Storyworthy
Review
Storyworthy is a book about telling good stories.
It is written by Mathew Dicks, an elementary school teacher and record 58-time Moth StorySLAM winner.
The book is divided into three parts: finding your story, crafting it, and then telling it.
Dick sprinkles some of his own stories in between technical chapters to showcase theory being put into practice.
Storyworthy reads like the stories that Dick tells - heartfelt and personal with immensely useful takeaways.
I’ve always said that a good storytelling show feels like a cross between therapy, rehab, and hanging out after dinner with friends.
Mathew Dicks
Takeaways
- finding a story
- homework for life: write about a storyworthy moment for every day of the year
- first, last, best, worst: game to come up with ideas and get to know people
- crafting a story
- 5 second moment: all stories build up to a 5s moment where the protagonist has a fundamental shift in their world view
- beginning of story should have forward momentum
- build stakes with elephants, backpacks, breadcrumbs, hourglasses, and crystal balls
- lies of omission, compression, assumption, progression, and conflation are okay to emphasize of important parts of story
- add a location to every scene to anchor people
- use "but and therefore" to stitch together events
- to make people cry, surprise them - plant a bomb, a small detail that takes on a different meaning, early in the story
- end the story on heart
- telling
- use present tense to bring people into the moment, past tense to setup backstory
- don't memorize a story, but do know first and last sentences as well as scenes of the story
- have no more than 7 scenes in a story
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Created 2024-01-21T07:51:52.382000 · Edit