Let’s get tactical! I'm breaking down the three key elements that turn a story idea into a capital-S Story. Plus you’ll hear these tools in action: I’m workshopping a brand new story about my extremely brief tango career, sharing my thought process and decisions along the way.
Let’s get tactical! I'm breaking down the three key elements that turn a story idea into a capital-S Story. Plus you’ll hear these tools in action: I’m workshopping a brand new story about my extremely brief tango career, sharing my thought process and decisions along the way.
Alejandro Puerta on TripAdvisor (he was the best - check out the reviews)
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(00:01):
If I was going to compare storycraft with makeup because why not? There are three questions you can ask yourself that will take your story from “I just woke up and I ate a lot of salt last night” to “full face of glam.” I'm supposed to say a line that grabs you. So I hope that grabbed you. I am Micaela Blei and welcome to The Story Letter, the podcast about telling better stories. I'm so glad you're here. Last week we talked about emotional timestamping. That's the idea that our stories change over time and how we can use that to find stories to tell. But today, let's get really tactical. Let's talk about what makes a story work. I don't actually think there's such a thing as an objectively good story because as we talked about in an earlier episode, that really depends on who you're talking to and what you're trying to say and sort of where you're at as you tell it.
(00:58):
But today we'll talk about: how do you make your story clear, so people can pick up what you are putting down? In a lot of ways, a good story is a story where what you mean to say is as close as possible to what people hear, right? What's happening in your head is what they receive. And so you might be thinking of a story idea of your own, either a story you tell all the time at parties and you want to make it more of a thing or you have an idea or something that happened to you and you want to turn that experience into a capital S story. So that's what we're going to do today. So if you have a story you want to tell, I would say there's between three and 1 million elements that help make a story as clear as possible.
(01:41):
You can get down to as simple as possible and you can get really intense about it. Obviously, as a story nerd, I sometimes do get really intense about it, but today I will restrain myself. Let's talk about the first three things that I think often can make the difference between a random personal story, like I'm telling my best friend about the guy I picked up on a train, versus something that will really connect with people, like the way that the man I met on the train made me understand new things. You know what? Actually, this has never happened to me before. This is not a real example, so I don't know how to finish that, but you get my point. So these three things, let's take them one by one. The first one is context. You could also call this the setup. This is making sure you give us enough information before you get into a story, or even as you're telling the story, to make sure that we understand what matters in this situation we're about to be in with you.
(02:37):
The second one is actually connected to that, and it's stakes, making sure we understand why this experience mattered to you at the time or what you wanted or wanted to avoid. These stakes don't have to be objectively high, by the way, for a story to be really compelling. We often think they do, but if we can understand the stakes of this moment and how this moment is important for you, that's what's going to be what makes us feel like we're there with you and we're rooting for you. And context, that first one, can often help you get there. I'm going to give you an example, just a super quick one. I had this storytelling student who was a lifeguard during the summers. He was in high school and he was talking about his first time as a lifeguard and how he was really worried about being able to save someone.
(03:22):
But that day that he's telling us about, no one got in any trouble, so he didn't do any saving, and he said, I don't know. That's a boring story because no one needed saving. And the group I was teaching, we all said, no, it's a great start. But we asked him, so what's your relationship with swimming or with having a job? We were kind of investigating what else we needed to know about him. We needed more context. And he said, well, I almost drowned twice when I was little, but I don't know if that's important. And we were like, yeah, that might be kind of important. That helps us understand why you're scanning the water and why saving someone could have extra meaning for you if someone saved you. So suddenly his story, which is a very ordinary day as a lifeguard where nothing actually happened becomes a triumph because nothing happened, because no one got in trouble.
(04:12):
The context made the stakes for him even more clear. Also, he told an amazing story. So you've got context, you've got stakes. And then the third one, if I were to say there's one thing that a personal story needs, it's change. Something should hopefully change from the beginning to the end of a story. And if nothing changes at all, you're telling us a beautiful portrait, you're giving us a great image, but you're not necessarily taking us on a journey. And so that change that happens in a story could be internal. It could be, I used to think I had to bring elaborate baked goods to parties so that people would like me, and now I feel like being myself and bringing Trader Joe's snacks is absolutely good enough. My friends love me for me and not my buttercream. That is a real example. Or it could be a giant change that really transformed your life.
