Being scared of this will make your stories suffer

“I’m nailing this parenting thing,” I tell my wife. 

We’ve just arrived at the bungalow we’re spending the weekend on, and our kids are playing happily together–which just about never happens. 

“What have you done?,” Patricia asks. 

“Well, I told them that if they pretended to be friends for 10 mins, I’d let them watch some cartoons.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About 20 mins.”

“Good work!”

Later that night, the girls climb into their attic bedroom, and Alice says, 

“Dad, I’m a little afraid of sleeping here, it’s a bit dark.”

“Don’t worry, baby, I’ve got a solution for that.”

I pick up my phone and start blasting Iron Maiden’s Fear of the Dark, singing it in the most ridiculous way I can:

“Fear of the dark, fear of the dark!

I have a constant fear that something's always near!!”

“You’re silly, dad,” Alice says, laughing. 

I am silly, but I’m also a genius, because it works. She goes to bed… until she sees a minuscule spider on the wall. 

“Dad, can you get rid of that spider??”

“Honey, it’s super tiny, it won’t do anything to you.”

“Ok, but… can you get rid of it? Please?”

“You can do it. Just get this tissue paper here, grab it and I’ll throw it outside for you.”

“Do I have to?”

“I really think you should, baby.”

She takes a little more convincing, but then she tries. She balls up the paper, gets close to the spider, and pulls her hand back. 

Then she does that again. 

And again. 

I encourage her, but she still can’t do it. 

Her hand is shaking a little, and she looks terrified. Patricia says, 

“Maybe she doesn’t have to do this now?”

“I think it’s important, she needs to get over stuff like this.”

Alice is still trying, but her hand just won’t go all the way. She’s in tears now. 

My wife is staring daggers at me. 

“Come on, baby, you’re almost there. I know you can do it.”

In slow motion, with her face half-turned away, she does it. As soon as she wraps the tissue paper around the spider, I take it off her hands, go outside and set the spider free. It really is the tiniest thing. 

I get back to the attic and Alice hugs me. She’s still shaking and crying. 

After a while, I try to break it off, but she won’t let me. 

Eventually, she lets go, and lies down to sleep. 

Sitting there in the dark, waiting until her breathing settles down…

I don’t feel like such a great dad anymore. 

It’s not true…

What I’ve just told isn’t completely true–and that’s not only ok, it’s better: 

I can’t remember the exact words we used and, even if I could, I might still change them: in real life, people often say way more than you, the audience, needs to hear–or they might not say enough, and leave you lacking relevant context. So I stuck to the gist of the dialogue, but tweaked the words as needed. 

Looking through my notes, I think I played Alice the Fear of the Dark song on the first night, I bribed my girls to play together on the second day and the spider happened on the third day. That’s messy, and skipping around days makes the story harder to follow and less fun. So I put it all on the same day. 

I also barely mentioned my other kid, or my mother-in-law, who was there with us. They weren’t needed. 

That's all fine. This is not the New York Times.  I’m not doing journalism, where you have to tell it like it actually happened (or you used to, at least 🤭). 

But it’s the truth

Some people love to quote “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story,” but that is not what I’m saying here. You shouldn’t lie to make your stories better. 

What I mean is “Don’t let minor details stop you from telling a true story.”

Don’t be afraid of keeping what the story needs, and getting rid of everything else–as long as those details don’t change the meaning of what happened. 

The story needs to communicate a truth (in this case, my doubts as a father) but, as long as you’re honest about that, tweaking small details is not only fine–it’s your job. 

Simplify dialogue - or use it to add some context. 

Condense timelines. 

Keep characters to a minimum. 

That’s how you nail it as a storyteller… and it's nothing to be scared of 🤘

-Francisco 

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3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

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