Thread by @howardtayler

Yesterday I worked on some brand new material for the #XDM2e appendix. It's "The X-Treme Guide to Conversational Storytelling," and in this thread I will share the core concept for free!

https://twitter.com/howardtayler/status/1435226478703104000

So: conversational storytelling, aka "shooting the breeze," is that thing where you're in a conversation, and something reminds you of a personal experience, and you decide to share that experience during the conversation.

This is super-common, we've all done it, and sometimes it's done very badly. Our goal, of course, is to do it well. In a book whose focus is better tabletop RPG play, all the relevant skills are right there, so this guide is a very close fit.

The goal of conversational storytelling is to share the experience in a way that helps the conversation rather than killing it. Unfortunately, personal experiences are not stored in our brains as coherent narratives, not until AFTER we've tried to tell them as stories.

Let's back up just a little bit. If you're an XDM (and #XDM2e makes the assumption that you are, or very soon will be) you know enough about story to spin out a quick beginning/middle/end structure. So this thread will assume the same. It's a big ask, I know.

Scenario: the conversation is circling some topic, and something about it stirred a memory for you. You want to share the memory. Let's take it by the numbers:

1) Identify which part of the memory is relevant to the current conversation.
2) Frame THAT part as a complete story w/ beginning, middle, and ending.
3) Tell the story, focusing on the relevant connection, and end it in a way that lets everyone know you’re done.

Lemme give an example of a set of memories I come back to a lot, because they touch on SO MANY conversations. This is not the example we use in #XDM2e, because it's not at all related to TTRPG play.

In sharing this, I'm going to ramble. The rambling is part of the point - the story is cool, but it's all over the map. That's how memories be. Until we shoe-horn them into a narrative structure, they're just "things that happened."

STORYTIME: There was a dead bird on our deck, killed by our huntress extraordinaire Kikaa, a 16-yo tortoise-shell patterned cat. It was a gift from her to us, because that's how Kikaa rolls. Anyway. Dead bird. Deck.

Ordinarily I wouldn't notice this, because ordinarily I'm in my office with no view of the deck. This was the 5-year summer of 2019, however, and my office was the front room of the house because we were having septic lines repaired, and boy howdy could I ever digress from here.

So yeah, I'm in my front-room office, and Kikaa has a bird, and then I realize that the neighbor's black lab, Tally, is VERY INTERESTED in the weakly-fluttering commotion on our deck. Being a good cat-daddy, I step out to intervene.

(BIG PARENTHETICAL: I told you this was going to ramble. Go ahead and ask yourself what this story is ABOUT. Cats? Dogs? Birds? Septic lines? Home offices as distraction-free zones ha ha I kid?)

I claim the bird from Kikaa and shoe her gently inside. Now I'm holding a bird, and Tally is VERY EXCITED because Tally likes me, and Tally can see that I've put the Scary Queen Of The Yard into the house, so it's safe for Tally to come and play with me and my fluttery toy.

I say "fluttery toy." The bird is dead. There's no bringing it back. But I'm holding it by a wing, and there's a bit of a breeze, so there's some flutter going on, and I now see two things:

1) Tally is CONVINCED that I'm holding that bird up for her to play with.
2) Kikaa is watching me from inside the house, judging me. If I take her gift to me and toss it that horrible slobber-beast, I am not worthy of her, and should just stay outside forever.

Oh, and I'm definitely not going to give the bird to Tally on purpose, because I do not have permission to feed dead birds to my neighbor's dog.

So I hold the bird high in my right hand, and keep Tally at bay with my left, and make my way around the back of the house to the gate, beyond which lies our driveway, a garbage can, and a plot twist. DUN DUN DUNNN.

(PARENTHETICAL AGAIN: I'm rambling, but I'm doing it skillfully enough to keep you reading. This is NOT how memories be. This is a story I've told dozens of times, and so I'm cheating a little. Also, this is fun.)

I reach the gate, and realize I've run out of hands. I'm 5'6". With my arm at full extension above my head, the bird is well within Tally's "playful-leap" range. I need my left hand to open the gate, but if I stop using it to keep Tally from jumping, she'll get the bird and GO.

So of course I use my left hand to open the gate, and use my right foot to keep Tally from jumping.

Bird held high in my right hand, left hand fumbling with latch, while I hop on my left foot and use my right foot to keep a fully grown black lab from eating the BARK BARK TOY.

What happens next is not indexed very clearly in my brain, for reasons that will soon be obvious.

I open the gate, pirouette myself through it, shutting it while I spin, and then my face connects with a utility box on the side of the house and SCENE CHANGE.

(PARENTHETICAL THE THIRD: What's this story about? If this were YOUR story, which part of it would be the "hook" that pulled it into a conversation? Cats? Short people keeping things from being eaten by large dogs? 50yo men failing to pirouette?)

Earlier I said, of the gate, that beyond it lay a driveway, a garbage can, and a plot twist. At this point in the story, the driveway also has me lying on it, unconscious, and bleeding. Not for long, I don't think, because when I came to, Tally was still barking at the gate.

I come to very disoriented. I don't remember whether I put the bird in the trash or not. I do remember realizing that I'd somehow cold-cocked myself, and I needed medical attention, but probably wasn't going to die from this. But that was my blood, yes.

Both eyes still worked, but the bleeding was coming from a point very close to one of them. I staggered inside, where Sandra was having, I think, an important and heartfelt conversation with one of the kids, behind closed doors, in the kid's room.

