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How Do You Tell A Good Story?
Matthew Dicks • 2022-11-01
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. You're listening to Say by Say That Again. Say That Again formed at the end of 2019 in KCMO. Their music takes influence from alternative rock, indie rock, classic rock, and other genres they grew up with. Say That Again released their debut EP, Flying Cars, in December of 2021, and are currently back in the studio, recording their first full-length album. The question for this episode is, how do you tell a good story? You'll learn in this episode how you can tell better stories by improving your delivery, increasing stakes, and avoiding common mistakes. Our guest is an international bestselling author, has delivered five TEDx talks, is a 57-time Moth StorySlam Champion, and 9-time GrandSlam Champion. I introduce to you, Matthew Dicks. Firstly, I want to say, just reach out to people when you read their stuff. Just want to say that I know as a kid, I was a big Captain Underpants fan, and I reached out to Dave Pilkey. I just wrote him a letter, my dad sent it off, and he replied, and I've kind of kept that same sentiment as I've grown up. And I read your book, Storyworthy, Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the power of storytelling. And Matt, I'm like, this is, I thought it was super useful. First off, that's why I sought out, you know, found the book. And then in reading it, I'm like, I got to tell this guy that this is some good stuff, right? So I find you on LinkedIn, I message you, and then here we are. I said, we got to have a podcast episode. Got to do it.
Matthew Dicks:That's great. I am glad you like the book.
Dylan Carnahan:And, you know, I notice here, you know, you got on here, it says 36 time off, StorySLAM champion, five time GrandSLAM. I know those accolades have changed a little bit. It boosted your numbers, but how did you become a storyteller?
Matthew Dicks:Well, you know, it was sort of accidental and deeply fortunate. I, you know, I was sort of writing novels. I'm a novelist as well. So I've published books and, uh, my friends sort of became aware of, uh, this organization called The Moth. They, you know, one of my friends in particular said, I'm listening to this podcast by this organization called The Moth. They, uh, produce shows and storytelling shows, personal storytelling in New York City and competitions, and you should go and do it. And, uh, I didn't really want to do it. I didn't have any thought or plan to do it initially. You know, people told me you've had the worst life of anyone we know. So you'd be a great storyteller, which isn't a nice thing to say to your friend. Uh, but because I sort of say yes to everything, I said, okay, I'll do that one day. And then I sort of stalled for a while. I really didn't do it. I kept hoping it would sort of go away, but it didn't. So, um, I went to the New Aurekins Poets Cafe in New York City one night to compete in a moth story slam with my wife alongside. And, um, they pulled my name 10th. At first, I didn't move because I thought maybe if I just don't move and I stay quiet, they'll pick another name and I won't have to do this. But my wife kicked me under the table and told me to get my ass on stage, which I did. And as soon as I started speaking into the microphone, I knew I was right where I belonged. And so I told a story about rooting against my teammates in high school, while pole vaulting, hoping that they would fail so that I would look better than them. And, um, I won that competition and I am a very competitive human being. And so combining sort of my love for story, you know, through writing novels and studying movies and things before I started storytelling, combining that with my deep desire to, you know, defeat everyone else and climb to the top of the mountain. Those two things came together. And, and I started telling stories first in New York and then Boston, and then eventually around the world.
Dylan Carnahan:And, and these moth story slams, you know, just in your story, we can kind of pull out a little bit how that structure, but what is it, you know, we're getting a scorecard, like a diving competition, you know, how does that work?
Matthew Dicks:It kind of is, you know, the, you drop your name in a hat. They pull out 10 names. So if there's 20 names, you have a 50% chance of telling a story that night. You get five minutes. You have to tell the story on the theme they give you. And when you're done, there's three teams of judges in the audience and they hold up cards and they give you a numerical score that is placed on a, on a piece of paper so that everyone can see your score throughout the rest of the night. And then the person who scores the highest at the end of the night wins. So, yeah, it's kind of like diving, except you're telling stories and, you know, and they're judged on time, so you have to stay within the time limit. And, you know, basically, did you tell a story that meant something? Did you make us laugh and cry? Did you move us in some way? You know, what story are we going to be telling our friends tomorrow is always what I think, you know, when you go back to work and you say, oh, I saw I saw a show last night, this guy told a story. If yours is the one that they would be repeating, that's probably the one that's going to win. Wow.
Dylan Carnahan:And, you know, you talked about after that first time you go up there, you know, all these kind of aspects, right, the competitive nature you inherently have. But what made you you know, these are personal things, right? What made you want to share, you know, these personal moments on stage?
Matthew Dicks:I've always been that way. I grew up in a broken home with adults who didn't pay a lot of attention to me. And honestly, teachers and guidance counselors who never even said the word college to me growing up. So I think I was always looking for attention in some desperate way. And early on, I sort of discovered that when I tell stories about stupid things I do, people like that. They laugh. It's how I can get girls to pay attention to me. I can tell a story about something ridiculous that I did. It makes them laugh. And if I make girls laugh, there's a better chance of them, you know, saying yes, if I ask them out. And so I think early on, I just sort of got into the habit of revealing everything. And I had no problem with it. My friend says I live out loud. Basically, if it happens to me, I'm probably going to be talking about it at some point, you know, unless it involves another person who whose privacy I have to protect. So there's very, very little that I won't say. And it's also, you know, it's sort of this feedback loop that you get because you discover when you say the things that most people are unwilling to say, people get closer to you and appreciate it. But I always tell people it's sort of like it's like diving. Actually, I always use that as the metaphor. You can watch 100 people go off the high dive and every single one of them is fine. But when it's your turn to go off the high dive, and you're standing on the end, it's still hard. So the first time you go off, you just have to jump. You just have to say the thing you've never said before. And then you hit the water, you come up and everyone's clapping, and they're all appreciate what you've just done. And then the next time is a little easier. Just for me, I think because I started doing it when I was like nine, you know, by the time I got to the point where I was sort of telling stories on stage, I was saying everything.
