Speak Up Storytelling #67: Bobby Klau

By Matthew Dicks | October 17, 2019 |

On episode #68 of the Speak Up Storytelling podcast, Matthew and Elysha Dicks talk storytelling!

In our follow up segment, we discuss last week’s episode and plans for an upcoming episode. We also discuss a recent review of the podcast and decisions related to the use of profanity in storytelling. Elysha also congratulates listeners for their recent ukulele playing,.

In our Homework for Life segment, we talk about a strategy to find hidden stories in your life via seemingly microscopic moments, and an especially useful strategy to use if you’re trying to find a story to match a theme

Next we listen to a story by Bobby Klau.

Amongst the many things we discuss include:

Humor in storytelling through word choice, tonality, and misdirection
Scene setting and re-establishing
Singing as a part of storytelling
The crucial “but” at the beginning of stories
Rounding out stories and indicating the importance of every word of the story by bringing early elements into later parts of a story

RECOMMEDATIONS

Elysha:

The Crane Wife

Matt:

Nicholson Baker

Text from The Anthologist

“And then a man of forty or so, with a French accent, asked, ‘How do you achieve the presence of mind to initiate the writing of a poem?’

And something cracked open in me, and I finally stopped hoarding and told them my most useful secret.

The only secret that has helped me consistently over all the years that I’ve written.

I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you how. I ask a simple question. I ask myself: What was the very best moment of your day?’

The wonder of it was, I told them, that this one question could lift out from my life exactly what I will want to write a poem about.

Something I hadn’t known was important will leap out and hover there in front of me, saying I AM—I am the best moment of the day.

‘Often,’ I went on, ‘it’s a moment when you’re waiting for someone, or you’re driving somewhere, or maybe you’re just walking across a parking lot and admiring the oil stains and the dribbled tar patterns.

One time it was when I was driving past a certain house that was screaming with sunlitness on its white clapboards, and then I plunged through tree shadows that splashed and splayed across the windshield.

I thought, Ah, of course—I’d forgotten.

You, windshield shadows, you are the best moment of the day.”

~ Nicholson Baker, from The Anthologist

LINKS

Purchase Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling

Purchase Twenty-one Truths About Love

Homework for Life: https://bit.ly/2f9ZPne

Matthew Dicks’s website: https://matthewdicks.com

Matthew Dicks’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/matthewjohndicks

Matthew Dicks’s blog:
https://matthewdicks.com/matthewdicksblog

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