Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks
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Название: Storyworthy
Автор: Matthew Dicks
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Маркетинг, PR, реклама
isbn: 9781608685493
isbn:
But remember this: I didn’t go to school to become a storyteller, and I didn’t grow up in a family of storytellers. My parents were like the adults in a Peanuts television special. There was occasional mumbling from the other room through a cloud of secondhand smoke, but little more. My family didn’t communicate through story. We barely communicated at all. I grew up in a broken home with a family that had little time or inclination to fill our lives with conversation.
I didn’t dream of becoming a storyteller. As I’ve made clear, I only started telling because my friends shamed me into giving it a try. In other words, I’m not special. I was not groomed to be a storyteller from an early age. Storytelling is not a part of my DNA.
If I can do this, you can too.
But my friends were wrong about one thing. They thought I would be a good storyteller because I’ve led an unusual and challenging life. They thought that my stories of homelessness and near-death experiences and encounters with the law would make me a great performer.
In that regard, they were wrong. Terribly wrong. Fortunately for both you and me.
You need not spend time in jail or crash through a windshield or have a gun jammed against the side of your head to tell a great story. In fact the simplest stories about the smallest moments in our lives are often the most compelling.
We all have stories. You may not believe this yet, but you will. You just need to know how to find them in your everyday life and then capture them for future telling.
Let me show you how.
No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.
— Daniel Kahneman
Writing myself into existence. I think that’s what I was trying to do. And it’s cool to write a song and then have it come true.
— Ani DiFranco
It’s a human need to be told stories. The more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.
— Alan Rickman
About a year ago, a man in one of my workshops asked, “Why am I here? I don’t want to stand on stages and tell stories. I don’t want to compete in story slams. I’m not an entertainer. I don’t get it.”
It was a good question, particularly because the man in question hadn’t chosen my workshop. His wife had asked him to attend.
He wasn’t the first person to attend a workshop for this reason. “My wife told me to take your workshop” is a surprisingly common reason given by men sitting before me in workshops.
Perhaps you’re asking the same question. If you have no desire to stand on a stage and bare your soul, why learn to find and tell great stories?
Not that long ago, I was asking the same question. Two years into my storytelling career, Elysha and I founded that Hartford-based storytelling organization that I’d once talked about with friends. We call it Speak Up. Together we produce shows throughout New England to sellout audiences numbering as high as five hundred people.
About a year into Speak Up’s existence, I started teaching storytelling too. But as with my journey to becoming a storyteller, my career as a teacher of storytelling began against my will. As our Speak Up audience grew and people wanted to learn to tell stories, they began asking me to teach them the craft.
I balked. I had no interest. But they were persistent. Many wanted to take a stage and tell a story. Others saw storytelling as a potential asset in their careers as attorneys, professors, salespeople, or therapists. Still others thought storytelling might help them to make friends and improve their relationships. Buckling under the weight of their pressure, I announced that I would teach one storytelling workshop.
One and done.
Ten people spent six evenings with me in a conference room at the local library. I taught them everything I knew about storytelling. I told stories and explained my process for crafting them. I listened to their stories and offered feedback.
As with storytelling itself, I quickly realized how much I enjoyed teaching the craft. Deconstructing the elements of a good story. Building a curriculum around what I knew and was still learning. Listening to stories and helping to find ways to shape them better. Turning my students into the kinds of people who can light up a room with a great story.
My “one and done” workshop has grown into something I do regularly and with zeal today. I travel the world teaching the art and craft of storytelling.
The people I teach are varied and diverse. I teach performers and would-be performers who want to become better storytellers. Some have never taken the stage before, and others are grizzled veterans looking to improve their skills. Many of these former students have gone on to take the stage at The Moth, Speak Up, and other storytelling shows. In August of 2016, one of my students beat me in a Moth GrandSLAM competition for the first time. I finished second, and she finished first. Perhaps I taught her a little too well.
I teach attorneys, salespeople, and business leaders who want to improve their presentation skills, sales pitches, and branding.
I teach novelists, essayists, screenwriters, television writers, poets, archivists, and other creative sorts who want to refine their understanding of story.
I teach professors, schoolteachers, ministers, priests, and rabbis who want to improve their lectures and sermons and hold the attention of their audiences.
I teach storytelling to people who want to improve their dating skills. I teach people who want to be more interesting at the dinner table. I teach grandfathers who want their grandchildren to finally listen to them. I teach students who want to tell better stories on their college applications. I teach job applicants who are looking to improve their interview skills. I teach people who want to learn more about themselves.
People have quit therapy and opted to participate in my storytelling workshops instead. While I don’t endorse this decision, it’s apparently working for them. Wives send their befuddled husbands to my workshops, hoping that storytelling will spark something inside them. Later they tell me how their husbands have opened up like never before. One woman told me that her husband has opened up “a little too much.”
People take my workshops again and again to discover more about themselves and find ways to connect with other people through СКАЧАТЬ