Did you know that your life is full of stories worth sharing? How can you discover, craft, and share those stories with others?
In the book Storyworthy, oral storytelling champion Matthew Dicks draws on his experience telling stories on stages around the world. He offers insights on how to shape ordinary moments into stories that spark profound human connections—plus tips for memorizing, practicing, and sharing your story on stage.
Continue reading for an overview of Dicks’s insightful book.
Overview of Storyworthy
Storyworthy is oral storytelling champion Matthew Dicks’s master class on how to discover, craft, and share great personal stories. Drawing on his experience telling stories on stages around the world and teaching storytelling to businesspeople, academics, performers, and people who just want to make a good impression on first dates, Dicks offers insights into how to shape ordinary moments into stories that spark profound human connections. (Shortform note: Dicks’s advice on storytelling is tailored for on-stage storytelling performances. But as we’ll discuss, his advice is valuable for all kinds of personal storytelling, from writing memoirs to relating to your professional clients.)
Dicks is a novelist, blogger, consultant, and former fifth-grade teacher. He’s a 59-time winner of the StorySLAM open mic competition run by The Moth, a nonprofit New York-based storytelling group.
This guide is divided into four parts:
- Part 1: Why Storytelling Matters explains why Dicks thinks everyone should learn how to tell stories and describes some of the benefits of storytelling.
- Part 2: Discover Your Best Stories outlines Dicks’s advice on how to decide which moments in your life you should tell stories about.
- Part 3: Put Your Story Together explains how to combine all the elements of a good story, starting with the key moment you identified using the strategies in Part 2.
- Part 4: Share Your Story covers Dicks’s tips for memorizing, practicing, and sharing your story on stage.
Throughout, we’ll supplement Dicks’s advice with tips from experts on writing, psychology, public speaking, and more.
Part 1: Why Storytelling Matters
When Dicks talks about stories, he’s referring to people’s firsthand accounts about important events in their lives. According to Dicks, these are more powerful than fictional stories because they create genuine connections between the storyteller and the audience. Personal stories require vulnerability, honesty, and authenticity from the storyteller, which allows the audience to feel that they know the person better by the end of the story.
Dicks emphasizes that everyone has the capacity to tell stories about their lives—and more importantly, everyone should share their stories for the following three reasons:
1) Storytelling can bolster your career: Most professions require you to present ideas, persuade others, or build relationships. Developing storytelling skills helps you communicate better so you can achieve these ends and makes your ideas more memorable and impactful.
2) Storytelling gives you greater insight into your experiences: Stories are a chance to process and understand your life more deeply. Identifying meaningful moments and how they’ve shaped you enhances your self-awareness and sense of personal growth.
3) Storytelling facilitates intimacy: When you share your stories with friends and partners, they can see who you truly are—and they’re likely to open up to you in return. Such opportunities for mutual vulnerability can fortify all your relationships.
Part 2: Discover Your Best Stories
Dicks suggests that no matter what kind of life you lead, it’s likely full of stories that are worth sharing. In this section, we’ll explain what makes a moment “storyworthy” and explore Dicks’s strategies for identifying these moments.
What Makes a Moment “Storyworthy?”
Dicks says that your “storyworthy” moments are emotionally significant events in your life—whether they’re extraordinary or mundane—that lead to transformation and discovery. Let’s break this down into three key requirements:
The first requirement is that the moment must be yours. Even if another person’s story seems more interesting, the audience wants to know about your life because personal stories feel more intimate. However, Dicks notes that it’s possible to tell your own side of another person’s story, as long as the story is still focused on you. For example, you could tell a story about how someone you know overcame a major challenge like addiction, but focus on how their journey affected you—what you learned, how it changed your perspective, or how it impacted your relationship with them.
Second, says Dicks, you must be able to talk about the moment in your own authentic style. If you have to use overly theatrical gestures, flowery language, or unnatural dialogue to get your point across, you’ll come across as a performer—not someone the audience can form a heartfelt connection with. Dicks says the way you tell the story should reflect who you are, featuring your natural voice, innate sense of humor, and genuine emotions.
Third, a storyworthy moment must have some element of transformation or discovery. Storyworthy moments are those that changed you by offering you a life lesson or a new perspective. Dicks argues that this transformation is what resonates most with an audience, as it gives them something to contemplate with respect to their own lives. When stories don’t feature some kind of transformation, they’re not really stories—they’re anecdotes. Anecdotes can be amusing, but they’re forgettable and unlikely to forge deep connections.
