Tuesday, May 22, 2007

My Storytelling

Everyone always teases me about how bad my stories are. The stories I tell end with a limp, and my stories about other people are often missing key subject matter. I end up thinking about the story as I tell it, making it more drawn out and boring.

E.g. "Ya, that sounds like the time my friend Doug and I were mowing the lawn with his rider mower, and I backed it into a pond. His dad got really mad, and.. what did he do?... I donno, something, he was sorta quiet about it. Then there was this weird feeling about.. I forget.. something?..."

Really, this story should go something like this:
"I was at my friend Doug's farm one year, and we were mowing the lawn with his rider mower. Now, I didn't have very much experience with it, so when it started rolling down a hill towards a pond, I didn't realize I couldn't break! In it went into the little pond; I essentially submerged the whole thing in water and we had to tow it out using a car. The engine block was filled with water but it somehow started again. Needless to say his dad was pretty peeved, in his own silent way."

The first person that I can remember that pointed this out to me was my good friend Nick. "Rooke, you have to end your stories better. Say something blows up in the end, whatever, just say SOMEthing." My friend Doug agreed with him, and I began to try to correct this problem (I thought).

Recent evidence indicates I've made no progress. My friends in the lab I work in, their friends, and several other people this year have pointed it out, and I don't blame them; I laud their criticisms.

So what I'd like everyone to do is this: everyone reading this on Facebook can leave a wall comment, or else leave a comment on the original blog for every time they've heard me tell a ridiculous story. Paraphrase the story, point out the plot holes, and hopefully I'll be shamed into telling better stories.

We'll see how this incentive works out.

No comments: