Remove the snooze from your stories

Mes amis

How has your week been?

I hope you’ve completed last week’s homework, you’re going to need it for this week.

We’re going to be learning how to craft a gripping beginning and a standing ovation finish to your story.

Let’s get into it.

Sticky Beginnings

Remarkable stories start with movement.

Think about the last movie you watched.

If was based in a city, then the opening scene was probably a pan across the buildings.

Or it may have been a montage of clips; people doing everyday things, kids playing or cars going through traffic.

All stories start with movement because movement develops momentum.

If your story is static, you won't hook your audience.

I should know the plot of your story to the audience within the first 3-5min of it being told.

Anything beyond that and you’ve lost me.

I’ll be too focused on sticking to the thread of it and I’ll miss your point.

You can’t grab the attention of a confused audience.

This is how you end up with a bad story cough Black Adam cough.

The beginning of the story should let the audience know (or give them a hint of) the transformation the main character is going to experience.

If there’s no transformation, then you don’t have a story, you have an anecdote.

That is one of the major reasons why a lot of people suck at storytelling.

They’re not telling stories.

They’re retelling events that happened, listing them off and regurgitating off from memory.

That’s not engaging.

A story shows a change of belief in the character. For example, Jurassic Park isn’t a story about dinosaurs.

It’s about an archaeologist who hates kids but later comes to the realisation that they’re better than he thought.

The dinosaurs, guns, and tense moments are thrown in for the action.

Spider-Man isn’t a story about a guy clinging to walls and fighting supervillains.

It’s about an awkward teenage boy becoming a man and stepping into his responsibilities.

Wall-crawling, web-shooting and the psychopath riding a hovercraft in a goblin mask are there to entertain.

If you don’t have a transformation for the main character, you don’t have a story.

Your Standing Ovation

So how do we wrap up a story?

We’ve talked about how to collect them, we know the difference between a good and a bad story. The difference between an anecdote and a story.

You know a lot and you’ll be impressing everybody with your skills but… How do you end and receive that standing ovation?

The end must have a change in belief come to pass.

The main character must go on with their lives with this new belief, transformation or change in circumstance.

If there’s no change, there’s no story.

Remember: the end of a story should always be the opposite of its beginning.

Life never goes back to being the same.

The archaeologist in Jurassic Park doesn’t go back to hating kids.

Peter Parker doesn’t regress into an awkward teen.

The events of the story changed them into becoming who they are now.

And it’s our journey with them that has us fall in love and deeply cherish our favourite characters.

But that’s the topic for next week.

A bientot 👋🏿

Music of the week

You ever love a song, save it, say to yourself you'll one day listen to the album and never do?

Yeah me too When I Get There is my pick-me-up song and I wish I had listened to this album sooner.

Enjoy!

Podcast of the week

Felix and Pandeni share their experiences living in several countries and the challenges they faced integrating into London.

Wall of Inspiration