How to Find the Core of Your Story
Dicks explains that it’s common to assume your audience wants to hear about the most dramatic moments of your life. However, your most storyworthy moments tend to appear relatively insignificant. These are moments where you gain some fleeting insight that creates a meaningful internal change. For example, while stuck in traffic, you might realize that your frustration isn’t really about the delay but about how you’ve been rushing through life without taking time to breathe. Audiences can relate to these minor moments more easily than grand, dramatic events because they mirror the subtle but profound transformations we all go through in everyday life.
Let’s explore two of Dicks’s strategies for identifying your most storyworthy moments.
Strategy #1: Daily Reflection
According to Dicks, you should take a few minutes to write notes about your most impactful experience of the day, every day. Create a list or spreadsheet where you can keep these notes. Your notes don’t have to be long or detailed; just write enough to capture the essence of the moment and why it stood out to you. This strategy allows you to see the meaning and beauty in everyday moments you might have previously overlooked. It also helps you see yourself as meaningful and gives you a sense of your place in the grand scheme of things. All of this serves as excellent storytelling fodder.
In addition, Dicks explains that this strategy can help you identify patterns in your life that you can turn into stories. For example, if you look back over your notes and see that you’ve frequently written about small acts of kindness from strangers, you might realize how these moments have shaped your worldview. In this way, you can turn a singular moment into a story that reveals something about the meaning of life.
Strategy #2: Write by Stream of Consciousness
Dicks recommends that you set aside a few minutes each day to write by stream of consciousness. This means that you capture all your thoughts, feelings, and ideas as they occur, even if they don’t make sense or aren’t phrased perfectly. He emphasizes that you shouldn’t judge your thoughts, edit your writing, or get stuck explaining one idea in detail. The goal is to let your thoughts flow freely, allowing unexpected connections and insights to surface. By avoiding self-censorship, you give yourself the freedom to explore your mind’s raw material and tap into deeper layers of creativity.
Dicks explains that this unfiltered writing process can help you uncover memories or experiences you may have forgotten or overlooked. When you’ve finished writing, you can review what you’ve written and extract any compelling anecdotes, memories, and thoughts that could be developed into a story.
Part 3: Put Your Story Together
The strategies from the previous section helped you identify the core of your story—a brief moment of meaningful transformation. Now, you must combine that core with other elements that make a story great. In this section, we’ll cover Dicks’s advice for building your story step-by-step.
Start at the End to Find the Beginning
Dicks explains that the brief moment of transformation you identified earlier should take place toward the end of your story. This ensures that the story builds toward a satisfying conclusion, giving the audience a clear sense of purpose and emotional payoff. It also allows you to guide the audience through your journey of transformation—but where does that journey begin?
According to Dicks, the beginning of your story should be the exact opposite of the ending. For example, if your story ends with a personal triumph, then it should begin by depicting self-doubt, confusion, or a challenge you’re struggling to overcome.
Additionally, Dicks recommends choosing a relevant moment that’s relatively near in time to the ending. If you start too far in the distant past, the story may feel unfocused or drawn out, and the audience may struggle to pay attention or make connections between the various details you include. To help your audience focus, keep your story brief and include only the most interesting and relevant details.
Incorporate Physical Details
Once you know where to begin, start thinking about the physical details you can incorporate throughout the story to make it come alive in your audience’s mind. According to Dicks, each moment in your narrative must be grounded in a clear, specific location. This allows listeners to visualize the action as it unfolds—they can picture it as well as they could if they were watching a movie. Without physical details, your story might come across like a lecture or essay, which most people tend to tune out.
This rule applies even if you need to give the audience some historical context or explain something technical. Say you want to discuss your family history—instead of giving a list of facts about your ancestors, fold those details into anecdotes or flashbacks. For example, you could discuss the time you drank coffee with your grandmother in her living room while she shared old family stories and secrets.
Create an Emotional Investment
Dicks emphasizes that stories are most impactful when they tug on an audience’s heartstrings in some way. He says you can accomplish this in three ways: by zeroing in on emotional details, by building suspense, and by leveraging surprise. Let’s explore each of these strategies in more detail.
