Storyworthy

by Matthew Dicks and Dan Kennedy

It’s a human need to be told stories. The more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible. — Alan Rickman

Change 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.

Matt’s Five Rules of Drinking Stories 1. No one will ever care about your drinking stories as much as you. 2. Drinking stories never impress the type of people who one wants to impress. 3. If you have more than three excellent drinking stories from your entire life, you are incorrect in your estimation of an excellent drinking story. 4. Even the best drinking stories are seriously compromised if told during the daytime and/or at the workplace. 5. A drinking story about a moment when you were over the age of forty is often sad, pathetic, and even tragic except under the following circumstances: • It is absolutely your best drinking story of all time. • The storyteller is over seventy. Drinking stories about the elderly are acceptable in any form, because they are rare and oftentimes hilarious.

Matt’s Three Rules of Vacation Stories 1. No one wants to hear about your vacation. 2. If someone asks to hear about your vacation, they are being polite. See rule #1. 3. 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.

If I had to tell a story from today — a five-minute story onstage about something that took place over the course of this day — what would it be? As benign and boring and inconsequential as it might seem, what was the most storyworthy moment from my day?

A sentence or two that captured the moment from the day.

Essentially Crash & Burn is stream-of-consciousness writing. I like to think of it as dreaming on the end of your pen, because when it’s working well, it will mimic the free-associative thought patterns that so many of us experience while dreaming.

Rule #1: You must not get attached to any one idea.

Rule #2: You must not judge any thought or idea that appears in your mind.

Rule #3: You cannot allow the pen to stop moving.

I say pen because, although I do almost all my writing on a keyboard, I have found that engaging in Crash & Burn with a pen tends to trigger greater creativity (and there is some science to support this claim). But if you must use a keyboard, go for it.

If you go to the StoryworthytheBook YouTube channel, you can see me engage in this process, speaking it aloud as I do in my workshops.