GEORGE DAWES GREEN, MOTH FOUNDER: Every good story, I feel certain, hinges on a decision. Sometimes there'll be lots of decisions in the course of a narrative: backtracks, double-downs, veerings off, choices made by other characters, your replies to those choices. But always, at the story's core, will be one key decision.
In the most powerful stories, your decision will be a tough one.
(Some of your audience will concur with your choice, some will be appalled!) Good storytellers soon learn that what happened is of less importance: Your audience really wants to know what you decided to do about what happened.
I've often been told stories of harrowing auto accidents.
I usually find these tales kind of dull.
But once, a man told me of a long icy skid that took him over a bridge and into a small river.
The car was completely submerged, but the windows were shut and he had plenty of air—and so he had to make a choice.
Should he lower the window, let the river come rushing into the car so he could try to escape, or just wait in that air-bubble for help? The story instantly took power.
The decision.#3533•
Chapter 4
In his story "Have You Met Him Yet?," former White House staffer David Litt has the simple task of handing over headphones…to President Barack Obama.
I reach into my pocket and pull out what looks like a hairball made out of wires. I don't know what's happened. I guess somewhere in that waiting room, I have just worried this thing into a hopeless tangle. And now I don't know what to do, so I just hand the entire thing to the president of the United States.
Now, if you work in the White House, you will hear the phrase "There is no commodity on earth more valuable than a president's time," which I always thought was a cliché.
Until…I watched Barack Obama…untangle headphones…for thirty seconds…while looking directly at me.#3576•
I was the speechwriter for the CEO of a very large company for several years. The thing about being a speechwriter is that it isn't just about being able to write well, it's kind of like being a professional best friend. You kind of have to be able to finish their sentences, be able to channel their voices.
So you spend a lot of time together, you travel a lot together, you learn how to speak in their voice.
Also, if you happen to be able to afford a speechwriter, you're probably pretty busy.
We might go to four or five countries in one week.
We'd get on the airplane, I'd be like, "Where are we going? We're going to Saudi Arabia?" So I pull out all the materials and teach him how to say hello in Arabic.
So he's placing an enormous amount of trust in me to be able to pronounce things correctly and tell him GDPs and things like this.
You spend several years building up this kind of trust.
I've seen people fail not for lack of talent, but for lack of ability to build a relationship.#3573•
I drop him off. I say, "I'm going to pick you up at six o'clock tomorrow morning, we're going to rehearse, and you're going to be great."
I go home, finish the script, send it off to the producers. I go to sleep, set six alarms, just in case, for five o'clock in the morning, and I wake up the next morning without the alarm, which is strange, because I never wake up without the alarm. There's sunlight streaming through the windows. I'm thinking, "That is so weird.
I'm in California, I'm not in Alaska.
Why is there sunlight?" And then, it's that movie moment where the audience would be screaming, "No!" And in my head, I'm screaming, "No!" I'm in slow motion leaping out of my bed, probably tucking and rolling and grabbing my cellphone, and it's 7:30.
And he goes on stage at eight o'clock in the morning.#3572•
There's also probably twenty-two text messages, four voicemails, some of which are from him, and he's seriously the nicest man on earth, which is what makes this story so much worse. Because he's like a father who's not angry, he's disappointed in you. He's like, "Hi, Karen. It's 6:04 or 6:12. I assume maybe your car broke? I don't know.
I'm just going to drive myself." So I have six of these voicemails.
So I call [the director of communications] and she says, "It's okay.
I'm just so glad you're alive, because John had to stop rehearsal this morning and tell everyone, 'I'm very, very sorry that I'm so off today and so flustered, because I think that one of my communications people died.
I don't know where she is.' "#3569•
This was an audience of everyone who mattered to my career, all the executives in the company, all of the communications department, everybody's there. So picture your worst personal walk of shame. This is like a professional walk of shame. Everybody knows, because first of all, they thought I was dead. And now they know I'm alive and that I just slept in like I'm seventeen.#3577•
An anecdote is a short, amusing account of a real incident or person. A story is beyond a string of occurrences; it deals with evolution. If you don't want or need anything, it's not a story. A good story builds. By the end, things have intrinsically changed. Something about it has a lasting effect. You can't go back.
You can't unsee it.
You can't un-be it.
You are a different person because of the events that unfolded.#3570•
Say you get the wrong bag at the airport and finding the owner to return it to is an ordeal. Or you sit next to someone on a bus who, it turns out, was your deceased father's best childhood friend. There is a beginning, middle, and end, but what's the larger point? Action, characters, setting—all of the boxes are checked except for what it all means. The why of why you are telling it.#3575•
All Moth stories document a storyteller's transformation. The change can be:
Physical (out of shape → now running marathons)
Situational (terrible marriage → divorced and fancy free)
Emotional (dreading each day → now happy to wake up)
Behavioral (lover of bacon → vegan)
Attitudinal (hated dogs → now you have three)#3571•