“So how was that concert?”
I’m talking to a friend who’s just taken his 9-year old, Rodrigo, to an AC/DC concert with 70,000 people.
“Man, that was sensational. The old geezers really delivered, even with all the rain and their 70 years. Well organised, great acoustics. Rodrigo nailed the feeling.”
“What did he say?”
“‘I don’t trust Spotify anymore.’ I asked why, and he said, ‘The ground doesn’t shake.’”
“What a wonderful line that is. I’m stealing that for my newsletter, your kid is a recurring character.”
“Great. He’ll love to know that.”
I hope he does ;-)
Please don’t make me sick
A common piece of storytelling advice is to talk about your senses beyond what you see: what did it sound like, what did it smell or feel like. I hate that advice. Not because it’s wrong, but because most people interpret it as if they needed to fill their stories with bad poetry:
“The moonlight was shining off the wet leaves”
“I could smell the sweet scent of the roses he gave me”
“His touch felt like an electric current running through me”
Excuse me while I go vomit in the corner for a moment.
I subscribe to what I’ve heard called “the dinner test”: if you wouldn’t use that language in a conversation over dinner, don’t use it when you tell a story. It will only make it sound artificial and make it harder for people to connect with it.
But what my friend’s kid did is not the same as that. It’s not flowery language that no human being would ever normally use; it’s a visceral description of what he actually felt at that moment, and it perfectly encapsulates what being at a loud rock concert can be like. You should absolutely use language like that–but there’s a catch:
It only works if it’s honest to what you felt in the moment. If that’s how you thought about it when it happened, or how you described it to the first person you talked to.
Sure, some people are amazing writers, but that’s not most of us. If you try to come up with the perfect way to describe the feeling later, you’ll almost certainly end up making me sick 🫣
Storytelling is about truth. The truth of what happened and the truth of how it made you feel.
Share that. Just say the thing. Don’t worry about making it “cool” or “beautiful.”
If it’s honest, it will resonate. It will connect.
And those are the stories that rock 🤘
-Francisco
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