Praise for Storyworthy and Matthew Dicks
“Offers countless tips, exercises, and examples to get you on your way to better stories. Anyone who wants to take the stage, become a better writer, or simply tell better stories at Thanksgiving will benefit from Storyworthy.”
— Jeff Vibes, filmmaker
“I laughed, gasped, took notes, and carried this book around like a dear friend — because that’s exactly what a storyworthy book should be. As a novelist, I’ve studied my craft in countless ways, but never before have I seen its marrow revealed with such honest, approachable charisma. Matthew Dicks has written a perceptive companion for every person who has a story to tell — and don’t we all?”
— Sarah McCoy, internationally and New York Times–bestselling author of Marilla of Green Gables and The Baker’s Daughter
“Matthew Dicks is a master storyteller and an incredible teacher. Most importantly, he is an artist who paints his verbal canvases with moments that change how his listeners see the world. Matt taught me about the hidden arc and architecture that lie behind every well-told story, and I’ve incorporated his techniques into innumerable courtroom presentations — and told several stories before live audiences — all thanks to Matt.”
— Ron Apter, trial lawyer
“When I gave Matthew Dicks a recurring spot on my podcast, I billed him as ‘the most interesting man in the world.’ He really has lived quite a life. But what’s truly interesting is not necessarily what he’s experienced but how he makes you, the audience, experience it through him.”
— Mike Pesca, NPR contributor and host of Slate magazine’s daily podcast, The Gist
“Learning from Matthew Dicks has truly been life changing both for me as a public storyteller and for my high school students. Matt’s practical advice and techniques can be applied immediately, and that’s what Matt encourages and inspires you to do. Start crafting your best stories right now: learn a little about yourself in the process and begin living a life of yes.”
— Jennifer Bonaldo, English teacher, Amity High School, Bethany, Connecticut
“Matthew Dicks is not only a master storyteller; he is a master teacher. His clear and detailed instructions allow him to brilliantly give his techniques and tricks of the storytelling trade to his students. I personally benefited immensely from Matt’s workshop, and I continue to use his techniques both in my professional work as a rabbi and teacher and onstage at Moth StorySLAMs.”
— Rabbi Ira Ebbin, Congregation Ohav Sholom in Merrick, New York, and Moth StorySLAM winner
“I had the opportunity to take Matthew Dicks’s workshop for beginners and then his advanced workshop. They were truly life changing. From Matt’s instructions, I have been able to sculpt true stories that I have shared with an audience of five hundred people. I am not a professional entertainer. But because of Matt’s insightful direction, editing, and support, I now have the confidence and ability to turn my life experiences into stories that entertain and impact many people. Thank you, Matt. One doesn’t always have the opportunity to live a dream.”
— Lee Pollock, president, The Pollock Company, Hartford, Connecticut
“In Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks gives us all the tools we’ll need to become an effective storyteller, and he does so with wit, wisdom, and self-effacing charm. What’s more, he reminds us that through storytelling — and our willingness to be honest and vulnerable when sharing the different moments that have helped shape our lives — we invite the great possibility of deeper connection with others, and with ourselves. This book serves as a guidebook and a muse, rooted in the belief that our individual stories, when shared with heart, end up walking us down the pathway to true belonging. Storyworthy acts as a bright light along that journey.”
— Scott Stabile, author of Big Love: The Power of Living with a Wide-Open Heart
“Matthew Dicks is dazzling as a storyteller and equally brilliant in his ability to deconstruct this skill and make it accessible for others. His workshop was a veritable epiphany — it has been formative in my own professional career and in helping shape the work of my students. Trust me: whatever Matt has to say about storytelling, you want to hear. In my role at Yale, I oversee courses that involve more than one hundred faculty members. I can say without a doubt that Matt is one of the finest teachers I’ve ever seen.”
— David A. Ross, MD, PhD, director, Yale Psychiatry Residency Training Program
Also by Matthew Dicks
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
Something Missing
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs
Unexpectedly, Milo
New World Library
14 Pamaron Way
Novato, California 94949
Copyright © 2018 by Matthew Dicks
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
The material in this book is intended for educational purposes only. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken. The author’s experiences used as examples throughout this book are true, although some identifying details such as names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of others.
Text design by Tona Pearce Myers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dicks, Matthew, author.
Title: Storyworthy: engage, teach, persuade, and change your life through the power of storytelling / Matthew Dicks; foreword by Dan Kennedy.
Description: Novato, California: New World Library, [2018] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009879 (print) | LCCN 2018003193 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685493 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685486 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Storytelling.
Classification: LCC LB1042 (print) | LCC LB1042 .D53 2018 (ebook) | DDC 372.67/7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009879
First printing, June 2018
ISBN 978-1-60868-548-6
Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-549-3
Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper
New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org
10987654321
For George Dawes Green, who built the stage;
Dan Kennedy, who first inspired me to speak my truth;
and Catherine Burns, who convinced me that
the stage is where I belong.
