Book in 3 sentences
- We don’t really need huge events to happen in our lives to tell a great story. The simplest stories are about the smallest moments in our lives and are often the most compelling.
- Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new. The change can be infinitesimal. It need not reflect an improvement in yourself or your character, but change must happen.
- Homework for Life – Every evening, ask yourself “what is my story from today? What is the thing about today that has made it different from any previous day?” Write this down. If you do this, before long you’ll have more stories than you can ever imagine.
Impressions:
- The book was highly engaging and has made me capture the tiny moments in life which would otherwise pass by without me acknowledging them. Just by applying few techniques from this book , I was able to notice better engagement from the audience during meetings and presentations.
Who should read it?
- I would recommend this book to everyone. Matthew shows how to find stories in our everyday life and capture them for future telling.
- You should give this a book a read , If you want to be a better storyteller at work or simply be able to engage people at the dinner table.
Highlights:
- Storytelling makes me a better dinner companion. It compensates for my inability to hit a golf ball accurately. It makes me far more palatable to my in-laws.
- Trying to get better at storytelling also meant trying to get better at being a friend, or a son, a boyfriend, a brother, or just a better person.
- Commitment and faith.
- Commitment that you will sit down every night and reflect upon your day. It’s crazy to think that you won’t give five minutes a day over to something that will change your life, but many won’t. – This also resonates with the stoic principles of reflecting upon the things that happened during the day.
- You may also lack faith because this change won’t happen instantly, and in this world, most people want their results instantaneously. But this process does not happen overnight.
- I give this to you: Homework for Life.
- Five minutes a day is all I’m asking. At the end of every day, take a moment and sit down. Reflect upon your day. Find your most storyworthy moment, even if it doesn’t feel very storyworthy. Write it down. Not the whole story, but a few sentences at most. Something that will keep you moving, and will make it feel doable. That will allow you to do it the next day. If you have commitment and faith, you will find stories. So many stories.
- There are meaningful, life-changing moments happening in your life all the time. That dander in the wind will blow by you for the rest of your life unless you learn to see it, capture it, hold on to it, and find a way to keep it in your heart forever.”
- Matt’s Three Rules of Vacation Stories :
- No one wants to hear about your vacation.
- If someone asks to hear about your vacation, they are being polite. See rule #1.
- If you had a moment that was actually storyworthy while you were on vacation, that is a story that should be told. But it should not include the quality of the local cuisine or anything related to the beauty or charm of the destination.”
- We are the sum of our experiences, the culmination of everything that has come before. The more we know about our past, the better we know ourselves. The greater our storehouse of memory, the more complete our personal narrative becomes. Our life begins to feel full and complete and important
- Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever — Ancient proverb
- Let me say it again: Every great story ever told is essentially about a five-second moment in the life of a human being, and the purpose of the story is to bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible.
- Stories must reflect change of some kind. It need not always be positive change, and the change need not be monumental. In fact, stories about failure, embarrassment, and shame are fantastic. Stories about trying desperately to achieve a goal and failing spectacularly are beloved. Even when progress is made, the best stories often reflect incremental change.”
- I was once this, but now I am this.
- I once thought this, but now I think this.
- I once felt this, but now I feel this.
- So the beginning is important. Finding that five-second moment in your life is critical, of course, but in terms of actually crafting your story, where you start your story is the most important decision you will make. The right beginning creates a satisfying narrative arc that will cause people to connect to and remember your story. It will provide a clear, coherent path to the end. It will serve as an enormous arrow that will point both you and the audience in the right direction.
- Boring stories lack stakes, or their stakes are not high enough. Stories that fail to hold your attention lack stakes. Stories that allow your mind to wander lack stakes. Stakes answer questions like:
- What does the storyteller want or need?
- What is at peril?
- What is the storyteller fighting for or against?
- What will happen next?
- How is this story going to turn out?
- The Elephant: “Every story must have an Elephant. The Elephant is the thing that everyone in the room can see. It is large and obvious. It is a clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery. It signifies where the story is headed, and it makes it clear to your audience that this is in fact a story and not a simple musing on a subject.”
- A story is like a coat. When we tell a story, we put a coat on our audience. Our goal is to make that coat as difficult to remove as possible. I want that coat to be impossible to take off. Days after you’ve heard my story at the dinner table or the conference room or the golf course or the theater, I want you to be thinking about my story. I want that coat to cling to your body and mind.
- A simple one: Make sure that every moment in your story has a location attached. Every moment should be a scene, and every scene needs a setting. – It’s the simplest, most bang-for-your-buck strategy that I have to offer.
- But and therefore are words that signal change. The story was heading in one direction, but now it’s heading in another. We started out zigging, but now we are zagging. We did this, and therefore this new thing happened.
- The goal of storytelling is to connect with your audience, whether it’s one person at the dinner table or two thousand people in a theater. Storytelling is not about a roller-coaster ride of excitement. It’s about bridging the gap between you and another person by creating a space of authenticity, vulnerability, and universal truth.
- 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. 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.
- To review, the strategies for preserving and enhancing surprise in a story:
- Avoid thesis statements in storytelling.
- Heighten the contrast between the surprise and the moment just before the surprise.
- Use stakes to increase surprise.
- Avoid giving away the surprise in your story by hiding important information that will pay off later (planting bombs). This is done by:
- Obscuring them in a list of other details or examples.
- Placing them as far away from the surprise as possible.
- When possible, building a laugh around them to further camouflage their importance.
- Humor can be an enormous and essential asset to storytelling. Most people want to tell a funny story, and with some strategic crafting and execution, most can. But remember that humor is not necessary. There are many great stories that are entirely humorless but are still highly effective and beloved. Humor is optional. Heart is nonnegotiable.
- There is nothing wrong with sharing your success stories, but they are hard stories to tell well. The truth is this: failure is more engaging than success
- Tragic first-date stories are far better than perfect first-date stories. The story of an F is almost always better than the story of an A+.
- If you’re telling a success story, (1) malign yourself, and (2) marginalise your accomplishment. Make the story about a small step rather than a large leap. Tell a story about a small part of the success. Small steps only.
- Don’t memorize your story word-for-word. Memorize 3 parts instead: (1) the first few sentences, (2) the last few sentences, (3) the scenes of your story. Always start and end strong.
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