(05:03):
I used to be a cutthroat marketing VP in New York City, and now I make gourmet baby food in a farmhouse in Vermont. That is, of course, the plot of 1987's Baby Boom, starring Diane Keaton. So any story that you're thinking about, you want to sort of think about what is that change? How did things change for me because of what happened? But here's the trick. Most stories do have change. You don't have to put it in. So sometimes it's a question of discovering it, not deciding it. You might not know how things changed in something that happened until you've actually tried telling what happened. So what does that mean? Well, you don't have to say, I want to tell a story about losing my innocence or whatever. You can just tell the story and figure out what the change is afterwards, and knowing the change will help you focus the story as you edit it and practice it, and that will make your telling even clearer.
(05:58):
I know that I'm throwing a lot at you. So let's see all this in practice for our story. This week I'm going to do something a little different, because I was thinking if I keep telling you sort of finished stories, you'll never get to see the steps I take to create a story. So today I'm doing something a little scary. I'm not telling you a story that is done. I've told friends about this experience, but I have never made it a story and I've never totally cracked how to translate this experience into an actual story. I don't know where we're going to end up at the end of this, but we're going to test it out. I will do a little thinking out loud as I'm telling it, about where I might need to add those three things, right? Where to add context, what the stakes seem to be and what change is emerging. And I'll tell you, I have some thoughts about these things, but I don't have anything done for sure, and that's how we're going to find the shape for the story, to find the beginning, middle, and end. We're going to see if this would work and what this story means for me right now, which might not be much or it might be something. We don't know.
(07:07):
As I'm getting ready to tell you all of this, I have a bit of an idea of what I want to tell this story about. I know that I had a bad dance teacher and a good dance teacher, and I want to tell about how different they were, and what I kind of learned from each of them, I think, but we'll see. So I took a trip to Buenos Aires when I was in my late thirties. I'm not going to try to give you context right now. Let's save the context for just a minute. But here's what I'll tell you. I was there for a week and I signed up in preparation to take tango lessons from two different teachers while I was there. I signed up from finding them on TripAdvisor before I went. They were the number one and number two rated tango teachers in Buenos Aires, according to TripAdvisor, because that is what I'm like, and it was winter, so everything was really cheap.
(07:57):
So I scheduled five lessons in five days because that's also what I'm like. I wanted to go pro in a week basically. I pictured coming back from this trip and just being a tango dancer. So I scheduled a lesson with teacher number one on Monday and Friday, and then I scheduled with teacher number two on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I feel like I should draw you a graph. This is part of why this is a challenging story, but that is relevant. The timing of all of that. It was first guy, second guy for a while, and then first guy again. But anyway, okay, I get to my first lesson with the first guy and I tell him I've never taken tango before, and he tells me immediately, well, the woman has the easiest part in tango because she never has to think. Apparently, my job is just to follow directions and I don't have to do anything except for what he tells me to do.
(08:48):
And he starts the music and comes up next to me to start to dance, and he pulls me right up to his chest and tells me this is the tango stance. And he proceeds to sort of lead me all around this studio, dipping me and pulling me this way and that, hands all the way around my back, and it feels like a very sexy dance. And after this first song, he tells me I'm very talented, I have great musicality, and we do three more songs, and they're honestly very sensual. And I'm kind of like, okay, I guess this is what tango is like. I mean, this is what I've seen in the movies. And he says, you have great form. Can't wait for you to come back on Friday. And I said, great. And I didn't tell him, by the way, I was taking another lesson.
(09:30):
I sort of got it in my head that maybe they hated each other, the number one and number two spots on TripAdvisor, like two pizza restaurants across the street from each other. So I kept that part to myself. Okay, let's actually pause here because this is where I feel like I should already have told you some really important context. What do you need to know about me to really experience this with me and understand why I'm telling it to you? What's significant about what's happening? So there are a few ways this could go. I could give you some context about how I got to Bueno Aires. Because I was on this trip with my parents. I mean, remember I was in my late thirties, but my dad was going to a math conference and let me come along, and I had some embarrassment about being in my late thirties and going on vacation with my parents.
(10:15):
I'd been single for a couple years at that point, and I felt a little like the spinster aunt. So one reason I was taking all this tango was that I wanted to feel like I was on a cool solo trip, and not tagging along with my folks. The other piece that might have something to do with it is that I was single and I'd kind of lost my mojo. I wasn't feeling sexy at all. And so I know I also wanted to take the tango classes to maybe do something sexy, to feel like I was in my body again. And I remember telling my friends this, and they thought it was hilarious that I'd signed up for five tango lessons in five days. This is what you do if you're a middle-aged lady trying to get her spark back. You go to Argentina and you learn how to tango.