"Sandra, I need you out here. I have injured myself."

No shouting. Very matter-of-fact. Or that's how I remember it. I don't know how Sandra remembers it because we are two different people with different brains and sure, 26 years of marriage is a thing, but that's HER memory.

(PARENTHETICAL THE FOURTH IS WITH YOU: The next bit is hazy because I never tell it. We rode in the minivan to the ER, and Sandra asked me what the hell happened and then we checked in and blah blah like I said, hazy.)

The doctors in the ER pay very close attention to you when you answer "yes" to the question "did you lose consciousness?"

This could be a "that's it, that's the tweet" tweet, but it's part of a story so I'll keep going.

She asked me to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten.

"Four."
She tipped her head just a bit, and that spoke volumes of "are you being tough, or are you wasting our time, no really why did you pick FOUR here in the ER?"
No words. Just a slight tip of the head.

"I got superglue in my eye once, and that's probably an eight. The needle to the nerve in my foot a few years back is as close to ten as I can remember. This is a four, but it's a four which is RIGHT NEXT TO MY EYEBALL so yeah, I'm here with a four."

The doctor explained that a concussion is like a sprain, and you treat it similarly. You don't walk on a sprain, and you don't do any heavy thinking on a concussion. No reading. No screen time.

I laughed.

She then explained the symptoms to watch out for, the things that say "it's time to take it easy again." Headache, nausea, light-headedness, etc. And then she asked me what that meant.

At this point I was in RARE FORM. A good scare plus depletion of p-trans will do that.

"It means that if I want to keep getting stuff done, I shouldn't tell anybody about my headache."

She smiled, and replied with a real zinger.

"I can tell you're thinking clearly enough that you know the correct answer."

Or something like that.

And then she turned to Sandra, who said something to the effect of "he's difficult to manage, but I have lots of practice, and I know it may not seem like it but he actually listens quite well, so don't worry. I've got this."

Less words. Maybe just a head-tip of her own?

AAAND STOP.

Everything between this tweet and the one that began "STORYTIME: There was a dead bird on our deck" is a big old pile of rambly-scrambly memory, and it's not really a proper story in the structural sense.

It's also WAY TOO LONG for a conversation in which I'm a participant. Here on Twitter, or maybe during a kaffeeklatsch where I'm expected to hold court, I can do what I want, but in a conversation this thing needs to be PRUNED LIKE TOPIARY.

Let's go back to the three steps:
1) Identify which part of the story is relevant to the conversation.
2) Wrap that bit up as its own story.
3) Tell it well, then end in a way that says "I'm done, the next person can talk now."

Suppose I'm sitting with friends, and we're talking about doctors, second opinions, and stuff. That point where I back-talk the ER doctor? It does not need the story of the bird, or the cat, or the dog, or the gate, or the septic line.

That version of the story goes like this: "I was in the ER for a concussion, and the doctor tried to tell me I couldn't use screens until I was all better. That was a fun conversation to remember having had and to not have to have again."

DONE. Nice conversational thing.

But what if the conversational hook is "dead birds?"

"I love that our cat brings us gifts. It means she loves us. One of the dead birds did result in a trip to the hospital for me, but it wasn't the bird's fault, or the cat's fault. I just failed a DEX save at the trash can."

In both of these cases I've tightened the story up to tweet-length, and have told it in a way that would let the (purely theoretical) conversational group decide whether or not to invite me to say more on the matter.

"Wait, the HOSPITAL?"
"Long story"
"GO RIGHT AHEAD PLS."

(ERRATA: Sandra has done the work of reviewing my 2019 timeline for the more accurate account of the story. I knew I was changing the details in this telling, but I'm too lazy to go back and check my notes.)

https://twitter.com/SandraTayler/status/1435248799618764810

(ERRATA AGAIN: Yeah, I told this part WAY better back in 2019. Memory be like that, y'all.)

https://twitter.com/howardtayler/status/1153580484544221184

Back to the point. The #XDM2e guide for conversational storytelling is much, MUCH shorter than this story I've told here, and fits the book much better than this Twitter mess I've made. Oh, and it goes on to make an additional point:

The Expert version:
Social settings are complicated. Ask yourself whether this setting is one in which it’s appropriate for you to steer the conversation to new topics. Then ask yourself whether that’s a thing you should do with this story.

So... if we were talking about cats, and I wanted to talk about health care, I could use my story to be a complete arsehorse and go from "nice cat-daddy disposed of bird out-of-sight" to "going to the ER is expensive."

Read: don't do it THAT way. But the point stands. Your memory has digressions, off-topic bits, and twists, and if you're a good conversational storyteller, you can employ those to steer the conversation to a new topic with one anecdote.

The Expert version, then:

1) Identify the part that's relevant to the current topic
2) Frame the story with an ending which places a “hook” for the new topic.
3) Tell it REALLY well, because you’re not just telling a story, you’re steering the whole group.

Aaaaand THREAD! Thank you for coming to my TED talk. While I tweeted all this stuff, #XDM2e crossed 1500 backers, and is now just $3800 from the $100k mark where I have to no wait I mean GET TO illustrate it on Twitch.

kickstarter.com/projects/howar…

(ADDENDUM: After tweeting this, I went back and read the appendix. It's far better. Twitter format is fun, but I write much more effectively when I can choose my own paragraph length.)