Dylan Carnahan:I really do have to say, Matt, you were incredibly authentic. Like even in that response right there, you're like, I had an idea. I grew up in a broken home. I wanted attention. And you definitely see that in the stories that you tell, that raw nature of it. And you've had a lot of people, too, that after performances or talks that have come out and told you very personal things.
Matthew Dicks:Thanks. Yes, it's I'm the bearer of more secrets than you could ever imagine. I had a woman just before the pandemic. I was telling a story in New York about bad parenting. And I got off the stage and she came up to me and she grabbed me. People touch me all the time. I tell a story and they they like pet my forearms. It's so strange. They just put their hands on me because they feel they know me. And she pulled me in close and without even introducing herself, she said, every time I go into someone's house, even my own mother's house, I have to steal something. And then she pulled me in even closer and she whisper yelled at me. She said, I've never told anyone that before. So, you know, this is a person who has a legitimate mental illness. She's in her forties, I would guess, which means she's been living with it all her life. She saw some random guy on a stage in New York City, tell a vulnerable story, admitting to a bad parenting mistake. And she said, he's the one, like, I'm going to finally reveal to him. But it happens all the time. I've had five women in the course of my storytelling career, take me aside and tell me about their miscarriages. And all five of them, I was the only person they'd ever spoken to about the miscarriage. And I had never told a story about a miscarriage. It was just, he's the one I'm going to talk to and tell. I was in a high school a couple of years ago in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and a kid came up to me after I spoke to the whole school. And he said to me, he whispered to me, he said, I can only pee in the corner of restaurants and in the corner of restrooms. I can't pee in toilets. And then he ran away. And I know that's actually a problem that kids have. Boys have it. Usually they break it by the time they're eight or nine. As an elementary school teacher, I've seen it before. For some reason, there's just some mental block where they pee on the floor instead of in the toilet. But this kid's 16 and he had yet to reveal it to anyone. And he was like, that rando on stage today is the guy I'm going to tell. And thankfully, I figured out who he was and I was able to get him help. But it happens to me all the time.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow. So, I mean, just as you've said, you know, telling stories has the ability to draw people towards you. But what are some other reasons that, you know, stories are important?
Matthew Dicks:Well, they're the best way to communicate information. You know, if you if you just think about in life, you know, you'll go to a meeting and someone will show you a PowerPoint deck with some graphs and, you know, some charts and some facts and figures, you know. And by the time you're eating dinner, it's kind of all gone, you know. But if you go to a movie and you watch the movie like you'll remember that movie forever in a lot of cases. Also, if you just think about it, you've never asked like to see a pie chart a second time, you know. Oh, can you do that? Can you do that presentation for me again? That was amazing. But you'll watch the same movie 20 times and be thrilled if it's on again for the 21st time. We're drawn to story like we're just built that way before we could write things. You know, as hunter gatherers, we lived by story. We told stories about how the berries on that bush killed Uncle Joe. So don't eat the berries on that bush, right, before we could actually write something down. Stories kept us alive. It was the way we transferred information from one generation to the next. So our brains are just built to enjoy, absorb and remember story far more than anything else. So, you know, if you want to communicate an idea, if you want to move someone emotionally, and if you want to be remembered after you've been in a place or cause people to remember your ideas or your messages, you tell it through story, and then it's always going to be more powerful.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow, that yeah, there's something more digestible about, you know, a narrative, especially when retaining information. You bring up oral tradition. One of the things that I found is that history is easy to memorize because it's just a large story, right? With chronological events.
Matthew Dicks:Yeah, if it's told as a story, especially sometimes it's just told as facts. But if you actually tell the story, then it's great. You know, I mean, Hamilton, which my son loves and I love, but my son loves to a degree that's even far greater than me. It's essentially just it's it's history about Hamilton and it is told through a story and music and it is utterly unforgettable because of that.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you going back to what we talked about earlier, you have on stage said some very raw stories. You've shared some very personal things and to a layman or just anyone, what are good stories to tell? How do you decide what to tell?
Matthew Dicks:Well, I mean, what you're looking for is a moment in your life when something changes. Every story is about change. It's either transformation, which means I used to be one kind of a person and now I'm a different kind of person, or more often realization, which is I used to think one thing and now I think another thing. You know, we're looking for the moment and the story essentially is going to bring that moment to the greatest understanding possible. The tricky thing that people have is like my friend said, you're going to be a great storyteller because you've had a terrible life, right? And I haven't, but I've had a bunch of misfortunes. You know, I've stopped breathing and my heart stopped beating twice and CPR was done on me to restore my life. I was arrested and tried for a crime I didn't commit. I was homeless for a period in my life. I was a victim of a horrific robbery, lots of those nonsensical things. So my friends figured that's what's going to make you a great storyteller. It turns out all of those stories are certainly great to tell. I've actually not told some of them unbelievably. I've never told the story of the trial that I went through for the crime I didn't commit. My storytelling friends are like, you were on trial for a crime you didn't commit and you haven't told that story. No, I mean, I'll get to it eventually, I think. But the best stories are the ones that people actually relate to in a real meaningful way, which is to say small stories, little things. And so often in life, the tricky thing about stories is almost always when that moment hits you, the moment of change that we're looking for, if you were to watch me experience that moment, you would never know I'm having a moment because most stories happen inside our heads. Most of the time, we just change the way we think about ourselves, the people around us, our lives, the world. If you're a person who didn't believe in God and then some stuff happens, and the next day you believe in God, you don't actually get to see that if you're watching the person suddenly find faith in God, right? They don't stand on top of a rock and go, like, that's not how it works. You're just walking down the street and one day you go, you know what? That's it. I found it. That's the story you want to tell. So you have to recognize that most of the time the stories we're telling, everything is happening in our head. And we're just trying to bring that realization to the greatest fruition possible.
