Storyworthy

by Matthew Dicks

  Part III

  Telling Your Story

  I hope I didn’t bore you too much with my life story.

  — Elvis Presley

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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

  I’m writing this chapter on an Amtrak train from Washington, DC, to Hartford, Connecticut. I’m not sitting in the quiet car, but it’s quiet nonetheless. The train rocks back and forth on the rails, dramatically increasing the frequency of typos. Elysha is sitting beside me. She’s listening to music through earbuds and struggling with a crossword puzzle on her phone.

  It’s late afternoon. The sun hangs low in the sky. Sunlight is streaming in through the windows on the other side of the train car, brightening my daughter’s face. She’s leaning against the window. Her legs are scooched up underneath her blue and pink skirt. She’s sitting quietly, reading. She’s eight years old, but today it seems as if she’s twice that. She looks so mature, so together.

  Her younger brother, Charlie, is sitting beside her in the aisle seat, just an arm’s length away from me. He’s listening to music on an iPad through a pair of blue headphones. He’s fidgeting.

  I turn back to the laptop on the tray in front of me. I should be thinking about the best way to convey the idea of this chapter. I should be hunting for the perfect story to illustrate my point. I want to bang out this chapter before we hit New York City.

  But I’m not thinking about this chapter at all. My mind is focused on Charlie and his fidgeting. He needs to pee. He’s needed to pee since Aberdeen, New Jersey, but he’s afraid of the restrooms on the train. In his words, “They are yuck.”

  The situation is becoming precarious. I need this boy to pee, but it turns out that you can’t make a human being pee, even if you’re forty years older, 150 pounds heavier, and his father. There are just some things that can’t be done without consent. Peeing is one of these things.

  Charlie’s refusal to pee in the train’s restroom worries me. We’re still more than three hours from our home in Connecticut. The boy can’t hold it for three hours, so there are only two possible conclusions to this predicament: he has an accident, or I convince him to use the restroom.

  It’s amazing how a five-year-old boy’s bladder is consuming so much of my mental energy. I cannot stop thinking about his need to pee. It’s like a blazing road sign in my mind.

  He’s also occupying enormous amounts of my time. He’s signaling me again to stop typing. He’s climbing out of his seat. We’re off again, walking to the end of our train car and then crossing over into the café car. This is his fourth attempt to pee. He hopes that the restrooms in the café car are somehow more palatable and less frightening.

  They are not. This restroom is the same as the ones we’ve seen already, and we’ve seen a lot of them. “Porta-potty,” Charlie declares as I slide open the door. He shakes his head. “No, thank you.”

  “It’s a toilet,” I say. “Everyone uses it.”

  “Not me,” he says.

  We turn around. As we wait for the conductor to clear the aisle so we can pass, Charlie looks up at me and says, “I’m not proud of myself. If I could pee in that potty, I would be proud, but I’m not.” Then his head drops. He stares at his shoes.

  My heart breaks. The train rocks, the conductor punches a ticket, and a little part of me dies. My son’s inability to pee in a less-than-ideal location is affecting his sense of self. He feels bad about himself because he can’t pee. This petty biological annoyance has blossomed into something more serious.

  We commence our walk of shame through the café car and toward our seats. A simple bodily function that I mastered long ago has now become the bane of my existence. “This too shall pass,” I whisper as we step back into our car. I know it’s true, but in this moment, I don’t believe it.

  Elysha looks at me hopefully. I shake my head in defeat.

  Charlie sits. He’s already wriggling again. This poor boy is suffering. So am I.

  Do you feel as if you’re on the train with me? I’m trying like hell to put you here, because I am still on the train, writing these words.

  I want you to be here with me. I’m loading you up with sensory information. The sounds and sights and feel of the train. I want you to feel that you’re occupying my space, experiencing time in the way I am experiencing it now. I want you to feel the weight of my son’s reluctant bladder.

  Another strategy that I’m using to put you on this train with me is the use of the present tense. These events are happening right now for me, literally as I write this sentence, and, I hope, you feel as if they are happening in the space and time that you are occupying as you read these words.

  This is the magic of the present tense. It creates a sense of immediacy. Even though you are reading these words in bed or by the light of a roaring fire or perhaps naked in your bathtub, a part of you, maybe, is on this train with me, staring at a little boy who desperately needs to pee. The present tense acts like a temporal magnet, sucking you into whatever time I want you to occupy. It allows me to put you on an Amtrak train somewhere in central New Jersey in the summer of 2017 or in my 1976 Chevy Malibu on a lonely highway in New Hampshire in the fall of 1991 or in a chaotic emergency room on December 23, 1988.

  The present tense will bring you a little closer to these moments in time. It may even trick you into believing that you have time traveled back in time to these moments.

  Charlie wants to try to pee again. I thought he might ask Elysha this time, but no. It’s me. It’s back to the restroom in the café car for us. “It’s the best one,” he says.

  I want to remind him that he’s already dismissed it as a porta-potty, but I’m holding on to hope. He’s five and fairly illogical. Maybe this time will be different.