(10:57):
So both of those are true. Those are both my context and also the stakes. I wanted to feel like I was on a cool solo trip and I wanted to feel sexy again. In a story, I can tell you both, or I can pick which one I want to focus on for this telling of the story. Let me keep telling you what happened and we can see if one or the other would make sense. By the way, I also want to say there's other background that could be relevant to this story about experiences I've had with men and consent and manipulation, and I'm choosing not to put those in the mix here honestly, just because I don't feel like talking about them and that's in my control. I can have them in mind and decide I don't want to go there in this story. That's totally my choice.
(11:38):
Okay, so back to the story. The next day, after teacher number one, I go to the number two teacher and he asks me, have I taken tango before? And I say, I took one class yesterday. And he says, great, show me what you've learned. And he turns on music and I immediately go chest to chest with him, which is the tango stance that I know, and he sort of gently puts me further away from him and says, okay, no, that's the stance if you're already in a relationship with someone. That's a very intimate position. We do it like this. And he puts us in a more respectful distance. So immediately I'm thinking, ah, what was that first teacher really about? But I don't say anything. And we dance for a song and he tells me– this is the part that I really want to think about.
(12:27):
He says, just so you know, the follower has the hardest part in a tango pair because it's your job to interpret what your leader is asking you to do. Which is again, really different than teacher number one. So he starts dancing with me, and it's a completely different experience. It feels amazing, first of all, and it feels like partnership. He's talking to me with where he's putting my weight and how he's signaling me, and I understand what he's saying with these moves. He's never pushing me somewhere. And throughout the lesson he's telling me these little things like if your partner is trying to get you to go somewhere or do something that either doesn't feel right or isn't right, you just don't have to do it. So I have three lessons with teacher number two, and over the course of those lessons, first of all, I get really fucking good at tango, if I may say.
(13:17):
Second of all, he talks to me a lot about how, because tango is an improvisational dance, you're always navigating and negotiating with your partner, but this feels like an important detail. He says, at social dances, these tango dances, you're dancing with strangers. So if your partner is ever doing something that you don't like in a social dance, if he's being handsy or whatever, you don't have to just take it. You can leave a partner in the middle of the floor. And if a follower leaves a leader in the middle of the floor, it signals to everyone else that he has done something so egregious that no one's dancing with him again for the rest of the night. And I love this idea. I think it's so great. So let's pause. That is a very specific detail that I'm telling you and that's on purpose.
(14:07):
So there are a lot of details I could give you about the tango lessons, and my trip in general, and about the food I ate and even what my parents thought about my tango lessons. But I'm already feeling like this isn't a story about them. I mean, it hasn't been. It's seeming to be about this consent piece and the contrast between dancing with the two teachers. So I'm skipping over all of those details. If I'm keeping this to be a story about feeling sexy, I guess I need to talk about how that felt in my lessons with both Alejandro, teacher number two, and teacher number one. So back to the story. As I'm telling you, I'm realizing that feeling sexy was what I wanted initially, but it wasn't what I liked about doing tango. Instead, I felt creative and lit up in an artistic conversation and all these other things, and that felt amazing, but it wasn't what I'd come here for.
(15:00):
And I started seeing that the first teacher was more sexy, and that was not comfortable or cool at all. So I took classes from teacher number two, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I was taking in all of the stuff he was telling me, learning a bunch of tango, but also realizing that the first guy was really creepy, and I didn't know it then because I had never done this before. And oh, shit, I'm going to see him on Friday. Pause. And again, there's other stuff going on here, but that is the part I'm focusing on because what's starting to come out as maybe the change of this story is how I saw going along with what someone wants or maybe what changed is how I thought I was allowed to be in control, even if I'm following someone else's directions, even if I'm not in a position of power, I'm not totally sure yet. Back to the story.
(15:52):
So anyway, I finished with my great teacher number two, and with this Friday lesson, I thought about canceling, but ultimately I decided to go, and I'm not totally sure why. I think I wanted to see it through, and maybe I wanted to show this guy how good I was and how much I'd learned. I don't know. But so after these three magical tango lessons, I show back up at the first teacher studio and he says, how are you? And I say, great. I took a bunch of lessons since I saw you. And he's sort of like, okay, well, we'll see how that went. And he starts, the music, starts pulling me to his chest, and I pull away and I give him firm arms and he says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't that kind of song. He says, this is the kind of song that you're close.