Dylan Carnahan:That's really interesting. Yeah, it's an internal process, right? Kind of two things there. So the first being, you know, these transformations, like these small moments. You know, I know in your book, you talk a lot about like, say, Jurassic Park, right? I mean, we're talking about relatability, Matt, and we're talking about Jurassic Park. It's a completely fictionalized thing. So in a lot of these, you know, very popular stories, you know, you've pointed out that really the transformation is something other than, I guess, what's built, right?
Matthew Dicks:Yes. Yes. It's often in movies, especially, but sometimes in life, too. What's happening that brings you into the movie isn't what actually the story is about, right? I just had someone actually email me who's read my book, and they said, I just watched the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds. And they said, I've watched it the second time. The first time I watched it, it was a movie about aliens invading the planet and eventually overcoming the aliens. She said, now I watched the movie, and I understand it's a story about a divorced father having to deal with his children in a part-time bad parenting way. Meanwhile, the world is being invaded by aliens. And I said, that's exactly what it's about, which is why that movie for so many people is much more meaningful, even though they might not recognize it. You know, I think so often we go into a movie that's really about something profound, deeply connective, important, and it's hidden by dinosaurs or aliens or whatever it may be. Right. And so you leave the movie and you go, it's a good movie. And you really can't articulate it unless you're, you know, like me and you're going, well, actually, it was really about this. And that's what touches your soul. I think what touches sort of that your eyes and your senses is dinosaurs and people getting eaten. Right. And that gets you to buy the popcorn and sit in the seat. But it's the other stuff that makes you leave and go, yeah, that was a good one. Even if you're not quite sure why.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. And I think examining, you know, cinema and stories with that lens can create a better appreciation. Right. It adds another dimension to that story.
Matthew Dicks:I think so. Some people say I sort of ruin every movie by dissecting it, but I do it naturally. You know, when I I've been doing it forever. When I was like 10, nine, I saw ET for the first time. And I came home and I was angry. It was a great movie, but it had a terrible and stupid scene in it. At the age of nine, I was thinking, why has he messed up another movie? You know, I'd seen a couple other Spielberg movies. They're all great. But in my nine year old mind, and frankly, in my 50 year old mind, there's always like a clunker of a scene that doesn't make any sense to me. And in the ET movie, it's the frog scene. There's a scene where Elliot saving frogs in science class. And there's just too many frogs and not enough adult supervision. Like this just can't happen. There's like 900 frogs. And somehow one boy frees all of them and no one stops him. And they make it like all the way out the door. These frogs somehow they're like smart enough to like get off tables onto floors, find doorways to exits and off into the. And I just watched it as a nine year old and thought that was so stupid. Everything else is so good. So I wrote him a letter to Spielberg. I wrote and said, Listen, you keep screwing these things up. So if you run the movie by me first, I'll tell you what the bad scene is and we can clean that up. And I gave it to my mother and it wasn't until last year that it dawned on me. Spielberg never wrote back to me. And I was always like, I can't believe you didn't write back to the nine year old. It dawned on me last year. My mother never sent that letter because in 1982, there was no way she could have ever found an address to Steven Spielberg. There's no Internet. Like there's no way she sent that letter. She took it. She said that sweet, Matt, and she probably threw it away. And for the next 41 years, I waited for Steven Spielberg and wondered why he didn't write it back to me. And one day I was talking about it and I went, Oh, wait, I bet she didn't send it. Right.
Dylan Carnahan:So it's in the drawing.
Matthew Dicks:I'm examining movies like that at nine. I'm looking at movies and I'm seeing problems and I'm seeing great greatness. So it's been something I've sort of been interested in for a very long time.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. That that lens, you know, you've had that for a while.
Matthew Dicks:Yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. Your letter ended up in the drawer with all of Santa's letters, too.
Matthew Dicks:Yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:So I know now that we've talked about kind of, you know, this transition and, you know, stories have to be relatable, right? I know you bring up how does someone find stories to tell and how do you overcome the unicorns that say, Matt, I don't have anything to say, you know, my nine to five, I get my every day is the same, you know, how do you find stories?
Matthew Dicks:Well, I say there are no unicorns.
Dylan Carnahan:And you keep telling them, you keep telling them, Matt.
