Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks

Foreword by Dan Kennedy

Preface: A Coward Tells a Story

Part I. Finding Your Story

CHAPTER 1. My Promise to You

CHAPTER 2. What Is a Story? (and What Is the Dinner Test?)

CHAPTER 3. Homework for Life

STORY BREAK: Naked in Brazil

CHAPTER 4. Dreaming at the End of Your Pen

       STORY BREAK: Storytelling Instruction Can Apparently Be Romantic

       CHAPTER 5. First Last Best Worst: Great for Long Car Rides, First Dates, and Finding Stories

       Part II. Crafting Your Story

       CHAPTER 6. “Charity Thief”

       CHAPTER 7. Every Story Takes Only Five Seconds to Tell (and Jurassic Park Wasn’t a Movie about Dinosaurs)

       STORY BREAK: This Book Is Going to Make Erin Barker Very Angry

       CHAPTER 8. Finding Your Beginning (I’m Also About to Forever Ruin Most Movies and Many Books for You)

       STORY BREAK: Thirteen Rules for an Effective (and Perhaps Even Inspiring) Commencement Address

       CHAPTER 9. Stakes: Five Ways to Keep Your Story Compelling (and Why There Are Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park)

       STORY BREAK: Zombie Brother

       CHAPTER 10. The Five Permissible Lies of True Storytelling

       STORY BREAK: Doubt Is the Enemy of Every Storyteller

       CHAPTER 11. Cinema of the Mind (Also Known as “Where the Hell Are You?”)

       CHAPTER 12. The Principle of But and Therefore

       STORY BREAK: Storytelling Makes You Just Like Family

       CHAPTER 13. “This Is Going to Suck”

       CHAPTER 14. The Secret to the Big Story: Make It Little

       STORY BREAK: Brevity Is the Soul of Wit

       CHAPTER 15. There Is Only One Way to Make Someone Cry

       STORY BREAK: The Return of Mathieu

       CHAPTER 16. Milk Cans and Baseballs, Babies and Blenders: Simple, Effective Ways to Be Funny in Storytelling (Even If You’re Not Funny at All)

       CHAPTER 17. Finding the Frayed Ending of Your Story (or, What the Hell Did That Mean?)

       STORY BREAK: Reconnecting with My Mean Old Elementary School Principal

       Part III. Telling Your Story

       CHAPTER 18. The Present Tense Is King (but the Queen Can Play a Role Too)

       STORY BREAK: A Storyteller and a Magician

       CHAPTER 19. The Two Ways of Telling a Hero Story (or, How to Avoid Sounding Like a Douchebag)

       STORY BREAK: “Fine” Is Apparently Not a Good Way to Describe My Sex Life

       CHAPTER 20. Storytelling Is Time Travel (If You Don’t Muck It Up)

       STORY BREAK: I Berate Storytellers at the Worst Moments

       CHAPTER 21. Words to Say, Words to Avoid

       STORY BREAK: The Weather Sucks. So Don’t Talk about It

       CHAPTER 22. Time to Perform (Onstage, in the Boardroom, on a Date, or at the Thanksgiving Table)

       STORY BREAK: The Solitude of the Storyteller

       CHAPTER 23. Why Did You Read This Book? To Become a Superhero!

       Acknowledgments

       Index

       About the Author

       Foreword

      In early 2000, I got onstage, I told a story at this thing called The Moth, and something in my heart and head felt better. I remember talking about my biggest screwups, about some childhood dreams that hadn’t come to pass, and about how my attempts to pursue them at half-steam were clumsy and ill-fated. The story I told that night, about going to Austin to become a singer-songwriter and discovering the hard way that I wasn’t prepared or particularly good at songwriting,