Do You Talk Funny?. David Nihill
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a lot of marketing dollars as media and user attention spread their tale far and wide. The hotel industry had a new competitor, and this competitor had creativity, passion, hustle, and a story worth telling. People don’t invest in your business or product. They invest in you and your story. If you want people to remember what you say, tell a compelling story.
“People don’t invest in your business or product. They invest in you and your story. If you want people to remember what you say, tell a compelling story.”
“Storytelling is everything,” says Barbara Corcoran from ABC-TV’s Shark Tank. “Show me an MBA and your sales numbers, that’s fine. But tell me a great story about how you got started and your vision, and we’ll talk.”7
The same logic could easily be applied to stand-up comedy. Jokes that tell a story, that immerse the audience into the scenario, are much more likely to get them to invest and laugh along.
How to Craft Your Story
So how do we craft a great story? Whether it’s business or not, the story always needs a personal element. Make it your own. Audiences respond better to a story that features the storyteller. Include stories from your own life experiences before referencing those of others. Nobody knows your stories better than you, which also makes telling them a lot easier. Remember, better public speaking is the goal here, and stand-up comedy is our means of achieving it.
The best way to be more engaging, memorable, and funny quickly is to tell a story that contains a few essential elements. “Who wants what and what stops them from getting it?” This, according to Golden Globe–winning writer and three-time Emmy nominee Bill Grundfest, is the secret sauce of all stories in its most simplified form. Yet what makes stories great is the detail we add. We need to put meat on the bones of our story by including the following elements:
Have a hero/protagonist.
Decide who will be the central character of the story. Often people remember the characters more than the story itself. Loose contenders so far in mine are Shakin’ Stevens, Mustafa, and some experimental comedian called Irish Dave.
Describe what your hero is up against.
What challenges does the character have to overcome? What do they want and what is stopping them from getting it? This can be as feisty as Guatemalan food or as terrifying as public speaking. This is your story’s source of tension.
Build in a specific transcending emotion.
You need something that breaks down barriers; love, lust, greed, passion, and loss are perfect.
Include a clear lesson or transformation.
Make sure your characters move toward their goal, objective, or solution to a problem. Even if it’s just finding a bathroom, or omitting words without laying an egg.
Add twists and turns to the story.
Try not to make it predictable for the listener. Introduce a question or challenge and don’t be too quick to solve it.
Make it believable.
It is essential that your story allows the listener to suspend their disbelief by listening to what you are saying rather than questioning the truth of your words. Vulnerability and jokes at your own expense work well here. Tell people how you really felt. Leave some of yourself on the stage. If something was scary, nobody wants to hear how confident you were in overcoming it. If your hands were like a partially defrosted mackerel, tell them.
Have a clear incident that makes the story really take off.
Often referred to as the inciting incident, it is a concept popularized by the master of story, Robert McKee, in his famed three-day “Story Seminar” given all over the world. It is described by Steven Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art, here: “The inciting incident in a screenplay or novel is that event that gets the story rolling. In The Hangover, it’s the moment when the guys wake up in their trashed villa with no memory of what happened the night before—and realize that they’ve lost their friend Doug. With that, the story kicks into gear. Everything before that is just setup . . . Ask yourself of your project, ‘What is the inciting incident?’ ‘When does the “story” take off?’ You’d be surprised how many would-be novels/screenplays/restaurants/startups don’t have inciting incidents. That’s why they don’t work.”8
Know where you want to end up (the punch line) from the outset.
The last line should be the first line you write. Then work backward toward your inciting incident and setup.
Quickly build in a hook to grab your audience’s attention and draw them into the story.
This is especially important in light of today’s ever-decreasing attention spans. You’re your audience’s reason to keep their phones in their pockets. For instance, what happened at the Castro Theatre that night? For someone afraid of public speaking, standing in front of fourteen hundred people doesn’t sound like the best plan. If you’re wondering if I’ll get back to that, don’t worry. I will.
Reference your opening lines/setup in the conclusion of your story.
This is referred to as the Bookend Technique, and it will give your story a feeling of completion or symmetry. More on this in chapter seven.
Frame your story within a three-act structure.
The three acts are Setup (Beginning), Confrontation (Middle), and Resolution (End).
The hook and inciting incident usually happen within the first act. “People have forgotten how to tell a story,” said Steven Spielberg. “Stories don’t have a middle or an end anymore. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.”9 If one of the most awarded directors of all time says that’s a problem, it’s a problem. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake.
Entertain.
Modern-day storytelling is joke telling. Today’s audiences expect some lightheartedness and entertainment. Airbnb gave it to them in the form of funky-named cereals. A story should make people care by including personal experience that the audience can relate to their own lives. The most powerful stories are not about the storyteller; they are about the person who is hearing the story. Most marketers and presenters forget this.
Sometimes, being entertaining doesn’t even require you to tell jokes. In his book, Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, Carmine Gallo reminds us, “The funny thing about humor is that you don’t need to tell a joke to get a laugh.” It can be enough simply not to take yourself too seriously—or to be brutally honest.
This has rung very true for my own attempts at being funny on stage. Often the biggest laughs came from stories and encounters I had in my own life rather than cleverly crafted witticisms or opinions—my vomitando story has served up more laughs than any alliterative quip I could come up with. The world is a funny place and your existence within it is probably funnier. Accepting that fact is a blessing that gives you everything you need to see humor and craft stories on a daily basis. All you have to do is document them and then tell someone.
“The safest humor involves personal stories, because they are guaranteed to be original and unheard, they can be practiced and perfected, and they are highly personalized to your style.”
–Alan Weiss
The Art of Storytelling
On a windswept, summer-like evening in San Francisco in May 2014, I go to check out The Moth storytelling series, founded by novelist George Dawes Green. Since its launch in 1997, the series has presented thousands of stories, each of them told live and without notes to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. It has a great mix of performers,