Matthew Dicks:I have more stories than I have time to tell them now, you know, which is a great thing. There are no unicorns. I've worked with tens of thousands of people. Everyone finds stories with me. So if you think you're special, that's just hubris and nonsense. You're just like everybody else. You're tragically average and you have stories. Everyone says they worked a nine to five terrible cubicle life. But what they don't understand is that stories can just be about changing the way you think about something. Or you hear someone say something and it moves you in a way and that can become a story. So you have to start looking at your life through the lens of storytelling. You know, I do something called homework for life, which essentially is a practice that requires you to every day sit down at the end of the day and say, what's the most story worthy moment from this day? Even if your day felt completely ordinary, you still find the most ordinary of the ordinary things and you choose that for that particular day. And if you engage in that process, homework for life over time, if you genuinely every single day sit down and say, if I had to tell a story about something happening today, what would that story be? Then you identify it and then what I do is I tell people to write it down, but don't write the whole story down because that's crazy. You know, that's like journalers, people who take the journal out after someone dumps them and they write and write and write. And then when they find love again, the journal gets put away. I want something that's like brushing your teeth. You never skip it. So I use an Excel spreadsheet. It's two columns. It's the date and then I stretch the B column across the screen. So you don't give yourself a lot of room to write. You just want to capture enough to remember the moment. But if you do that long enough and or and sometimes it's it's weeks before people start to really see things, everyone discovers that their lives are filled with stories. Every single person. The tragedy of our lives is just that we we don't actually notice moments that we should be. But even worse, we don't ever record anything that is meaningful. So like the worst game ever played, which is my favorite game to play, is take your age, whatever it is, and subtract 12. Right. So for me, it's 50 minus 12. It's 38, whatever, whatever yours is, and whatever your audience is, find that age and then ask yourself, what do you remember from that year of your life? What stories could you tell from 12 years ago? You went around the sun. You spent 365 days on this rock. I promise you stuff happened. I also promise you that unless you got married or divorced or you had a baby or you had a big move, you probably can't tell me much about that year of your life. You've probably lost most of it. It doesn't mean it was a bad year or a boring year. It just means you didn't actually take any account of it. So when people say time flies, I will tell you it never flies for me because every day is marked by at least one thing. And nowadays they get marked by six or seven things because I see so many stories in my life. And I'm not special. I am also not a unicorn. I'm just an ordinary guy who has adhered to this practice for a long time and it works. It works for everyone. It works for thousands of people all over the world. I've trademarked it. Trust me, it works. So Homework for Life will find you the stories that you need to tell.
Dylan Carnahan:And I'm as someone who's been doing that for two and a half months, who has an Excel spreadsheet, I can tell you it really does. And one of the things that I've found is that it's that reflection, really. Are you really present? You go throughout the day and then taking that time at the end to reflect. I mean, you pick up on things that maybe you didn't appreciate in the moment. And then I think one of the positive externalities of that is when you look back over an extended period of time, you have all these little nodes throughout your life where you have these events that you've captured. And definitely that's something you can utilize to tell stories. And I think it honestly, I know you've stated this, it kind of lengthens things out for you.
Matthew Dicks:It does. It stretches your life. It slows things down. You know, the other thing that happens, I don't know if it started happening for you, but when you start seeing life through story like I do, you suddenly will crack open and all the stories you've left behind, they'll start to bubble up and you'll remember things that you can't believe you forgot. Like you're appalled that something happened to you and you're suddenly recalling it for the first time. And that always I put into my homework for life too as a memory, which is great because now, you know, that 12th year ago that you can't remember, you'll start to fill it in. And that's a nice thing too, to, you know, to look back and see things that you couldn't see before. So it's the most important thing I teach. And it's the most impactful thing that I've probably ever told people to do in my life.
Dylan Carnahan:That's a strong statement and one that I definitely have seen the benefits of. And much as you're saying, I know experiencing that, you know, kind of that connection made, you know, oh, this is rather the most recent one. I had to put a dog down. I put a dog down. And I remember when I had to put Lucy down. It was just, you know, December of 2016 or whatever. And it's just kind of, you know, grand, that's pretty dark, let's say thematically. But elsewhere, you know, that's kind of that connections you make and associations and that drives further, you know, recall.
Matthew Dicks:Yeah, there's other activities, you know, there's exercises in my book that you can do to sort of refresh things from the past as well. So there's other ways you can do it. But homework for life is the first and most important way you should be capturing stories. And that's for everything. I work with Fortune 100 companies. I was working with a big tech company today who you probably interact with every single day. And I was speaking to one of their vice presidents. And, you know, when I work with these people, they always call me, they say, we need a metaphor. We have this product and we're trying to compare it to the real world. Can you give us a story and a metaphor? And one of the companies, they call me metaphor man, because I just always have a metaphor for them. You know, and one of the guys, this VP today said, how do you always have the metaphor we need? And I said, I'm doing homework for life, which I told you to do. I'm not a metaphor man. I just have a million stories because I'm paying attention to my life. And I'm recognizing things and seeing things and recording them. And just the act of recording them cements them in your brain to a greater degree. So I'm just a guy with a ton of stories. And these companies call me and they say, we have this new feature on our platform, and we need to make the lay person understand this feature. How would you do it? And I always think, well, I've got nine stories that we could use. I wonder which one I'm going to give them today. And they think it's wondrous. And if they would just do homework for life, like they could do the same thing I do.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that documentation aspect and be able to retain those moments, very important. Now, Matt, we're over here. We're doing, you know, our homework. We're documenting stories. We're recalling things from seven, 12 years ago. We're doing all of this. But how do we deliver a story? How do we tell one?