How to Zero in on Emotional Details
Dicks recognizes that you might want to tell a story about the worst or most dramatic event in your life, like the time you escaped prison or survived a plane crash. However, these events are too extraordinary for most audiences to relate to. They may feel shocked, but they won’t feel connected to you. To overcome this problem, Dicks recommends zeroing in on your emotional experience during that event. Emotions are universal—not everyone has escaped prison, but everyone knows what it’s like to feel trapped and then, suddenly, free. By focusing on your emotional experience, you make it possible for the audience to empathize with you no matter how much your lives may differ.
How to Build Suspense
Dicks explains that building suspense—a sense of nervous anticipation—helps you maintain the audience’s interest in your story. Here are two techniques you can use to build suspense:
1) Foreshadowing: Foreshadowing, which Dicks calls “breadcrumbing,” involves subtly hinting at developments that will unfold later in the story. For example, if your story is about how you faced your fear of heights, you might make an offhand comment early on about your hesitation to go on a ferris wheel. By dropping small, seemingly insignificant clues early on, you weave a thread of tension throughout the narrative and make the audience curious about what’s to come.
2) Slow pacing: When you’re approaching a pivotal moment in your story, intentionally slow the narrative’s pace by incorporating additional, seemingly trivial details. For example, if your story is building up to your discovery of a hidden letter that reveals a family secret, you might describe in detail your painstaking journey through a cluttered attic, focusing on your meticulous examination of old trunks and dusty boxes. Dicks says this slow, deliberate buildup intensifies the suspense, making the eventual reveal more dramatic and impactful.
How to Leverage Surprise
Dicks explains that surprise is a powerful emotion that you can leverage to captivate your audience. To create a sense of surprise, Dicks recommends emphasizing contrast: Include details, actions, and events that make it seem as if the story’s going in a predictable direction. Then, follow with an unexpected turn that disrupts the audience’s expectations and redefines the narrative.
Another technique Dicks offers for surprising your audience involves hiding crucial information within less significant details. For example, say your story is about how you pulled off a heist with the help of a local coffee shop owner. You might include a scene where you visit the coffee shop and have a mundane conversation with the owner, which the audience would view as mere background detail. They won’t see it coming when you reveal the identity of your accomplice later.
Keep the Action Moving Forward
Dicks emphasizes that every story needs momentum—otherwise, it’ll become stagnant, and the audience will lose interest. You can create momentum in two ways: by introducing conflict and by introducing consequences. For example, in a story about a breakup, your conflict might be the emotional turmoil and self-doubt that arise from the relationship’s end. A consequence could be your decision to move to a new city, which introduces new challenges and opportunities. According to Dicks, these forces help you clarify how the various events in your story are linked. They also signify change, indicating that the story is shifting direction or that a new development has emerged as a result of previous events.
However, as your story progresses, it’s vital that it remains focused. Dicks explains that a single story can’t effectively convey multiple meanings; it must focus on one central theme to be compelling. To find the meaning of your story, Dicks recommends telling your story aloud without worrying about structure or polish. Doing so allows you to re-experience the moment and often reveals why it has stayed with you. Once you identify your story’s focal point, make sure that each anecdote you include builds on that theme; cut out anything that seems extraneous.
Lie Strategically
According to Dicks, it’s OK to bend the truth slightly to make your story more compelling. Memory is imperfect anyway—you’re unlikely to remember things exactly as they happened. However, he emphasizes that any embellishments should enhance the audience’s experience, not mislead them. For example, if you’re telling a story about narrowly escaping a wild animal, it’s fine to enhance the suspense by describing the animal as growling menacingly even if it was silent. This embellishment adds to the story’s dramatic effect without altering the core truth. However, it’s not OK to falsely claim that the animal chased you for miles if it actually remained at a distance—exaggerating the danger you were in undermines the authenticity of your story.
Incorporate Humor
Dicks recommends weaving occasional humor into your story. It shouldn’t dominate the narrative—you’re a storyteller, not a comedian. But you can use humor to relieve tension or highlight the absurdity of a situation when that’s called for. To use humor effectively, try juxtaposing incongruous elements—things that don’t usually go together but create amusement when combined unexpectedly. For example, you might describe how you prepared meticulously for an important business presentation. But as you gave the presentation, you realized that your preteen upgraded your boring slides with a glittery unicorn PowerPoint template.