(16:35):
And I say, I do not think that's true, and I stay firm. And then we start dancing and he says, your tone is off. You're doing it wrong. You've learned all the wrong things. At this point, we are 15 minutes into a 60 minute lesson, and I had a genuine epiphany. Now I know, thanks to teacher number two, that if you're getting treated badly in the middle of a dance, you can just leave your partner. And we're not at a dance, obviously, we're in a studio alone on the third floor of a random building in Bueno Aires. But I think to myself, I can just leave. And I just unwind myself from his arms and he says, what's going on? And I said, oh, I'm going to go. And I didn't say, I have a different appointment. I didn't say, I'm so sorry. I didn't make up an excuse.
(17:26):
I just said, I'm going to go. He looked so confused and he watched me change my shoes and I just walked out of the studio. That is what happened. I've never told this as a story because number one, I personally don't love telling travel stories. I think they're a little bit like anthropological nightmares. And so this one, I need to know that this is really about me and not just about “look what people in Buenos Aires are like” or something. But I also just never totally understood or got what was at stake. This is a vacation, and yes, there's a lot going on, but I could never totally land on it. I think if I were going to really sit down and work on this story and figure out how to tell it, I'd probably add that number one, I am a super people pleaser.
(18:16):
I try very hard not to cause or worsen conflict. That might be important to know. Also, I have a hard time reading social cues a lot of the time, like knowing if someone is flirting with me, that kind of thing. So I tend to do what I'm told directly, and I'm very worried about breaking unspoken rules. So if I was going to work on this, I would think about the change. This is the thing that's going to help me find the shape of the story. Because I need to know where do I start it, where do I end it, what do I focus on, what details do I use? And knowing what change I want to talk about is going to help me do that, because you could tell any story for five minutes or 45 minutes. For me, it is, let's face it, usually 45 minutes, but I started landing on a shape as I was telling it, and with some reflection, we could get that even clearer. Because I'm thinking there's a few ways you could identify a clear change.
(19:05):
I went from following directions to walking out, so how do I want to put that? What change do I want that to be? We could try: I used to think that Buenos Aires was going to make me sexy, and instead my trip to Buenos Aires made me feel strong. This is kind of a nice one, but there's a lot we could choose, right? This is the one I think I want to choose right now. I think I have it because it feels closest to what I've been thinking about lately: I used to think I had to be polite to anyone who is nice to me, and now I know I can walk off the dance floor.
(19:46):
That part made me cry. I'm a little teary. I'm not going to lie. This was challenging for me. It is quite vulnerable for a perfectionist like myself to put out something that you haven't already decided is exactly right, but I am feeling like I do want to work on this story more, so maybe I'll make a later draft of it and I'll make it a bonus episode or something so you can hear what it became. I'm not promising that. I have no idea what it's going to sound like, but you might see that in your feed if you're listening to this. Okay. I also do want to add, I'm not going to name the first teacher– partly because he is not on TripAdvisor anymore, so I'm hoping that he maybe went out of business. But the second teacher is named Alejandro Puerta, and he's incredible, and I'm going to put the link to his site in the show notes because I think if you want to learn how to tango, you should learn how to tango from him.
(20:43):
Okay! It is your turn. I propose you try this process with a story of your own. Take a version of a story. You can write it out or talk it out or however you want to get it out there, and then ask yourself those questions. What's the context we need? What's at stake for you and how did this experience change things for you? Either a little or a lot. If you're working on your story and you don't know what to do next, you can work with me one-on-one. Go to my website to find out more. It's Micaelablei.com. Tune in next week. We're going to talk about those trusted listeners who will help you test your story out, and I'll share some behind the scenes and an exclusive cut story from my audible original memoir called You Will Not Recognize Your Life, which you can listen to right now. I'll put the link in the show notes.
(21:32):
Okay. This episode was written and hosted by me, Micaela Blei, go Micaela. It was produced by Laura Boach, and theme music was Duke of New York by Adrian D. Walther. I'm Micaela Blei, and this has been the Story Letter Podcast. I'm so glad we're doing this.
OUTTAKES:
Not now, heater. When I say dumb heater, that hates me. It's not me expressing, it's not me having a tantrum. It's like, that's a fact. It hates me. That's just something I need to accept in life. What people don't realize about this podcast is that it's one of those very meta podcasts where you're actually watching my slow descent into madness over the course of the episodes, like it gets weirder and weirder.