Matthew Dicks:Well, I mean, I could speak for, you know, hours on that subject. But, you know, I guess if you're going to start doing it, the first thing you have to do is decide where your story is going to begin and end. I guess that's probably the most important thing. Most stories don't actually end in the real world. It's usually like a phone call, an interruption, a text message, the ride ends, the meal's over. Most people don't actually plan where their story is going to end. You know, the difference essentially between a storyteller like me and most storytellers in the world is that I think before I speak. And mostly what I do is I say, what do I actually want to say? So when I say, oh, that happened to me once and I'm going to tell a story, I know where I'm landing. So we always have to start at the end because a story is about a moment of realization or transformation. And that always comes at the end, just like in a movie, right? Characters fall in love at the end of movies, right? That's when they realize, oh, they should have been in love, right? You know, some character realizes, oh, I must sacrifice myself, right? Tony Stark sacrifices himself for the good of all at the end of Endgame, you know, not halfway through it. So characters have these moments of realization at the ends of movies. We have moments of realization at the ends of our stories. So we have to start at the end by saying, oh, I'm trying to tell them this. I'm trying to say that, you know, I suddenly recognize that I'm trying to think of a story. Like, I'm suddenly realizing that my wife knows I was hungry as a child, even though I never told her. Wow. She knows me better than I have ever been known before. Right. That's what I'm trying to say. That's the end of my story. The end of the story is my wife says, I know you were hungry when you were a kid, even though you've never told me. I know it. I've listened. I figured things out. So if I know that's the end of my story, right? The beginning of my story should always be the opposite of the end. Therefore, that's why there's change, right? So if at the end of the story, my wife knows something about me at the beginning of the story, she must not know it. And that is me as a child keeping the secret of hunger, which is what most hungry children do. They don't tell people that they're hungry because hunger is shame. And so as a kid, I'm hungry, but never telling anyone because it's better to be hungry with dignity than asking for food with shame. Right. So I start by talking about those secrets. And then I end up at a dining room table with a wife who tells me she's uncovered my secret. That's essentially the story. All movies work this way. If you watch the first 15 minutes of any movie, you should be able to accurately predict what the ending is going to be. You won't know the circumstances, but you'll be like, this guy is flawed in this way. At the end of the movie, he will not be flawed in this way anymore. Every movie just about works this way, which is why I can watch 15 minutes of a movie, pause the movie, and then ruin it for everyone by saying, oh, this is what's going to happen. I don't know how it's going to happen exactly, but most of us are like this anyway. When you watch a movie like When Harry Met Sally, at the beginning of the movie, they actually say they hate each other. We all know they're going to end up at the end of the movie together. Many of these movies are not mysteries to us. We understand where we're going. It's just a joy to get there. We have to do the same thing with our stories. We start at the end by saying, this is what I'm trying to say about myself. Here's how I changed. Then you say to yourself, what's the opposite of that? That's the beginning. Now we have a frame for our story. Now we know where to put our stories beginning and end. That's great because most people start in the wrong place and never end.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. No, it is interesting kind of that formula. You said something about beginning with the ending. A friend of the show, David Naster, who's a motivational speaker and comedian, he would always tell me that he would ask people, what do you want the audience to leave with? Yeah. That's where he would start.
Matthew Dicks:Right. That's exactly right. What do I want the audience to ultimately know about me and what happened to me? Today, I realized this. Right. Everything that comes before that is the story and it gives you the context. So when we land in that moment, you understand exactly why this means something to me. Yeah. It also does a great job of clearing out all the nonsense because, you know, the other problem people have with stories is they throw everything, including which kitchen sink into the story. You know, my favorite is eye color. I have heard people describe the color of characters' eyes one million times in stories. I have yet to hear a story where eye color was actually relevant to the story, which means I'm going to tell you the girls' eyes are green, which means I now must remember that they're green throughout the story and wait for the green eyes to play out in some way, which never happens. And so when we get to the end of the story, you've just taxed my brain to keep track of eye color when I didn't need to know it. And most importantly, it didn't serve your story. You could have told me something else about that girl that would have been relevant and helpful to the story. But because when we were in first grade, when we wrote a story, a teacher said to us, can you add details to the story? And you said, what are details? And the teacher said, what color hair and what color eyes? That has weirdly stuck with you for the last 40 damn years, which means that's what we get all the time, is hair color and eye color. It is literally a relic of your first grade education that has persisted all the way through and does nothing for a storyteller.
Dylan Carnahan:You know, you get people, they're maybe starting in the wrong place. Maybe we're not sticking the landing, right? Maybe we're throwing too many things out there. What are some other common, I guess, mistakes that people fall into when telling a story?
Matthew Dicks:Well, a lot of people start with exposition, which means I have to teach you some stuff before I actually start telling a story. You'll know these stories because people will talk for a while, and then they'll go one day, and I always think, and this is where the story should have started. One day, this is it. This is where it begins. Oftentimes, though, they feel like they have to, like, let you know everything about their mother before they begin the story. You know, if you watch the movie Apollo 13, you know, the story of the spaceship that didn't make it to the moon. In order to understand that film, you have to understand how 1960s space travel worked. You have to understand how that space capsule works so everything makes sense. But the movie does not begin with Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon on a black screen at the beginning of the movie saying, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Before this movie kicks off, we're going to do a little lecture on 1960s space travel. They teach us, as the movie plays out, what we need to know. That's what has to happen in storytelling, too. Instead of saying, you know, I grew up in a one streetlight town with a candy store on Main Street and a pharmacy down there. I'm already done. I'm not listening to you anymore. You've given me nothing. I always say we want to start a story with action. Something should be happening at the beginning of a story, as it happens in movies all the time. Movies do not open with someone talking to you. Almost never someone talking to you. They always start with like something is happening. And it doesn't have to be much. You know, I have stories where I say I'm sitting in a chair staring at the computer. At least I'm doing something right. So I always say action and location. So tell me what you're doing and tell me where you are. We use location because location is one of the most beneficial things to a storyteller because every location is packed with a thousand adjectives that we don't have to say. If I tell you I'm standing in a kitchen, you've already filled the kitchen in for me. And if the particulars of the kitchen don't matter to the story, I don't care what kitchen you used, right? So, like, if I said I'm standing in a kitchen, you can tell me, is it linoleum? Is it hardwood? Is it tile? You know, like, you already put me there. You can tell me, is the refrigerator laminate or stainless steel? You can tell me where the garbage is. You can tell me where the microwave is. You can probably tell me what's in the refrigerator if I ask you to look inside. And all that's great for me as a storyteller. If the refrigerator needs to be stainless steel, I can mention that one detail. But otherwise, you'll put me in your kitchen or your parents' kitchen or your buddy's kitchen, and that's great, because now you can see it so clearly, as opposed to me trying to construct a kitchen in your mind by assembling the particulars of my kitchen, which have nothing to do with the story other than the fact I'm standing in it. So start with location, because they're imbued with the adjectives, and then you start with action, which is a signal to the audience, I've actually begun the story. Please don't worry, it's already moving along. Those two things will change everything for you.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, it's interesting, too, just as you go through there, just simply stating the setting, I mean, you're already visualizing that.