Part 4: Share Your Story
At this point, you’ve gathered all the elements of a good story, from a solid beginning to funny interludes. Now, Dicks says, it’s time to share your story with others. In this section, we’ll discuss Dicks’s tips for delivering your story effectively.
Step 1: Control Your Nerves
Dicks explains that it’s OK to feel nervous when you share your story. It’s also OK if the audience can tell that you’re nervous—they might find this endearing, as it shows authenticity and vulnerability. However, if you get too nervous you’ll find it difficult to perform.
When it comes to controlling your nerves, Dicks offers the following tips:
Tip #1: Use eye contact strategically. Meet the eyes of a few audience members scattered throughout the crowd. It’s too hard to connect with every individual in the audience, but if you look in the general direction of the people you single out, everyone near them will feel acknowledged.
Tip #2: Don’t memorize your story word for word. This will lead to a stilted performance that comes across as inauthentic. Instead, memorize your first and final lines and the most important events that take place in the middle of your story.
Tip #3: Don’t take yourself too seriously. You want to seem confident, but you don’t want to seem arrogant. If you’re telling a story about a major victory in your life, it’s easy to come across like a braggart—and that would prevent your audience from empathizing with you and enjoying your story. To minimize this risk, undermine yourself by highlighting your flaws or imperfections.
Step 2: Immerse Your Audience
Dicks explains that effective storytelling has the power to envelop an audience, making them feel as though they are living through the events of the story alongside the characters. This immersion creates a more emotionally powerful experience for the audience, but it can be hard to attain and easy to break.
To keep your audience engrossed in the world of your story, follow these tips:
Tip #1: Show up, but don’t show off. Dicks recommends that you wear nondescript clothing and advises against using physical objects like props to illustrate events. Flashy clothes and props can distract your audience from the story you’re telling.
Tip #2: Immerse your audience in the story, and don’t draw their attention to the fact it’s a story. For example, Dicks suggests that you avoid addressing the audience directly, and don’t start by saying something like, “This tale is about the worst day of my life.”
Tip #3: Use the present tense. According to Dicks, this helps the audience feel as if the story is unfolding in real time, which helps them more deeply experience the story as if they were actually involved in it.
Step 3: Choose Your Words Wisely
Recall that the reason for sharing your story, according to Dicks, is to make a heartfelt connection with your audience. To achieve this, it’s essential to choose your words wisely. Here are some tips to keep in mind:
Tip #1: Avoid offensive words. This includes graphic descriptions of sex or bodily functions, which can repel and alienate your audience. It also includes profanity. Dicks says you should save curse words for when they’re absolutely necessary to get your point across, and try to come up with creative workarounds whenever possible.
Tip #2: Be mindful of accents. If you imitate someone’s accent, it might seem like you’re making fun of them based on cultural or racial stereotypes—so as a rule, it’s best to avoid using accents. However, Dicks says it’s sometimes OK to mimic the language of your own culture; if your family members or neighbors have an accent that’s part of your lived experience, you can authentically incorporate it into your storytelling.
Tip #3: Protect others’ privacy. Dicks explains that using other people’s real names in your story can lead to unintended consequences, especially if the content of your story is sensitive or potentially damaging. Using real names might also affect your relationships with these people, as they may feel uncomfortable with the publicity or misrepresented by your portrayal. To avoid these issues, consider using pseudonyms or general descriptions instead of real names.
Exercise: Identify Your “Storyworthy” Moment
Dicks argues that everyone has “storyworthy” moments in their life—brief instances of transformation that can form the core of a compelling personal narrative. In this exercise, you’ll practice identifying and developing one of your own storyworthy moments.
- Think about a time in your life when you experienced a subtle but meaningful internal change. This might be a moment of realization, a shift in perspective, or a small decision that led to bigger changes. Briefly describe this moment:
- How did this moment transform you? What did you learn or how did your perspective change?
- Following Dicks’s advice, think about where your story should begin. What was happening just before your moment of transformation that contrasts sharply with the ending? Describe this starting point.
- Now, consider how you might incorporate physical details to ground your story. What specific location, sensory details, or tangible elements could you include to make your story more vivid?
- Finally, reflect on how you might use one of Dicks’s techniques for creating an emotional investment in your story. Could you use foreshadowing, slow the pace at a crucial moment, or incorporate an element of surprise? Describe how you might apply one of these techniques.
