Save the date! Our next storytelling event "On the Road" will be September 29, 2022 at 7pm at the Washington Cracker Building. Stay tuned for the announcement of the storytellers!
As always, the event is free, but donations will be gladly accepted to help us cover costs. Wine and beer will be served by Overbluff Cellars.
We look forward to seeing you!
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR SHARING A STORY:
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Rehearse your story. Create a video that you can send friends for feedback, then spend some time crafting and rehearsing your story some more for your final submission.
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Consider how your video is framed. Choose a background that does not distract. Place your face in the top half of the frame, not the center. Get in close so we can hear you.
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Just start your story. Begin at the beginning, rather than giving preliminary information about yourself, or giving a thesis statement such as “this is a story about...” or “this is a funny story.” Just start!
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It is often best to avoid using the theme title in your story. It punctures the magic, it breaks the fourth wall, and it reminds us we are being told a story. Let us live in the story.
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Be specific rather than general. Be concrete, not abstract. Not “I had two jobs” but “I was working as a food-room clerk at Jenny Craig weight-loss center and as a lubrication specialist at Jiffy Lube.”
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Have a specific audience in mind. Pretend you are telling your online story to one person; it is more intimate in this form.
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Consider storytelling structure. Many great stories are about a change over time (e.g. “I once was that, but now I’m this.”) Find the most important small moment in that change (small moments have more concrete detail than big moments), make sure that every part of the story helps us understand that moment, and when we get to that climactic moment, take us there fully, in the present tense.
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Find the two or three most important scenes or moments in your story, and only give us information that will help highlight them. Zoom in tight on those moments, and place us inside your head. Think like a great movie director. Find the details that push the mood forward, then cut away everything else. Cut away the resume, the biography, the unnecessary backstory, how you traveled from one place to another — anything that doesn’t reveal character traits, moods, theme or motivation. Your raw story is a block of marble. It’s what you cut away that makes it into a work of art.