Matthew Dicks:People always say, like, how do I see your story so clearly in my mind's eye? And I always say, I don't use adjectives, I don't describe things. I use good, hard nouns that have adjectives already attached to them. Right? So if I have to name something, if it's relevant that it's a maple tree, I will say I'm standing under a maple tree. But that's all you're going to get, because I know you know what a maple tree looks like. But if it's not a maple tree and it's just a tree, it's only going to stay a tree because I want you to pick the tree because you can see a tree clearly in a much clearer way than I can create a tree for you. Now, it's different in my books. When I'm writing a novel, people have control over the content. They expect details because when they buy my novel, they say, all right, I'm going to give them 10 hours of my life. I want them to fill this world out for me. And you can control how quickly you read. You can reread. You can actually skip my description if you're a good reader. You're like, okay, this is just a description of the forest. I know what a forest looks like moving on. That's how I read as an English major. When you have to read eight novels a week as an English major, you learn how to read like that. But as a storyteller, if you're at dinner or you're on a stage or you're playing golf with your buddies, you got to get to it. Because someone's going to cut in or someone's going to hit a shot in the woods. Something's going to happen that's going to end your story while you're talking about eye color, which is not anything anyone wants to hear. So you got to get to it.
Dylan Carnahan:Now, we've gone through, we've mastered where we're going to end, where we're going to start. We're in motion, right? How are we going to build tension? Maybe I have a really good story, but it's simple. And I'm afraid it's going to fall flat. How do we build, add some tension? What kind of storytelling tactics would you employ?
Matthew Dicks:Well, first, I'll tell you that if the story is important to you, you can make it important to other people. It won't fall flat. I mean, you might tell it poorly. You might include everyone's eye color, and that will cause it to fall flat. But if it means something to you, it'll mean something to other people. So telling it well enough will cause it to mean something and not fall flat. In terms of creating tension, it's not a word I think I would suggest. What you really want to do is make sure that there are stakes in the story at all times. I actually like the word wonder, which is to say your audience should always be wondering about something. So wonder can be a stake, like there's something to worry about, right? I'm in trouble or I want something. Will Matt get the thing that he wants? Will Matt solve the problem he's facing? But wonder can also just be like, what's going on here? You know, a little cognitive dissonance at the beginning of a story. You know, I can start talking and you're trying to catch up. You feel like you're a little behind. That's a good feeling for an audience to have the like. I'm trying to put the pieces together while he's talking. You know, you want to just ask yourself aggressively at every moment in the story. Is someone wondering about what's going to happen next? Because if they're wondering, they're in. If they're not wondering, they're probably out. You know, twice in my life, I've gone to a movie where the power went out. And the first time I went, the first time it happened to me, the manager comes in and says, you can come back tomorrow or anytime you want and see the rest of the movie. I didn't go back because I wasn't wondering what was going to happen to the characters next. I was out of the movie. I was like, I don't care what happens to these people, so I'm not coming back. The next time, though, it happened, I was with a buddy, and I was like, we got to go to another movie theater right now. I need to know what happens because I was wondering what was happening, right? And if you just take that approach as a storyteller, are people wondering about something? Have I given them something to wonder about? And if you have, that's great. If there's nothing to wonder about, the one trick you can use is you can be funny. There are moments in stories when I'm like, this is the boring part. I need to explain some stuff to them so that the story makes sense, but there's not a lot to it. I'd better do it in a funny way. So you can be funny for a while and trick people into thinking that their story has, you know, good stuff happening when really it's just laughter, but you can't make them laugh the whole way through because now you're just doing stand up, and that's not a story. So you can trick them a little bit along the way, but mostly it's wonder. And part of it is stakes. What is at stake? Part of it is maybe surprise or mystery or suspense, things like that. There's a million tricks to use, but start with do people care about the next sentence? If the power goes out, will people want to know what the rest of the story was? And if the answer is no, you need to fix that.
Dylan Carnahan:As someone who has told raw stories, has told personal things that have very real stakes, and you're having to recount this event, as you're putting pictures in other people's minds, you're also seeing those events transpire. What would you recommend to someone that wants to tell an emotionally difficult story?
