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The secret to the right story is makeup

Author

Francisco Mahfuz
January 16, 2026

“Dad, am I going to get lines in my face like you?”

We’re on our way to catch the school bus when Alice asks me that. 

“What lines? I have perfect skin.”

“Dad!”

“Yes, baby, you will. Everyone does when they get older. It’s normal.”

“Ok.” 

“You know, some people aren’t happy with that, so they use needles to stick some stuff on their face and get rid of the lines.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea! I think that can go really wrong for them.”

“That’s what happens sometimes.”

“Well, I’m never going to do that.”

“What a lot of people do instead is wear makeup to change how they look. That’s not dangerous.”

“Like mom, you mean?”

“Yeah. She doesn’t wear it a lot, though, only when we go to a party or something.”

“I don’t think she should use it. She should be happy with how she looks.”

I think of telling Alice how I wear makeup sometimes, when I am going to be speaking, or recording something on video. I’d explain to her how strong lighting makes my face shiny, how sometimes if I haven’t slept well, or had a random zit show up, it’s just easier to hide it then talk about it – but I don’t do any of that. 

The school bus is almost here, and I rather not have the conversation in a hurry. 

But also, if I’m honest… 

I’m afraid she’ll tell me off 😅

The three stages of a story

Stage 1 is what happened. What you just read above is, to the best of my recollection, the exact conversation I had with my daughter, and what I thought at the time. 

It works on the page and, with a tiny bit of tweaking (to avoid that much dialogue getting repetitive), I could also tell it live. 

Stage 2 is how you remember it. That’s almost always a summarised version, usually without dialogue, like this: 

Alice asked me if she was going to get lines in her face like me, and I said she would. Then we talked about how people use Botox and she thought that was a terrible idea that could go wrong. Then we talked about makeup, why people use it, and she said to Patricia later that she shouldn’t use it, she should be happy with how she was. (I thought about explaining to her the “makeup” I use but didn’t want to be told off or come across as a hypocrite.) 

That is exactly how I wrote it down on my notes, and that was enough for me to recall the actual conversation. It’s also how I recommend people write down their (potential) stories. You don’t typically need more detail than that. 

Stage 2 shouldn’t be how you tell stories because it’s just too boring. Sadly, that’s what many people do. 

Stage 3 is how you tell it “on stage”: it’s when you get a story from stage 1, add more thoughts, memories and musings about the subject, connect it to different things that happened, add humour, tension, all that good stuff. In other words, stage 3 is a crafted version of what happen (some people would actually only consider stage 3 a “proper story,” but I’m not that radical). 

And this is important because…? 

It’s pretty simple: write down your stories as stage 2, and tell them as stage 1 or 3. 

It’s not necessary to write them down with more detail than stage 2, stage 1 is good enough to tell them in most circumstances, and you can leave stage 3 stories for keynotes or storytelling events. 

That’s it. 

Some stories need a little makeup. 

Some need a lot. 

And some… don’t need any at all. 

Knowing when and how much makeup to use… 

Well, I hope that’s not a secret anymore 🤘

-Francisco 

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