  Two years ago, Charlie, Clara, and I were playing at a school playground on a hot summer day when Charlie announced that he had to pee. The playground had no bathrooms, so I told Charlie that he would need to pee on a tree or we’d have to go home. He had never peed while standing up before, let alone on a tree, so he was skeptical. I coaxed him. Cajoled him. Modeled the process for him. Cheered him on.

  After a couple of minutes, Charlie peed on that tree. One of the proudest moments of my life.

  “I wish I could pee on a tree,” Clara said as I high-fived Charlie’s unwashed hand.

  I was glad that Clara expressed disappointment. I worry about Charlie. His sister is three years older than he and is one of those kids who reads exceptionally well, speaks in complete sentences at all times, and seems to remember everything she sees or hears. She possesses a vast storehouse of information in her brain that she accesses with great ease and fluidity.

  I worry that Charlie will compare himself unfavorably to his big sister and think less of himself because of it. I’ve seen this happen to students, especially when the sister is older than the brother. The combination of the age disparity and a boy’s propensity to mature much later in life often leaves younger brothers feeling dumb. I don’t want this for Charlie, so I celebrate his accomplishments whenever I can. He peed on that tree, and damn it, was I proud.

  Clara couldn’t. It was about time she couldn’t do something that Charlie could.

  But now he can’t pee in an actual toilet, and I sense his confidence waning. He sighs this little-boy sigh. It’s tiny but terrible. “I will be proud of myself, or I will be mad,” he says as we head back down the aisle again.

  I open the door to the restroom. He shakes his head. Sighs again. Another failure.

  A woman with two young boys smiles at me as we pass. She’s watching us march down this aisle for the fifth time. She seems to get it.

  I don’t.

  Did you see what I did there? I opened that section in the present tense again, trying like hell to suck you back into the time and space of the train, but then I shifted to the past tense when I slipped into backstory about the day I taught Charlie how to pee on the tree. I did this d
eliberately, for two reasons:

  1.I didn’t want to compromise the immediacy of the train part by bringing in a second present tense to my story. If I spoke about Charlie’s tree-peeing lesson in the present tense as well, then I would risk diluting the visceral, present-tense nature of the train. Stories cannot have two or more events that took place at different times happen in the present time of the story. It’s like putting a hat on a hat.

  2.The use of the past tense in backstory makes sense. It’s in the past. It should be presented as such. This is not always the case, but it’s often the case. When in doubt, tell backstory using the past tense.

  Following the tree-peeing backstory, I end that last section by returning you to the present tense. I placed you back on the train, walking down the aisle, passing the woman with the knowing glance after another failed attempt. I want you with me on that train again, if you left at all.

  There are other reasons to shift tenses when telling a story. Sometimes I want to push an audience back before bringing them forward again. I do this in “This Is Going to Suck” when I reveal that my friends are filling the waiting room outside the emergency room. Look how often I shift tenses in this paragraph:

  But I’m not alone, because when the nurse called McDonald’s to tell them about the accident, the manager on duty told my friends, and those friends started calling other friends. An old-fashioned phone tree begins, with friends calling friends calling friends, and the waiting room is now filling up with sixteen- and seventeen- and eighteen-year-old kids in ripped jeans and concert T-shirts, and one fourteen-year-old boy who is cooler than all of them. And my friend Bengi is the first one to arrive.

  I start in the present tense (“But I’m not alone”), but then shift to the past tense to something you already know happened (“when the nurse called McDonald’s”). Then I shift back to the present tense (“An old-fashioned phone tree begins, with friends calling friends calling friends”), even though I’m still relating information from the past. This phone tree already happened. The waiting room is already full of kids. I’m about to tell you this, but I still want this past event told in the present tense.

  I do this because the disclosure that “an old-fashioned phone tree begins” is a powerful moment in the story. It means a lot to me, and I hope it will mean a lot to my audience. I want them to feel as if it’s happening in the present. I want them to see teenagers calling teenagers, rushing to my assistance while my parents go to check on the car first.

  I can’t tell you about this phone tree when it’s actually happening, because it would ruin the surprise of my friends in the waiting room, so I tell you about it after it has happened — but in the present tense.

  While these time shifts were admittedly intentional, many are not. As you begin to tell stories in the present tense, the shift from present to past to present will become instinctual as you learn to sense when you want your audience in the present moment as opposed to the past. I hit a moment of heightened emotion or increased gravity, so I instinctually shift to the present tense if I’m not already there, because this is when I want my audience “in the now.” Similarly, when I launch into backstory, I almost always instinctually shift into the past tense. It just makes sense.

  When she was editing The Moth’s collection of stories, Catherine Burns told me that she discovered that storytellers shift tenses constantly, but it’s not something you would notice unless you’re trying to put these stories on the page. These constant tense shifts are nearly undetectable in their oral versions. But on the page, they become obvious and challenging. They can stick out like a sore thumb.

  “I really need to pee,” Charlie says. He’s standing in the aisle again, tugging on my sleeve.

