EXERCISE: Ask your friends for stories!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting June 1, 2015

Over here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-dicks/11-ways-to-guarantee-a-su_b_7302144.html

Matthew Dicks talks about ways to do a good author talk. Along the way, he comments:

"While I have admittedly led a less-than-conventional life, I believe that everyone has stories waiting to be told. When I prepare to compete in a Moth storytelling competition, the first thing I do is ask ten of my closest friends for stories that might fit the assigned topic, because I forget many of my story-worthy moments and discard others as not interesting enough."

Step one: Ask 10 people for stories that might fit the assigned topic...

All right. Let's say the topic is trust. If you want to be specific, trusting your friends. Now, do you have a story about trust? Sometime in your life that shows trust, exemplifies what it means, perhaps teaches us a little bit about it?

Go ahead, tell us that little bit of a story.

Step two: The exercise then, of course, is to take one or more of these little stories and make them into a grand story. Build up the characters, set the scene, make the conflict and the suspense a little more pointed and poignant, and make that climax explode.

So, who is going to provide the little stories about trust? Don't worry, they don't have to be great stories, just little ones from your life. Or even from Reader's Digest?

And then we can take the second step...

Write!