Sary's notes on Storyworthy

Components: #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. The change can be infin-itesimal. It need not reflect an improvement in yourself or your character, but change must happen. Even the worst movies in the world reflect some change in a character over time.

If I tell the story about the time I died on the side of the road and was brought back to life in the back of an ambulance, it's going to be challenging for an audience to connect with my story and with me. It might be exciting and compelling and even suspenseful, but audience members are probably not thinking. *This is just like the time I died in a car accident and the paramned-ics brought me back to life!"

When it comes to Crash & Burn, you must free yourself of this dreadful, hobbling, ingrained need to prepare and self-monitor. You must spill your guts on the page, free from judgment or worry about whether what you are writing is good or right. Just put the damn words on the page as they appear in your head and on your fingertips. Ignore your inner demons.

That is the purpose of my story. I'm trying to tell my audience that there was a time in my life when I felt alone and lost, thinking that I was facing a lifetime of solitude, only to discover how foolish and blind I was to feel that way. The rest of the story is crafted to serve that singular moment in time and only that mo-ment. Anything in the story that doesn't help bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible is marginalized, shaded, or re moved entirely. Anything that helps bring clarity to that moment is strengthened and highlighted.

Stakes strategies: 1) 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. The Elephant should appear as early in the story as possible. Ideally, it should appear within the first minute, and if you can say it within the first thirty seconds, even better.

Stakes strategies: 1) The Elephant Example: When I was nine years old, I wanted to disown her. Leave home and never return. Forget she ever existed." The audience has a good idea of the story being told, and it's likely that they will want to hear more. Now they have something to wonder about

Stakes strategies: 1) The Elephant Example 2: In "Charity Thief," the Elephant that I present at the beginning of the story is a simple one: I'm stuck in New Hampshire with a flat tire and no spare. The audience knows this almost immediately. It all happens within the first two sentences of the story. At this point, the audience is probably thinking that this is an escape story: How will Matt escape from New Hampshire and return home without a spare tire or money?

Stakes strategies: 2) Backpacks A Backpack is a strategy that increases the stakes of the story by increasing the audience's anticipation about a coming event. It's when a storyteller loads up the audience with all the storyteller's hopes and fears in that moment before moving the story forward. It's an attempt to do two things: 1. Make the audience wonder what will happen next. 2. Make your audience experience the same emotion, or something like the same emotion, that the storyteller experienced in the moment about to be described.

Stakes strategies: 2) Backpacks Example: This is why heist movies like the Ocean's Eleven franchise explain almost every part of the robbers' plan before they ever make a move. If you understand their plan to rob the casino, you can experience the same level of frustration, worry, fear, and suspense that the characters feel when their plans go awry. The filmmakers put the audience on Danny Ocean's team. They know the plan, so they feel as if they are a part of the heist themselves.

Stakes strategies: 2) Backpacks Backpacks are most effective when a plan does nor work. If I had deseribed my plan for begging for gas, and then the plan worked perfectly, there would have been no payoff for the Back-pack. The scene would fall flat. If I go through all the trouble of explaining my plan beforehand, and then I say, "The kid agrees to lend me the gas," the audience is oddly unsatisfied. They are left wondering why I went through all of that explanation only to find out that things turned out fine.

Stakes strategies: 3) Breadcrumbs Storytellers use Breadcrumbs when we hint at a future event but only reveal enough to keep the audience guessing. In "Charity Thief," I drop a Breadcrumb when I say: But as I climb back into the car, I see my crumpled McDonald's uniform on the backseat, and I suddenly have an idea. During a workshop, sometimes I'll stop the story right there and ask my students what they are thinking. Their responses are hilarious.

Stakes strategies: 4) Hourglasses It's time to slow things down. Grind them to a halt when possible. When you know the audience is hanging on your every word, let them hang. Drag out the wait as long as possible. In :Charity Thief”: They want to know. They need to know. So what do I do? I stop the story cold. I bring everything to a halt. I start by describing things that don't require a description. I say: An hour later, I'm standing on the porch of a small, red-brick house on a quiet, residential street. I'm knocking on a blue door. I'm wearing my McDonald's manager's uniform.

Stakes strategies: 5) Crystal Balls The Crystal Ball is the easiest of the strategies to deploy, because you already use Crystal Balls in everyday life. A Crystal Ball is a false prediction made by a storyteller to cause the audience to wonder if the prediction will prove to be true. - In Charity Thief, author made them think that the man is calling the police This does not happen, of course, but when I present this very real possibility, the audience wants to know if it will happen. By predicting my future arrest, I've established wonder in their minds about a future event.

"Then how am I supposed to teach them about photosynthe-sis?" he asked. "Why not tell the story of the first time you learned about photosynthesis?" I said. "Or a time when you taught photosyn-thesis? Instead of stopping the story completely to explain the process, why not offer a scene in the form of a flashback that also explains photosynthesis? Just keep telling a story."

Oddly, the negative is almost always better than the positive when it comes to storytelling. Saying what something or someone is nor is almost always better than saying what something or someone is. For example: I am dumb, ugly, and unpopular. I'm not smart, I'm not at all good-looking, and no one likes me. The second sentence is better, isn't it? Here's why: it contains a hidden but.

Ultimately none of bug stories are about what they appear to be. The story of my beesting is really the story of the death of my mother, and of my hope that we might still be connected even though she is no longer alive. The story of firefighters rescuing me from my home is real about the greatest "I told you so" of my life. The story of my arrest is really the story of my struggle with faith and of an unexpected plea to the Almighty, and the story of my subsequent jailing is really about missing a second date with a girl I liked a lot. The story of the robbery is really the story of my ongoing, persistent existential crisis and its impact on my relationship to my children. The story of the attempt to destroy my reputation and get me fired is really the story of the power of the anonymous assailant but the greater power of public support.