Tall tales: the art of storytelling

The Desert Sun
Kevin Wong, program coordinator at Desert Institute at Joshua Tree National Park, has some information to add to our recent column about campfire cuisine. That is, he wants you to see, smell and taste the cuisine for yourself.

If stories told by the firelight constituted one of early man’s first forms of entertainment, then it would stand to reason that poorly told stories by the firelight likely constituted some of our earliest forms of boredom. I’m not one of those people who believe every person has a novel inside of them, but surely every person has an amazing story to tell. The great comic Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Nevertheless, if you fell down an open sewer and didn’t die, it’s still an interesting story, but the ending is sort of spoiled by your appearance. Thus the question you want your audience to be asking, literally and metaphorically, is: “How did you get out of it alive?” And the question to ask yourself, before you ever tell the story, is: “How do I keep my audience engaged?” Here’s how you do it:

Group of people sitting by campfire

Set the scene. People want to be rooted in a place when you tell them a story. Describe your surroundings in vivid terms. That time you had a secret rendezvous with a rock star at Coachella? Don’t just say it was hot; say that your scalp was sweating. Don’t say it was loud; tell us what the people surrounding you were screaming. Don’t say there were people surrounding you; for that matter, tell us about the man who smelled like wet grass and beer and who cried during the Prince tribute.

Create a sense of empathy. You never want someone to pity you when you’re telling your amazing tale; you want them to imagine they are you and what they would have done in a similar situation. Or, alternately, how thankful they are that they aren’t you anymore, because they’ve already learned the lesson you’re about to impart (which is to say: They already know not to eat anything that is still moving, know not to drink the milk that is inexplicably bubbling, know not to ignore the sign warning of snakes).

Create the presence of drama — even when there isn’t anything inherently dramatic about your story. Think about the film Stand By Me and the great line a young Jerry O’Connell utters to start off the adventure: “Do you guys wanna go see a dead body?” Every great story is, at its core, a mystery of some kind. So even if your story is about the worst dessert you’ve ever had, you can get people to care by simply asking, “Do you want to hear about a vile misuse of chocolate?”

Imbue the story with character and conflict. Once, a few years ago, a retired detective stumbled into my hotel room, thinking it was the place where a party was happening. There was a party going on, except it was 10 writers, not 10 ex-cops. The detective was in his 70s, big through the chest, like he’d played football as a young man, and was a little tipsy. When he realized he was in the wrong place, he decided, what the hell, he’d stay for a drink with us. “You seem like nice people,” he said and settled into a deep leather chair, put his feet up, slipped off his shoes. I asked him, after a time, if there was one case that still haunted him, because that’s the kind of question I ask retired detectives. He leaned back, took a sip of his scotch, and said, “It was 1973 and I was working in Guam as a military cop. Not like that stuff you see on TV. It’s not glamorous like NCIS.” He shook his head and looked a touch wistful. Took another drink. “There was a storm and a little girl disappeared from the base,” he said and then went on to tell the most amazing story about the banality of evil, the dystopian nature of government and how one man can hold onto a sense of justice for 40 years, even when it goes unrequited …

You want to hear the rest, don’t you? That’s how you tell a story. Leave them wanting more.