writing & storytelling
Let go of self-delusion, which is maybe the hardest thing of all to let go of. Shape the thing you’re making into a pure expression of the thing you’re making: “Cut away, strip away the unnecessary, and strip away what people expect.”
Zach Baron • Martin Scorsese: “I Have to Find Out Who the Hell I Am”
Those are the moments when I know that it’s time to tell myself a story so I can understand my behavior and solve the complex problem of my personal history. The solutions often make for great stories and provide us with opportunities to more fully understand ourselves. To make meaning out of who we are from the stories we have lived.
Dan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
FEH, my newest memoir (more details about that soon), began with my wanting to write about the rampant judgementalism and sneering contempt I was seeing all around me. It takes on God, Jesus, Paul Rudd, Nextdoor, social media, Schopenhauer, Wolf Blitzer and Yuval Noah Harari. And even with all those sacred cows, it felt bland... until I decided to ... See more
Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers
If you’re not sure about the level of stakes in your story, simply ask yourself: • Would the audience want to hear my next sentence? • If I stopped speaking right now, would anyone care? • Am I more compelling than video games and pizza and sex at this moment?
Dan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
This is the trick to telling a big story: it cannot be about anything big. Instead we must find the small, relatable, comprehensible moments in our larger stories. We must find the piece of the story that people can connect to, relate to, and understand.
Dan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
Some prompts for thinking and writing.
You win $100,000,000 in the lottery. How do you allocate it?
Write out an average day in the life of you in 10 years. What makes it beautiful?
If you had to flee America and start a new life, where would you go and why?
You go back in time to when your great grandparents were your age. How would you explain the fu
So you’ve got yourself a five-second moment — a moment of transformation or revelation or realization. This is good. You’re already a better storyteller than most people in the world. Truly. Tell a story about a real moment of meaning from your life — a five-second moment — and people will want to hear more. More good news. You’ve also found the en
... See moreDan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
Oftentimes I will load a portion of a story with superfluous information simply to hide the one important bit of information that I need the audience to know but not yet recognize as important. I clutter the landscape so that the audience can’t tell what is important and what is not.
Dan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
The best stories are a little messy at the end. They offer small steps, marginal progress, questionable results. The best stories give rise to unanswered questions.