Contents
Foreword by Dan Kennedy
Preface: A Coward Tells a Story
Part I. Finding Your Story
CHAPTER 1. My Promise to You
CHAPTER 2. What Is a Story? (and What Is the Dinner Test?)
CHAPTER 3. Homework for Life
STORY BREAK: Naked in Brazil
CHAPTER 4. Dreaming at the End of Your Pen
STORY BREAK: Storytelling Instruction Can Apparently Be Romantic
CHAPTER 5. First Last Best Worst: Great for Long Car Rides, First Dates, and Finding Stories
Part II. Crafting Your Story
CHAPTER 6. “Charity Thief”
CHAPTER 7. Every Story Takes Only Five Seconds to Tell (and Jurassic Park Wasn’t a Movie about Dinosaurs)
STORY BREAK: This Book Is Going to Make Erin Barker Very Angry
CHAPTER 8. Finding Your Beginning (I’m Also About to Forever Ruin Most Movies and Many Books for You)
STORY BREAK: Thirteen Rules for an Effective (and Perhaps Even Inspiri
ng) Commencement Address
CHAPTER 9. Stakes: Five Ways to Keep Your Story Compelling (and Why There Are Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park)
STORY BREAK: Zombie Brother
CHAPTER 10. The Five Permissible Lies of True Storytelling
STORY BREAK: Doubt Is the Enemy of Every Storyteller
CHAPTER 11. Cinema of the Mind (Also Known as “Where the Hell Are You?”)
CHAPTER 12. The Principle of But and Therefore
STORY BREAK: Storytelling Makes You Just Like Family
CHAPTER 13. “This Is Going to Suck”
CHAPTER 14. The Secret to the Big Story: Make It Little
STORY BREAK: Brevity Is the Soul of Wit
CHAPTER 15. There Is Only One Way to Make Someone Cry
STORY BREAK: The Return of Mathieu
CHAPTER 16. Milk Cans and Baseballs, Babies and Blenders: Simple, Effective Ways to Be Funny in Storytelling (Even If You’re Not Funny at All)
CHAPTER 17. Finding the Frayed Ending of Your Story (or, What the Hell Did That Mean?)
STORY BREAK: Reconnecting with My Mean Old Elementary School Principal
Part III. Telling Your Story
CHAPTER 18. The Present Tense Is King (but the Queen Can Play a Role Too)
STORY BREAK: A Storyteller and a Magician
CHAPTER 19. The Two Ways of Telling a Hero Story (or, How to Avoid Sounding Like a Douchebag)
STORY BREAK: “Fine” Is Apparently Not a Good Way to Describe My Sex Life
CHAPTER 20. Storytelling Is Time Travel (If You Don’t Muck It Up)
STORY BREAK: I Berate Storytellers at the Worst Moments
CHAPTER 21. Words to Say, Words to Avoid
STORY BREAK: The Weather Sucks. So Don’t Talk about It
CHAPTER 22. Time to Perform (Onstage, in the Boardroom, on a Date, or at the Thanksgiving Table)
STORY BREAK: The Solitude of the Storyteller
CHAPTER 23. Why Did You Read This Book? To Become a Superhero!
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Foreword
In early 2000, I got onstage, I told a story at this thing called The Moth, and something in my heart and head felt better. I remember talking about my biggest screwups, about some childhood dreams that hadn’t come to pass, and about how my attempts to pursue them at half-steam were clumsy and ill-fated. The story I told that night, about going to Austin to become a singer-songwriter and discovering the hard way that I wasn’t prepared or particularly good at songwriting, felt like the most deflating stuff any of us go through in personal defeats. Up to the moment I stepped onstage at The Moth that night, my life felt as if the stain of failure had been on me since about age twenty. But when I opened my mouth and shared a story about the details of that trip to Austin, the crowd laughed. Which made me smile through the bundle of nerves I was that night, and somehow made me feel like maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay in this life.
If I can recommend storytelling to you for any reason at all, it would be that storytelling helps you realize that the biggest, scariest, most painful or regretful things in your head get small and surmountable when you share them with two, or three, or twenty, or three thousand people. The other reason I can recommend storytelling, and learning about it with the book you’re holding, is that we’re all disappearing — you, me, everyone we know and love. A little heavy for a foreword maybe, but when you tell stories, you do yourself a kind favor by taking a moment to write your name in the wet cement of life before you head to whatever is next. This is a much more selfless act than conventional wisdom would have you believe. It’s a little like leaving a note in the logbook on the trail that others will be hiking after you, a note that might give the next hiker a clue: “Keep your eyes open for rattlesnakes by the bluff at the two-mile mark” or “There’s fresh water at the fire lookout if you’re running low” or “I live in the woods now, and I don’t care if I never see an iPhone again after staring at one for a decade until my head was tortured, my eyes were ruined, and my heart was broken.”