Matthew Dicks:Well, I would say it's perfectly fine to tell an emotionally difficult story. There's nothing wrong with getting a little weepy while you're telling a story. I always say as long as you don't reach snot bubble level, you're probably okay. So there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, there's probably something wrong with it if you're playing golf with your buddies and getting weepy. It's a little awkward maybe if you're at dinner with six couples and suddenly you're verklempt. There's moments when you don't want that to happen, and maybe in those moments you just don't tell those stories. But if you're telling a story to people that genuinely want to hear this kind of a thing or they love you enough to listen, then there's really nothing wrong with you becoming a little weepy, a little teary-eyed. All of those things are good. That's real. It doesn't happen for everyone because not everyone sees their story when they tell it. Some people like me, I sort of relive the moment while I'm telling the story. I see it in my mind's eye. Some people don't do that. Some people actually see the page that they wrote their story on. I don't write my stories, so maybe that helps. But some people actually see the page, and they just sort of read the page as it floats before them like Macbeth's a dagger floating before them. And so for them, it's a lot easier because they don't become emotionally, you know, exhausted by their story. Then again, I think my way is better because I think you relive the story for the benefit of the audience. There are some tricks, though. I mean, there is a story that I tell that is really is a real hard part for me to get through. And so one of the things you can do is you can just say the sentences that make you become weepy. You say them over and over again. They sort of like you strip them of their emotion to a certain degree. You can also sort of change perspectives of the story. It's really hard for people I've discovered. But what I do is as I'm telling the story, I'm seeing it through the eyes of previous me. And then when I'm approaching the moment that's going to make me really upset, instead of seeing it through the eyes, I shift and I float above the story. And I see myself almost in the third person. Instead of looking through my eyes, I look down at a guy who's doing some stuff. But that guy isn't me anymore because I'm up here. And that helps a little bit to like sort of not see the scene in the way you saw at that time. That'll make you a little less weepy too. There's also just a trick of the water. My friend Steve, Steve is this enormous man who played, who was the starting tight end for UConn football for four years and was, was actually in NFL camps for a little while. So he, you know, he's serious football player.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Matthew Dicks:And I got him to tell a story one night on a stage in front of like, I don't know, 800 people. And it was the story of how he, during the, during the NFL draft, he didn't get drafted, but right when the draft ended, the Miami Dolphins called and said, we want you to be our free agent. And he said, yes. And they celebrated. They hung up the phone to be on celebrating with his family. They were so happy. And then right after he hung up his agent called back to tell him, Miami pulled the deal, but we also have a deal with San Diego. And he didn't hear the phone through the celebration. And by the time he got back to the phone an hour later, all the positions essentially were gone. And he had to sort of fight his way into a couple of camps and never had really a shot at that point. And it was devastating to him. And then what happens is a couple of years later, he's on a run with his child, his little infant. You know, he's pushing the thing and running, and he starts to feel pain in his chest. And so he goes directly to the hospital, and they immediately have open heart surgery on him because he's got what's called the widow maker, the thing that like when it goes, you die, you're just dying instantly. And he suddenly realizes that if he had made it into an NFL camp in the way that he had planned on it, he was the kind of guy that would have pushed himself to the ends of the earth to make the team and probably would have died on a football field from a heart attack that would have been unavoidable. And so somehow missing that call that day saves his life and lets him have a wife and three boys. And when he tells that story on stage, he gets really, really, you know, reclaimed. And he's like, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I said, you're just going to have a bottle of water next to you on a stool. And when you start to feel it, you're going to take a sip of the water. And he goes, what's that going to do? I said, it's going to change everything for you. And so he does it and he drinks the water and he can't believe it. Because what happens is you're in a moment and he's telling the story. And then if you feel it coming, you take some water and you drink it. And your brain shifts from storytelling to I now must hold a bottle of water and I now must put water down my throat and I must do it in a safe and comfortable way. And so it just shuts off that part of the brain that was storytelling and transfers your brain over to something else, seals off all the emotion. When you start telling it in, the emotion will come back, but you're not heightened. You're at the bottom again, building up again. And if you need another sip of water, you get water. So Steve will tell people, he's like, Matt's got this amazing trick with water. And I'm like, it's not really that amazing. And I don't know if I was the first one to come up with it, buddy, but it does work. So that's another thing. If you're telling a story and you get a little weepy at the dinner table, just reach for your drink and have a little sip and you'll come right back down to neutral. You'll build up again, but you're not going to be heightened all the way at the top.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you're grounding yourself. Really, it's a pattern break, right? You're kind of replaying this thing. And I will say just briefly, as we're talking here, it's come to my attention that, again, not everyone visualizes things, right? You know, I know for me, for whatever reason how I am in telling a story, I visualize that. I use my mind's eye. I see something. And that's not how everyone operates. As much as you're saying, you know, someone may read something, and they're just seeing the words on the page, right?
Matthew Dicks:Yeah, it's also a part of our bandwidth, the amount of mind space we have on stage. So when I get on a stage, I can have a second conversation with myself while telling a story, which I've had storytellers tell me is not true. And then it happens for them eventually. And they'll call me and go, oh, my God, I can't believe it. So while I'm telling a story, I can be talking to myself and sort of evaluating how the performance is going. I'll be like, oh, that that landed really funny. They laughed at that. Can I call that back? Can I can I find a way to say that again in a different way? So I can do all that while I'm telling a story because I have a lot of bandwidth because I'm not nervous in any way whatsoever. I feel completely at home in a place I've always been before. It doesn't require a lot for me to tell the story, right? I might be using, let's say, 60 percent of my bandwidth to actually tell the story. So I've got 40 percent to play with. Right. For some people, they get on stage and all of their bandwidth is concentrated on storytelling. And therefore they might not be able to fall into that mind's eye because what they see is audience and lights and themselves and fear and nervousness. And so it's really hard for them. I was working with one lady once, thankfully not in a show, but in a workshop. She was on stage and she walked all the way around the microphone so that the microphone was behind her. And she didn't know she had done it because all of her bandwidth was focused on the story. She didn't even know she was moving on stage. And when she was finished, her name was Leslie. I said, Leslie, what's the microphone? And she goes, Oh, did you take it away? And I said, No, it's behind you. You walked all the way around the microphone. But and I explained to her, it's not your fault. It's just bandwidth. So my buddy Steve, for example, has an easy time on stage because it turns out that when you play Division one football in front of eighty thousand people, even though storytelling is challenging, like you've played Division one football in front of eighty thousand people. So, you know, you get a measure of perspective. You know, you as a former baseball player, you had pressure placed upon you in front of large audiences and people depending upon you to do a job. And so it is likely because of that when you're standing in front of people, you probably have more bandwidth to work with because of that experience that you've had. Although it's nothing like telling a story, pitching in a baseball game, it is placing yourself in front of a large group of people and having to perform at a high level. And that does, I think, afford your mind some space to do other things.
Dylan Carnahan:That's interesting, right? That comfort level, you're, you know, you've had that exposure that enables you to shift your focus to things. As much as you're saying you're able to make real time critiques, maybe pick up visual cues from the audience and try to go back and recapture some of those moments or emphasize things. Whereas someone, as you just mentioned from your workshop, they may succumb to some of those pressures and not be able to perform in that way.
