simple mistakes or failing to accentuate or enhance the potential surprise of the moment.

  Common mistakes that storytellers make that ruin surprise include:

  Presenting a thesis statement prior to the surprise.

  This often takes the form of an opening sentence that gives away all that is surprising about the story.

  “This is a story about a time in my life when my friends became my family.”

  “This is a story about a car accident so serious that it took my life, if only for a moment.”

  “This is the story of a waiting room full of surprise guests.”

  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.

  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.

  The same holds true for smaller moments of surprise within stories. For example, in describing the way my grandmother pulled my teeth, I have two choices:

  Option #1

  My grandmother tied a length of string around my loose tooth. She leaned in close so our two faces were just inches apart. She told m
e to look her straight in the eyes. “Don’t blink,” she warned. Then she wrapped the other end of the string around her fist, raised it between our noses, smiled, and pulled down. Hard.

  My grandmother was a sadist.

  Option #2

  My grandmother was a sadist.

  She tied a length of string around my loose tooth. She leaned in close so our two faces were just inches apart. She told me to look her straight in the eyes. “Don’t blink,” she warned. Then she wrapped the other end of the string around her fist, raised it between our noses, smiled, and pulled down. Hard.

  See the difference? In option #1, the thesis statement comes at the end of the paragraph, allowing for my grandmother’s method of pulling my teeth to be as surprising as possible. That thesis statement “My grandmother was a sadist” also probably adds a laugh at the end to punctuate the moment.

  Referring to any grandmother as a sadist is surprising. These two words are rarely pushed together, and therefore the statement, if delivered well, is probably funny.

  Option #2 strips the moment of its potential surprise. It alerts the audience to the horror that is coming. “My grandmother was a sadist.” The audience knows that whatever follows will not be pretty. The actual method of tooth removal may still be surprising, but not nearly as much as in option #1.

  Thesis statements ruin the surprise every time. In storytelling, our job is to describe action, dialogue, and thought. It is never our job to summarize these things.

  Failing to take advantage of the power of stakes to enhance and accentuate surprise.

  Remember in “Charity Thief” when I put a Backpack on my audience before I enter that gas station? I describe my plan for begging for gas in great detail. It sounds like a plausible idea. Probable, even. My audience is rooting for me. They expect me to get the gas I need. I know this because when I tell this story in workshops, I see the same reaction every time I say, “But the kid won’t give me the gas.”