Throughout our lives, and even moment to moment, we are ever-changing people. We grow and change and make good and bad decisions. What remains constant is that even the smallest moments in our lives have consequences. This message is really at the heart of Storyworthy. It is a book about storytelling that is disguised as a self-help book.
If you can deal with Matthew Dicks’ self-congratulatory tone and constant reminders that he has won many storytelling prizes, this book can be interesting. It takes you through the entire process of crafting a story to perform, from finding the storyworthy moments and working backwards to find the starting point of your story.
While it may seem like a book solely for performers, some of the points that Dicks makes can be interesting for others too! While there are many handy tips in the book for performing your stories, I want to focus on some of the insights at the beginning of the book. I think that these are the most interesting.
Five Second Moments
You do not have to have led the most exciting and interesting life to have good stories. In fact, it is often not the big and unusual events that make the most interesting stories. Drunken anecdotes and life-threatening moments can be interesting but don’t often move us in the same way that small, more relatable moments do.
Dicks argues that every good story consists of a five-second moment where something changes for the storyteller. These small yet very human moments are the moments that connect people. They are much more real and relatable. We have all experienced these changes at some point in our lives.
For instance, I recently told a story about a moment on a Skype call where my friends were both telling me about their new cars, and I was telling them about my new wheelchair. A story about a Skype call? It doesn’t sound like a very wild story. However, the story was actually about a moment in my life where it hit me just how far my life was from where I wanted it to be. We have all had those tiny moments of realisation that things aren’t going our way. This recognition is what makes it a powerful story. It makes something that is not relatable (chronic illness) into something that is.
One of the wonderful things about storytelling is that if we can learn to appreciate these five-second moments of change or realisation as they happen, we can have a deeper appreciation for ourselves and our lives.
If we can see the power in these everyday moments, they become more valuable. Seeing these moments gives us more room for gratitude and a stronger ability to see room for growth. We enable ourselves to become more self-aware of the narrative we tell ourselves about our own lives.
Homework for Life
But how can you find and remember the five-second moments in your life? We often forget these small but powerful moments. They get lost in the everyday moments of our lives. Luckily Matthew Dicks provides some different ways to find these moments. I will touch on the two I found most interesting: crash-and-burn and storyworthy moments.
Crash and Burn
Crash and burn is a simple journalling technique that helps you unlock memories through a rapid-fire association process. To do this, set a timer for five or ten minutes and then choose a random word. It can be anything from a colour to an object you see in your room.
Start by writing this object down, and then anytime a new thought pops into your head, leave the last thought and write the new one down. It is important not to follow one specific thought. Instead, keep writing the thoughts down as they come into your head. If, at some point, you get stuck, then simply write the last word on repeat until something pops into your mind.
An Example…
I will do a quick example of this right now just to demonstrate how it works.
Pencil/ art class/ fancy sketchbooks Chenderit primary school leavers/ 2d dancer doing the splits/ picking glue off hands at/ picking sunburn/ brother getting sunstroke in Spain when he refused to put / brother bitten by a dog in France in Normandy/ buying Normandy playing cards holiday with family/ buying lollipop with grampy when super young/ Building Dens with kayaking friends when / someone brought us ginger cake when we finished dens/ lost round lake Wales/ Just round the corner/ spider landed Jemma’s head China.
Now, many of these moments will mean nothing to you, but to me, they have strong associations. So many stories pop out and have obvious five-second moments. There are also many stories that I had forgotten that came back as I was doing this exercise. It is a great exercise to do if you are looking for stories. But it is also great if you want to find some of the memories that you have lost over time.
Storyworthy Moments
Storyworthy moments are the most interesting takeaway from this book. This exercise is one that Dicks suggest to do daily and is something that I have incorporated into my life. He says to ask the question:
“If I had to tell a story from today — five minutes about something that took place today, what would it be? What was the most storyworthy moment of my day?”
At some point during every day, Dicks suggests writing down the most storyworthy moment of your day. I keep a little notepad by my bed, and every night before I go to sleep, I think of the story I would tell from that day. Sometimes, the story is obvious, but recently, I have spent a huge amount of time very sick and in bed, so it has been less clear. However, by finding that moment regularly, you are training yourself to find the meaningful moments in your life.
Not only does this allow you to reflect on your life and appreciate it more, but it also allows you to spot patterns over time. On top of that, it helps you to remember the seemingly unremarkable days and moments of your life that you don’t want to forget. You don’t need to write the entire story as that is a big commitment and will invariably be too hard to commit to long term. Writing a short sentence is enough to capture the moments.
An Example…
For example, here are a couple of entries from the last month for me:
- 11th April 2024 – Proud to the Bone sold out again. Good night. I am organising this show. Wow!
- 23rd April 2024 – Sitting in PJs on the phone at a meeting where everyone else in the room. Relapses lonely.
- 24th April 2024 – Phone call with newish friend who asks, “What ways can we make this friendship still work while you are really sick? It’s important to me.”
Each of these notes brings me back to a moment I would probably have forgotten if I had not looked out for the storyworthy moments in my life. Each of these moments contains the emotions I was going through that day and allows me to reflect on my life and appreciate what I have.
Take Away Thoughts
I’ll be honest, sometimes this book was hard to get through because on the one page, Dicks would deliver these interesting thoughts and tips, but on the next, he would be off again talking about how amazing he is. It is also just a little too long and could definitely be condensed. I feel like my issues with this book might come from a cultural difference as the author is American – but who knows?
Storyworthy is a book I would recommend to people looking to get into storytelling performance, but it could also be very helpful for writers, bloggers etc. For anyone else, I think I have written about the main interesting takeaways, so I wouldn’t bother reading it!
Having heartlessly slandered the writing style in the book, I have really enjoyed doing my homework for life and intend to keep up with that. It is something I would recommend to everyone!
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