  “I know you need to pee,” I say. “But will you actually pee this time?”

  “Yes,” he says, grabbing hold of my arm for balance as the train rocks back and forth. I look out my window. The skyline of Manhattan is on the edge of the horizon, on the other side of the river.

  “Fine,” I say, a little too annoyed for my liking. He’s five years old and frightened. Now I feel like a jerk.

  I hand my laptop to Elysha, stuff my phone into my pocket, and stand.

  “Good luck,” she says.

  I’m not sure if she’s speaking to me or Charlie.

  “Let’s go to the café car,” Charlie says. “I think it’s the best one.”

  “Okay, buddy,” I say. I reach down and take his hand. I squeeze it. “I love you.”

  “C’mon, Dad!” he says.

  There’s one more benefit to the present tense: It helps you see your story.

  Some storytellers are able to see their stories. As they tell it, they almost relive the moments. Rather than staring into the eyes of their audience, their minds recreate a vision of the events as they unfold.

  I see my stories. When the Mercedes is barreling down on me and the double doors are opening on the emergency room and my friends are standing there, I see them in my mind’s eye. I can see the events again as if a movie is playing in my eyes.

  Seeing your story as you tell it is a great thing. It will help you connect to it more effectively. Your emotional state will more closely match your actual emotions from the time and place that you are describing. When you can see your story, it is more likely that your audience will see your story too.

  Charlie peed. On our sixth attempt, as we entered Penn Station, he agreed to sit on the toilet after I assured him for the 119th time that it was just a toilet.

  “I did it, Dad,” he said as he hopped off the toilet.

  “I’m so proud of you, Charlie.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m so proud of me.”

  Even better. My eyes fill with tears in the restroom of a train heading north to Connecticut. Crisis averted. Pride intact. A moment I will never forget.

  Did you notice that I told much of that last bit in the past tense? Do you know why?

  If you were thinking that I used the past tense because I didn’t write this last section on the train, you would be correct. I’m sitting in the dining area at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Massachusetts Berkshires, three days removed from our train ride.

  But this is not why. I chose the past tense because I was writing about Charlie peeing on the train. I didn’t feel I needed to bring you into that tiny restroom with me while my son was sitting bare-assed on the toilet.

  Some things are told better from a distance. Urination, I think, is one of them.

  But then I switched to the present tense when I admitted to crying in the restroom, because in that moment, I wanted you as close to me as possible.

  But the important part is this: I made the choice. I weighed my options. I didn’t simply default to one tense. I chose what I thought was the correct tense for that particular moment.

  That said, not every person can tell stories in the present tense. I meet many people who have been telling stories exclusively in the past tense for years. Shifting to the present tense occupies so much of their mental bandwidth that it does more harm than good.

  There is nothing wrong with telling a story from the past — even five minutes in the past — using the past tense. You will not be a terrible storyteller if you do. In a lot of ways, this is the most intuitive, logical, and expected way to talk about the past. It makes a lot of sense.

  But try the present tense. See if it’s something you can fall into naturally. If you can, great. You’ll have a much better chance of drawing your audience into your story and perhaps seeing your story as well. You’ll have more choices to make in crafting your story, and they will give you an additional strategy for your toolbox.

  If you can’t do it, I’ve loaded that toolbox up already with plenty of strategies, more than you can probably manage at this point. Better to tell your story well from the past tense than poorly (or unnaturally, or stressfully) from the present tense.

  If You Practice Storytelling or Public Speaking in a Mirror, Read
This. If You Don’t, Skip It.

  In all the time I have been coaching storytellers, one thing comes up again and again that makes no sense to me: people tell me that they rehearse their stories and speeches in front of a mirror.

  I am always baffled by this strategy. Why a mirror? When you’re performing onstage or speaking in a conference room or interviewing in an office or presenting in a classroom, you’re never looking at yourself. You’re looking at other people. In fact, the only person in the room you can’t see and will never see is you.

  The only place in the world where you shouldn’t rehearse is in front of a mirror. It’s the only time that you are guaranteed to be seeing something that you will never see while speaking.

  Not only will practicing in front of a mirror not help, but I suspect that it might hurt your performance. The very last thing you should be worried about while speaking is what you look like. It’s your words, your inflection, your tonality, your ease of speech, and your choice of vocabulary that matter. The tilt of your head, the twinkle in your eyes, and the angle of your smile are all irrelevant. If you’re thinking about your appearance while speaking, you’re not dedicating all your concentration to the one thing that matters.

  Storytellers often ask me what to do with their hands when performing. My answer:

  Nothing. Let them be. Allow them to do what they will do. If you’re thinking about your hands, you’re thinking about the wrong thing.

  Mirror practice only encourages attention on your physical appearance. Don’t do it. Practice in front of anything but a mirror. You have a greater chance of seeing a Canada goose or a shambling corpse than you have of seeing yourself while you’re speaking.

  Instead of a mirror, practice in front of other people. Or in front of pictures of other people. Or a wall. Anything, really. Anything but you.

  Why would you practice doing something in a way that will never happen in real life?