Matthew Dicks:It sounds crazy to people sometimes, but like I'm taking golf lessons right now. And I am trying to get a hip turn, a shoulder turn, and I'm trying to move my weight forward before I start the swing. And when I watch my coach do it, everything is fluid and he does it instantaneously. And for me, it's three things and I often forget one of them. Right. And so for him, I know it is hard for him to imagine why can't this guy just put these three things together and do them all at the same time. Right. It's the same thing in storytelling. For me, I think, why can't you just stand on stage and be calm and be relaxed and tell your story and do a little modification along the way that I have discovered is an unrealistic expectation. I think my coach probably understands that to a certain degree, too. But when I see him take a swing and I see now all the things that he does, I think I can see it and I can do all those things individually. I cannot put them together all in one motion yet, right? That's what I deal with with storytellers. I tell them 98% of your bandwidth is focused on telling the story right now. And that makes sense. I happen to do this professionally and I've been doing it for a long time. I've been a wedding DJ for 25 years. I stand in front of audiences and speak extemporaneously every Saturday to a bunch of half drunk people who I have to get to do something in a certain way at a certain time. Like all of that training really comes into play when I'm standing on a stage. So, you know, it just makes sense that I can do that in the same way my golf coach can do all those things. And I'm sure when you're pitching, right, I can't throw a ball because I'm a left handed person whose evil stepfather handed a right handed baseball glove to because he wouldn't buy me a new one. So I had to learn to throw with my right hand, even though I am left handed. So you can imagine how terrible I am at throwing anything. Right. And so you can do things on a baseball, you know, baseball mound that I can never do. Although I guess if I worked at it hard enough and long enough and with the right people, I might be able to, which is what storytelling is as well.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, I think the longer you do something, you gain a high level of intuition. Right. And you have that feel and you can feel through those things. And that's something that that you've mastered with storytelling and looking at audiences and knowing, you know, your formula for a story.
Matthew Dicks:Yeah, the intuition is an interesting word. I haven't thought of it that way, but it's true. You know, when it's time to compete in a GrandSLAM championship, you know, people will spend weeks working on their story. And not that I wouldn't. I just don't need to anymore. You know, a lot of times I'm with like a friend, a storytelling friend. And, you know, we're literally driving to a competition and I don't have a story when I get in the car. And I have a story when I get out of the car. And it's only because I've done it so long. And I understand. I always say, Oh, I know what the trick of the story is, which is really just me saying, I know I'm going to go here, here, here, here and here. I know the five scenes and now I'll just put some words to them, which for some people is that's a lot of stuff to do. And it takes a really long time and it frustrates some of my friends. Frankly, you know, my friend Jenny's like, she's like, I hate you because you get in the car without a story. You leave the car with a story. Then you go into the slam and you beat me. And I spent two weeks on my story and I spent two weeks on like two weeks, like not like, you know, twice over the last two weeks, I spent two weeks on it. But, you know, it's just because I've been doing it long enough that I'm able to. And I can really, I can do a lot of the work that is required to tell a story on the stage once I have the structure in my mind. You know, it's not going to be probably the best version of the story, but it's going to be damn good enough.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you you do something long enough. I think you gain that level of intuition. I we talk about it in baseball. Feel have some feel. And that's really what it is. You can feel these things out. And so I think to our audience, Matt has given you a tremendous amount of value, a lot of tips, tricks, things that you can utilize to tell a great story. Don't compare yourself too much. Don't because he's very good at it. But if you keep at it, that's something that you'll gain that intuition with as well. So where can we find Storyworthy and learn learn more about you, Matt?
Matthew Dicks:If you go to matthewdicks.com, you'll find all of my sort of stuff there. And if you want any of my books, you can get them wherever books are found or any of those internet websites that you go to to buy books. I always recommend indie booksellers. They are my heroes. And if my book isn't there, you should ask them to get it for you. And that they'll do that for you too. So, so yeah, find them all there.
Dylan Carnahan:Well, thank you so much, Matt. Like I said, you're you're raw. You go out there, you tell your stories. It resonates with people. You have people tell you things. I think there's something really brave about breaching that and doing that. And I think there's really something admiral about also being willing to share that knowledge with others. So thank you for that.
Matthew Dicks:I got to push back on you for one sec. I just always get to say it's not brave for me because it doesn't require any courage to do it. I had a woman once say to me she's taken lots of my workshop. She says you're the bravest person I've ever met. You say everything. And I told her, I was really clear about it. It's not brave because it's not hard for me. Like to be brave requires something to be difficult. And for me to tell you all of my most vulnerable thoughts and moments, it's not hard for me. So I always acknowledge that it requires enormous courage from almost every other person. But I never want anyone thinking I'm brave to do it because I know in my heart, like when I do something terrible or stupid or ridiculous or embarrassing or shameful, I can't wait to find people to tell it to. So don't think of me as brave. You may think of yourself as brave if it's challenging for you. But it is not bravery. It's just what I do. And everyone else can do it too. Got to go off that high dive.
Dylan Carnahan:Well, thank you for sharing your time today.
Matthew Dicks:Alright, thanks a lot. It's been an honor.
Dylan Carnahan:That wraps up our conversation with Matthew Dicks. We talked about how to stay grounded while telling an emotional story, how to structure your stories, and the impact stories can have. Pick up a copy of Matt's book, Storyworthy, to further learn how to become a great storyteller. Do not forget to listen to Say That Again on Apple Music or Spotify. And lastly, subscribe to the Simple Questions Podcast to get notified when our latest episodes are released. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep asking questions.