Thread by @SivaCArunagiri

🧵 Sharing snippets and my reflections from the [[Book/Storyworthy]] by [[Author/Matthew Dicks]].
🎬 Start Date: [[December 24th, 2021]]
🏁 Finish Date: [[December 26th, 2021]]
📚 Genre: #NonFiction #Storytelling #PersonalHacks #Writing

1/#Storytelling helps you realise that the biggest, scariest, most painful or regretful things in your head get small and surmountable when you share them with others.

2/#Storytelling is a favour to yourself because you are taking a moment to write your name in the wet cement of life before you head to whatever is next.

3/#Honesty is attractive. Sometimes telling about your most shameful and foolish moments brings you closer to your listeners. #Vulnerability

4/The simplest stories about the smallest moments in our lives are often the most compelling.

5/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.

6/Tell your own story and not the story of others. People would rather hear the story about what happened to you last night than about what happened to your friend.

7/Matt says that when you grow up with siblings, you learn to forgive and forget. Well in my case, I forget things and my siblings forgive me for it. 😅

8/Don’t tell other people’ stories. Tell your own. But feel free to tell your side of other people’ stories, as long as you are the protagonist in these tales.

9/A story is like a diamond with many facets. Everyone has a different relationship to it. If you can find a way of making your particular facet of the story compelling, you can tell that story as your own. Otherwise, leave the telling to someone else.

10/Storytelling is not theatre. It is not poetry. It should be a slightly more crafted version of the story you would tell your buddies over beers.

11/Audience want to feel that there being told a story. They don’t want to see someone perform a story.

12/Homework for Life: What was the most story worthy moment from your day? A sentence or two that captured the moment from the day. Just enough for me to remember the moment and recall it clearly on a later date.

13/As you begin to take stock of your days, find those moments—see them and record them—time will begin to slow down for you. The pace of your life will relax.

14/If you want to be a storyteller, find your stories. Collect them. Save them forever.

15/Crash & Burn technique:
1: You must not get attached to any one idea.
2: You must not judge any thought or idea that appears in your mind.
3: You cannot allow the pen to stop moving.

16/Benefits of recovering memories: 1) Life feels more expansive and significant. 2) Significant associations between the past and the present are discovered. 3) Life becomes brighter and sharper and better with every memory that is uncovered.

17/We are the sum of our experiences, the culmination of everything that has come before. The more we know about our past, the better we know ourselves.

18/“Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.” —[[Author/Zadie Smith]]

19/Recalling a forgotten moment from your life or suddenly seeing it as more than what you once thought can expand the boundaries of your perceived life, while filling in gaps and connecting disparate memories into a more complete picture.

20/Stories will both fill in the holes in the mental map of your life and help you to see how expansive that map truly is.

21/Matthew Dicks’ three tools to find more stories: 1) Homework for Life. 2) Crash & Burn. 3) First Last Best Worst

22/Every great story ever told is essentially about a five second moment in the life of a human being, and the purpose of the story is to bring the moment to the greatest clarity possible.

23/Search. Hunt. Fight for the five-second moment. Allow yourself to recall the entire event. Don’t get hung up on the big moments, the unbelievable circumstances, or the hilarious details.

24/Seek out the moments when you felt your heart move. When something changed forever, even if that moment seems minuscule compared to the rest of the story.

25/The hard part in storytelling is finding the beginning, because it involves choosing the right moments from your life, and there is often a multitude of choices.

26/The first idea is rarely the best idea. It may be the most convenient idea. The easiest to remember. The one you personally like the most. But rarely is the first idea the one that I choose. First ideas are for the lazy. The complacent. The easily satisfied.

27/Start with the story, not with a summary of the story. There is no need to describe the tone or tenor at the onset. Just start with story, and whenever possible, open with movement. Forward progress.

28/The goal of storytelling is to connect with your audience, whether it is one person at the dinner table or two thousand people in a theatre.

29/Storytelling is not about a roller coaster ride of excitement. It is about bridging the gap between you and another person by creating a space of authenticity, vulnerability, and universal truth.

30/The trick to telling a big story: it cannot be about anything big. Instead we must find the small, relatable, comprehensible moments in our larger stories. We must find the piece of the story that people can connect to, relate to, and understand.

31/In storytelling, you should always try to say less. Shorter is better. Fewer words rule.