Category: Storytelling
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Storytelling tip 6: You only get a few hooks, so use them wisely
By hooks, I mean lines that stand out (and pull the listener in) because they are clever, or lyrical, or profound. Writerly lines. They may introduce a powerful metaphor or capture a meme. The tension is that if you use too many hooks, you will definitely sound too writerly—very few people speak in hooks. So…
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Storytelling tip 5: Think about leaving pathos in the wings awhile
Personal storytelling is, by its very nature, a manipulative art. You want your audience to care deeply about what happened to you, and to experience something of what you experienced. And your audience wants to care. Your listeners are there for the vicarious experience your story offers—whether it is hilarity, wonder, emotional empathy, a combination…
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Storytelling tip #1: Start with a script–but not a sacred text
Tip #1 from my ten tips for storytellers: Start with a script–but not a sacred text
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The Fox Demon
In the summer of 1986, eighteen months after my HIV diagnosis, my friend Susan said she wanted to drive to Seattle. “I don’t have anyone to go with,” she said, “but if I have to, I’ll go alone.” That was all the invitation I needed. Little did I know that during the trip, a Japanese…
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Jason and the Hells Angels
We my step- foster sister showed up claiming the Hells Angels had killed on of her dogs and were coming back for the other, we sat around the table and discussed options. One possibility was for someone to go home with Diane and stay up all night to keep watch—and to fight off the Hells…
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A Great Disturbance in the Force
NOTE: I first performed this piece on Feb. 6, 2013 at Fireside Storytelling in San Francisco. The theme was “Bad Medicine.” One morning many years ago, I was standing over the sink, getting water for my coffee, and I was overcome by the sudden bout of sobbing—that shoulders-heaving, unable-to-fill-my-lungs, abdominal-muscles-cramping, random-guttural-sounds-escaping-from-my-throat kind of sobbing. As…
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Lolita the Chimp
When I was in junior high, my mother and father split and my mother started seeing her graduate adviser a man named Mike. By senior high, I was living on Mike’s farm. About a year before I arrived, Mike went down to Florida and came back with a tiger. Next trip, he came back with…
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Passing on Curves
When I am in the woods for more than a day or two, everything slows down. I stop talking, I enter a trancelike state. My friends once made the mistake of letting me drive home like that. I was on a narrow, winding highway, a cliff face on one side and a steep drop on…