I believe the farther you get your audience to travel emotionally the more likely you are to get the story to resonate with them.

What do I mean by emotional travel? 

Emotional

In simple terms, I mean getting them to feel any of the core emotions. Joy. Fear. Anger. Sadness.

Travel

This is better visually explained. I’d do this with string, but I’m not there with you so I’ll do this with 3 digital lines. 

Which line is the shortest?

If you straighten Line 2 and Line 3 they will both be longer than Line 1 when straightened. If you were to run your finger along the three lines you would travel the shortest distance on line 1. You would travel more on lines 2 and 3 than you would on line 1.

The three lines start at the same point and may end at the same point, but when you straighten them you see that the lines with more ups and downs means more length than a string without ups or downs.

Try it yourself by cutting three pieces of...

Is your teen stuck creatively or looking for ideas for their next story?

Invite them to stop and refill their creativity well. One way to do that is to memorize something. Encourage them to 1) memorize a poem (maybe something from Shel Silverstein) 2) memorize the dialog from a scene in a movie (e.g. The Princess Bride) 3) memorize a new dance move (e.g. Napoleon Dynamite) 4) memorize a joke. Those are a few simple ideas to help them replenish their creativity well and get unstuck.

Me: For the last few months I’ve been reading a book. 

Critic: Months to read a book!? What is it, Les Miserables? 

Me: No. 

Critic: Then what’s taking so long?

Well, it’s a book about storytelling and there are so many actionable tools in the book that I had to try them all out. And I’m blown away. It has changed the way I tell stories and it has changed the way I identify stories in my own life. It gives you tools and shows you how to use them and I’m recommending it even before I’ve finished it. 

The book is Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks (not an affiliate link).

Let me tell you one way the book has changed me. For the past few years I’ve felt like my memories are like sand, I’m trying to catch them with a fishing net. I journal, but I do so without direction. I’ll write about whatever. What happened or where I am or the weather or sometimes insights I’ve had (those are my favorites, but there...

I’m 16 years old, running on the dirt road of an island in the Marshall Islands with a pack of teenage boys. It’s hot and humid. Our soccer team has been running non-stop for back-to-back practices for weeks. One of my teammates running with me verbalizes what I’ve been thinking “Why are we running so much?! We should be doing real practice!” It’s getting so bad that some teammates are starting to come up with excuses for why they have to miss practice. If this goes on for too much longer there won’t be a team. 

But then, the season starts and… we start winning. And we just keep winning. We figuratively (and probably literally too) run circles around the other teams on the island. Our coach’s decision to focus 70% on fitness and 30% on skills paid off. Our coach (Coach C) had identified what our team needed to win. I’d been playing soccer since I was five years old and even played with a German club in Germany until...

I’m walking to my death. 

It’s mid afternoon and I’m pausing work for one of those corporate social networking events. I die a little every time I attend a social event. It’s the small talk I can’t handle. I just don’t get much out of it and I can feel that today this event won’t be any different. 

As I approach the event hall I see a couple of familiar colleagues and a lot of strangers through the tall glass doors. The plan is to walk in, grab a water, join a circle, stand and smile for 5 minutes, then head back up to my desk and get real work done. 

(breathe)

I’m an adult. 

(breathe)

I can handle this.

I pass through the doors and start walking. There are my colleagues. They would be the easiest and most comfortable group to chill with. But, I don’t stop. Wait, why am I not stopping? Why am I still walking? And why does the room feel like it’s getting smaller. I’m almost to the other side...

I’m sitting on a ship with a dead lobster sprawled across my plate. Everyone at the table is grinning and staring intently at me as I hesitantly bring a lobster filled fork to my mouth. I hate seafood. I try chewing and… nope, this one ain’t going down my pie hole. After I regurgitate and burn it, the first words I utter are, “It popped in my mouth!”

Nobody seemed to hear anything else I said after that even though I tried to explain what I meant and why it was disgusting. They were too busy laughing and repeating “It popped in my mouth!” or remixing those words with anything they could think of. “Want some cake? It’ll pop in your mouth!” or “Mmm, that was so good it popped in my mouth!” 

Now, anytime anyone from that group brings up “It popped in my mouth!” we all recall that moment and relive the humorous memory together. It’s an inside joke. 

Chances are you have at least...

I’m pacing my room fighting the urge to scrap everything I’ve worked on for the past two weeks. I hit a self-doubt wall with this project that no one is going to care about. I start up my STPT (Self-Talk Pep-Talk) engine. “This time is going to be different. This time I’ve created something great. Everyone will recognize my genius. You got this, bruh!”

I hurry over to my computer, force myself to sit back down, and close the 12 tabs I have open with Ryan Trahan’s newest video, a Dune cinema review, Dude Dad’s home addition, and whatever else I’ve been pretending to “research.”

I take a deep breath, publish my video, and wait. One hour passes… 0 views. Two hours pass… 0 views. One day passes… 0 views. I crawl under my covers and die.

Okay, so that didn’t happen… this time. But, it has definitely happened to me before. I put my heart and soul into something and nothing happens. Crickets....

Even if your teen doesn't plan on pursuing the “creative art” of storytelling professionally (i.e., filmmaker, author, oral storyteller, etc.) storytelling isn't limited to the “creative arts.” Let me share a dose of the practical use of storytelling IRL.

When employers ask non-technical interview questions, specifically behavioral questions, they often expect a S.T.A.R. response from the job applicant. (S.T.A.R = Situation. Task. Action. Result.) Ladies and gentlemen, what the employer is really saying is, “Yo, tell me a story, bruh.” 

Don’t believe me? 

Look at how the S.T.A.R.s align (pun intended… I slay me) with the 3-Act structure of a story:

Act 1: What was the setting or the norm (i.e. SITUATION)? What was the triggering event (i.e. TASK)? 

Act 2: What was the plan? What went wrong? What did you do? (i.e. ACTION, conflict, and rising tension) 

Act 3: How did it end? Did you succeed? What was the...

As my brain leaked out of my left ear onto my desk and started to drip gray globs onto my shoes I had a couple questions. Why must debits equal credits? What is gross margin? Why did my girlfriend dump me?

That was my first accounting class in college. To me accounting was complex. No, that’s not true, calculus was complex. Accounting was… magic. Not the fun and very real Harry Potter kind of magic. I mean the kind that is completely fabricated and changes willy nilly to take on any shape or form so that any answer you give you will always be wrong and your teacher will always be right. Bad magic.

I couldn’t grasp it. So, I spent countless hours (42 to be precise) in the accounting lab where I persistently asked the accounting lab volunteer people (not sure what to call them… tutors? psychiatrists?) to make the pain stop. I went day after day without any success. And then, it happened.

One of the volunteers pulled out a piece of paper and drew a beautiful...

Your teen has a great idea for a story, but how do they get their audience onboard for takeoff and stick around for the landing?

Takeoffs and landings for airplanes are the most complicated parts of flight. So, how can they start their story in a way that peaks curiosity and in such a way that the audience wants to know more?

TAKEOFF

The takeoff of their stories needs to hook the audience’s attention, otherwise the audience likely won’t stick around. It doesn’t matter how awesome the dialog or special effects will be AFTER a long boring 3 minute introduction. They need to create an open loop and they need to create it at the beginning.

An open loop is simply bringing up a question and not answering it right away or as Jay Acunzo said “[it’s] a moment of tension left unresolved.” That can be done through actions, a sequence of events, direct questions, etc. The goal is to create curiosity (that’s the open part or the gap in the...