Telling stories about your life lets people know they’re not alone; and it lets some of the people closest to you — like family and loved ones — see your life apart from the context of family and without the kind of revisionist hindsight we can sometimes fall into concerning the ones we love most. Opening your mouth, getting out of your head, and your house, so you can be fully engaged in your life and the lives of others for the night — that’s what storytelling is all about, if you ask me. Or maybe it’s just as my friend Jesse Thorn joked: “Storytelling. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s kind of like a less-funny stand-up comedy.” That line cracked me up — in some ways, it’s right on the money. Then weeks later, it oddly made me realize why I love storytelling so much: at its best, it’s not out to razzle-dazzle you at any cost. There’s no adversarial relationship with the audience; they’re not people leaning back in their chairs, drinking their two-drink minimum, signing an implicit contract that basically says “You better make me laugh.” There is no volley of anger like I’ve seen in comedy clubs; just a crowd of people who want to hear what you have to say and in some cases might be stepping up to the mic right after you to share something about themselves.
Sometimes it’s the funniest thing you’ve heard, and you’re rolling. Other times someone is getting attacked by a shark. Or going to space. Or sitting next to their crashed car and reevaluating their life. Or wondering how they got caught up in a world of white-collar crime. Or just dealing with an average Tuesday evening and trying to make sense of life like the rest of us on the planet. How can you not walk out of that room a changed person after feeling that connection?
In my early years of hosting The Moth StorySLAM, I never gave much thought to the numbers the judges in the audience hold up to score each storyteller. The scoring has always seemed in the spirit of fun, a device used to get the audience involved and to add some friendly stakes to the show. And early on, it never seemed to me that the storytellers were any more concerned with the scores than would be, say, a few friends throwing darts in a bar or playing poker for acorns on a camping trip. Even when we weren’t great onstage (and I’m also pointing the finger at myself here, as a host who sometimes tries to tell a story in the top or middle of the show), it was just part of the fun, because we were all there for each other, laughing or shrugging it off when a story went sideways on us. If nothing else, when I bombed something, I figured maybe I had been of service — hey, maybe someone in the audience who was too nervous to put their name in the hat and share a story heard me and thought, “What am I afraid of? I’m not going to do any worse than that guy!”
At some point as the years started racing past, I noticed storytellers caring about the scores; sometimes people would get angry if they didn’t get the score they thought they deserved. Storytelling was getting a lot of press at this point — The Moth Podcast was up to tens of millions of downloads a year, and tons of other great new storytelling shows were popping up around the country. And it was around this time that I started noticing a different kind of people coming around — a more competitive type of personality. I was vexed, frankly. It had always seemed like the most humble, fun-loving thing in the world to me. I mean, even the name of it never sounded cool: storytelling. How could you develop an ego or agenda to become internet- or podcast-famous (actual things, swear to god)? It’s a little like wanting to have the biggest house on the tiny-home scene.
It seemed like there was a phase when suddenly people who you could tell were seasoned actors or comedians were there; it felt like they were just there looking for a way to get another gig on their résumé, hanging around just long enough to see if this was going to be the thing that got them on TV somehow. Oh, no — the cool kids were coming around!
I felt I was developing a way of sussing out people who were the real deal and not just coming around for a hot minute to use storytelling as a stepping-stone. That had to be righ
t about when I met Matthew Dicks. And here’s the twist: not only could you tell he was the real deal, the kind of person you wished was a family friend back home, but he somehow made me see that it was okay to want to work at getting better at this stuff. He’s the person I would watch whenever I was lucky enough to be hosting a show he was in. He taught me that 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. He’s a guy you can tell has been as heartbroken as you or me or anyone else carrying a heart around on earth, but he manages to set that aside, in the background and subtext of his stories.
It would be easy for a guy like Matthew Dicks to get onstage and tell an emotionally overwrought story to manipulate listeners into feeling something; oversharing and “emotion porn” are super-fast ways to get a reaction from an audience in the heat of the moment, and they wear off just as fast, leaving a mental hangover in their wake. But Matthew Dicks forgoes the aforementioned tricks and instead tells stories like the one about trying to impress his mom by jumping his BMX bike off the roof of his house growing up. And having it end miserably, but not without his sister nailing her cue of turning to their mother, as instructed by Matt, and exclaiming a then-popular TV show’s catchphrase: “That’s incredible!” This story is a perfect example of how Matt somehow gets you to feel bigger emotional stakes in subtext instead of hitting you over the head with them.
Matthew came along at a time when the New York storytelling scene needed someone to remind it that storytellers are, first and foremost, a family, no matter how large, no matter how many different shows exist, no matter in how many different cities or countries. The family might be millions of people all over the world at this point, but Matthew Dicks is the guy who makes you realize it was that big all along. That those of us performing on this so-called storytelling scene haven’t been doing anything new at all, just stepping up to a mic to partake in something that’s been happening since the dawn of time.
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