Storyworthy
Here again with another interesting application of Productivity Game’s YouTube Video Book Summaries.
In this case, we’re talking about StoryWorthy by Matthew Dicks.
I can’t tell you when exactly, but over the course of my adult life, I came to the realization that tugging on people’s heart strings and getting people emotionally invested in my thoughts and feelings was the only way to connect with people on a deeper level.
Now this may sound like common sense to you reading this, but for me, I used to feel emotions were the messy, unpredictable chaos of life that I didn’t want or need. They made life confusing, upsetting, and painful. Now, obviously I understand that in order to connect with my loved ones, my closest people, that its necessary.
I’m not some heartless person.
But I feel like I close myself off to strangers, to new friends, and acquaintances until I eventually warm up to them.
As I got older, I would pessimistically judge those who were so open emotionally quickly. Judge them for being naive, optimistic.
Why share so much of yourself to a stranger?
Why waste your time?
What’s the point?
Enter StoryWorthy by Matthew Dicks, a book about captivating an audience via your stories, via your experience, via your life perspective.
And I wanted that.
I want people to enjoy my company and feel more connected to me.
I want to develop that skill for myself to use.
I want that capacity to connect emotionally with people quickly if I choose to.
Whether that is for making connections quickly, whether that is to sell you a product or a service, or whether that is to persuade or convince you to support me or be on my side, engaging storytelling is a hugely useful tool.
Boiling It Down To 5 Seconds.
All great stories tell the story of a five second moment in a person's life.
5 seconds to hook you in.
5 seconds to have a visceral change. A realization that your life is never going to be the same.
As a society, we already put these moments on a pedestal.
That moment you realize you fell out of love with your ex.
That moment you realized you loved your partner.
That moment you stepped into the spotlight and knew you belonged.
That moment you realized you made a terrible mistake.
Everything in a captivating story must build up to a 5-second moment - a transformative moment.
And after that 5-second moment, you or your subject, as the main character are different.
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.
Reverse Engineer The Beginning.
Now that you have a transformative moment, identify what you were before. What once was. What no longer is. Distinguish what is pre-event and post-event and establish the events that led to that change.
The events that led to that transformation should be told with one of three techniques.
Start With Action.
Misdirection.
Pause Before the Big Reveal.
Start With Action.
Start mid-action. No build-up. Straight into action. Action means energy, tension and potential chaos. You don’t have time to build to action and must start with tension with eventual resolution or release of tension.
Starting a story halfway down the river just before realizing I was heading towards a waterfall builds tension and the need for resolution.
Starting a story when you wake up, getting ready to kayak, renting a kayak, heading out, getting lost, going down the wrong path, and then realizing I was heading toward a waterfall requires too many steps of build up and risks the loss of attention.
Misdirection.
Leading people to incorrect assumptions creates tension that needs to be resolved or corrected. By building moments for misdirection, you hook an audience into vested interest.
Now, there are three ways to do this.
Tell the audience your plan and then derail your plan. By leading with a designed plan, an expectation of smooth sailing and subsequent chaotic derailment, the audience is hooked into the story. They are in on the plan and want to see it through to completion. Now that there’s absolute chaos, they need to know how it is resolved.
Make False Assumptions. Lead into the events of your story by making false assumptions about what happens next. Explaining how you expect things to go followed by a disruptive, unexpected event similarly builds audience investment. And finally, after reaching my goal I could finally relax…. creates the perfect storm for tension.
Hint at something that’s about to happen and then reveal something unexpected. By dropping breadcrumbs, you give the audience just enough information to start guessing what’ll happen but not enough to guess right. The jarring revelation of their incorrect assumptions leads to intrigue in what really happened which means attentive listening and a captivated audience.
Pause Before The Big Reveal.
Finally, the pause before the big reveal. As the story goes on, it can be tempting to quickly reveal the big moment, the resolution, the finale. But don’t.
Delay, delay, delay.
Stop time in that moment. Explain the situation seconds before the big moment in vivid detail. Set the stage. Describe the moment in excruciating detail. That build-up is good story telling.
All That’s Left To Do Is Practice.
So, here I am with these theoretical tools in mind.
And I hope that it makes me a better engaging conversationalist. But it’ll take me intentionally practicing my storytelling to organize my thoughts this way.
Hopefully this becomes my 5-second moment; where my outlook on connecting with strangers, getting listener buy-in on my story and captivating an audience become a skill.
Sometimes it can be hard to care deeply or connect authentically about people when all you have are shallow interactions. By connecting via storytelling quickly, perhaps my perspective on the whole point of it might change as I get people to invest in me and subsequently I see them in a new perspective, lower my guard, and begin to care deeply about them.