This story is a mesh of story and stand up comedy techniques as outlined in Chapters 1 and 2. To help highlight these by way of a recap I have outlined those used below.
Items from Storytelling:
Describe what your hero is up against. The hero in my story is my mother. Outlining her conservative up bringing sets up the twist in the tale (the inciting incident) under the influence of a city: San Francisco
Build in a specific transcending emotion. The love and bond between mother and son are the transcending emotions.
Include a clear lesson or transformation. My mother nurses me back to health and in doing so gets a new lease of life.
Add twists and turns to the story. The main twist of where my mother asks if I happen to have any weed cookies. This is also the incident that makes the story really take off. (The Inciting incident). The Lulu lemon pants and iMessage also add to it.
Make it believable. The story is believable and relatable.
Have some stakes. I nearly lost my knee. Without my mothers care I would have been stuck in hospital.
Start in the action. The story starts with the accident to grab people’s attention and then works backwards to set the scene.
Steer clear of meandering endings. The story was told with the end in mind and it comes to a natural end.
Items from Stand Up Comedy:
Start Strong. The story gets a quick laugh, which seeks to take folks from shock, (the knee injury) to laughter as quickly as possible.
Local references. The story is perfect for this crowd as it happens in places they are familiar with. I selected it for this reason.
Rule of 3. 3 accidents (Electric fence in Ireland, Septic Tank in Spain, Cliff jump in Greece). Californian old people with their hiking, Bikram Yoga and running around.
Compare and Contrast. Irish 69 year olds vs. Californian 69 year olds and their contrasting lifestyle activities. Irish conservative culture vs liberal San Francisco.
Strong finish and Bookend technique. Save your best until last and finish in a way that the audience knows its over. It only becomes clear my story is actually about a city with the last two words of the story. To tell this story outside San Francisco I can make the last word “America” and now it works with a wider audience.
Build anticipation before key words. You will notice I do my best and pause accordingly to build anticipation before key lines: (represented by …below)
The only place I have ever been asked…What…is Ireland
David….Do you have any of those weed cookies?
There she was…Lulu lemon pants
Wait a minute. This is a blue message…This is an I Message..did you get an IPhone?
David..what the feck did you do to your mother?
There were two words that explained it perfectly…San Francisco.
Calling the room. “I’m glad you find this funny comment” was impromptu and acknowledged that they had a good laugh at my expense in the 3 examples of me picking up stupid injuries.
Lots of laugh lines. The story builds in as many laugh lines as possible and aims to maintain a level of entertainment that would be equally at home on a stand up comedy stage. For the most part it stays within the guideline, 3 lines with no funny are too much.
Memory Palace. To make sure I remembered all the key elements of this story I created a memory palace and kept the below drawn out representation of it in my back pocket, just in case. For each one of these key words I have created a mimi story where the elements interact with each other as I progress from room to room.
