Category Archives: Storytelling

50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks | Number 1

Trick 1

Building Size (Changing Scope)

This first technique holds audience interest by revealing the true size of something over the course of the story until it can be seen to be either larger or smaller than it originally appeared. This makes things appear to grow or diminish as the story unfolds.

Conspiracy stories are usually good examples of increasing scope, as only the tip of the iceberg first comes to light and the full extent is ultimately much bigger. The motion picture All The President’s Men illustrates this nicely. Stories about things being less extensive than they originally appear are not unlike The Wizard Of Oz in which a seemingly huge network of power turns out to be just one man behind a curtain.

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Plot Order vs. Exposition Order

The order in which events unfold in a story is not necessarily the order in which those events occurred to the characters within the story.

In movies, for example, a story might open with a scene in the present, then put up a title card saying, “3 Days Earlier…” and dissolve back to an earlier time to see how things got to this point.  As another example, in the classic book, The Bridge at San Louis Rey, five travelers arrive at a bridge at the same time, then the book jumps back to see how they all came to be there.

These are simple instances of a very common practice of jumping around in time in the storytelling to create suspense and generate interest and mystery for your readers.  The problem is that mixing up the sequence of events makes it very easy for you, as author, to accidentally leave out essential pieces of the linear logic of the timeline.

When this happens, readers eventually realize that there’s something wrong with the actual order of events, and if it is a serious enough gap it can destroy the readers’ suspension of disbelief and pull them right out of the story emotionally.

You might think, then, it would be a better idea to just write things in their actual order and then mix them up for storytelling later.  But, authors often create best when envisioning their stories in the order they plan on unfolding them.  Exposition is an integral part of the creative process and forcing oneself to write only in sequential order might very well hobble the Muse and result in writers block.

Fortunately, there is a simple technique you can use to avoid temporal mis-steps than can cause your story to stumble, while still supporting the free form creation of stories in exposition order.

First write your story as usual, then jot down all the major events in your story on index cards in the order they are revealed.  Next, rearrange the cards to put the events in character time, rather than exposition time.  Finally, follow the order of events to see if you have left out any crucial steps .

With this clear view of the event-order timeline, you can easily find and plug any holes and correct any pacing issues and then apply those changes to your existing storytelling order so that it all flows perfectly in both the character-sequence and the exposition sequence.

Melanie Anne Phillips

The Cardinal Rule of Storytelling

You probably know someone who can take a bad joke and tell it so well that you are rolling on the floor. And you probably know someone who can’t tell a joke to save their life, even if the joke itself is hilarious.

If you start with a joke that just isn’t funny, even the best delivery in the world won’t improve the humor of the punch line, but getting there may have been a hoot. Conversely, if the joke is outstanding, a terrible delivery will rob the experience of its levity even though you still see what was supposed to be funny.

Stories work the same way. Even a perfect structure will lay there dead if poorly told. But a good storyteller will keep a reader/audience riveted, even if they clearly see how flawed the structure really is.

Point being, structure is not the Story God. It is a means to an end. It is far better to break structure and go with your Muse than to shackle yourself to the nuts and bolts of story mechanics at the expense of inspired storytelling.

Naturally, the best stories are those that have sound structure and passionate storytelling. But if you find the two diverge, it is always better to err to the side of passion.

Remember the cardinal rule of storytelling – Never bore your audience.

Melanie Anne Phillips

Plot Order vs. Exposition Order

The order in which events unfold in a story is not necessarily the order in which those events occurred to the characters within the story.

In movies, for example, a story might open with a scene in the present, then put up a title card saying, “3 Days Earlier…” and dissolve back to an earlier time to see how things got to this point.  As another example, in the classic book, The Bridge at San Louis Rey, five travelers arrive at a bridge at the same time, then the book jumps back to see how they all came to be there.

These are simple instances of a very common practice of jumping around in time in the storytelling to create suspense and generate interest and mystery for your readers.  The problem is that mixing up the sequence of events makes it very easy for you, as author, to accidentally leave out essential pieces of the linear logic of the timeline.

When this happens, readers eventually realize that there’s something wrong with the actual order of events, and if it is a serious enough gap it can destroy the readers’ suspension of disbelief and pull them right out of the story emotionally.

You might think, then, it would be a better idea to just write things in their actual order and then mix them up for storytelling later.  But, authors often create best when envisioning their stories in the order they plan on unfolding them.  Exposition is an integral part of the creative process and forcing oneself to write only in sequential order might very well hobble the Muse and result in writers block.

Fortunately, there is a simple technique you can use to avoid temporal mis-steps than can cause your story to stumble, while still supporting the free form creation of stories in exposition order.

First write your story as usual, then jot down all the major events in your story on index cards in the order they are revealed.  Next, rearrange the cards to put the events in character time, rather than exposition time.  Finally, follow the order of events to see if you have left out any crucial steps .

With this clear view of the event-order timeline, you can easily find and plug any holes and correct any pacing issues and then apply those changes to your existing storytelling order so that it all flows perfectly in both the character-sequence and the exposition sequence.

Melanie Anne Phillips

Designing Your Plot with Multi Appreciation Moments

By Melanie Anne Phillips

The great masters of plot create dramatic moments that multi-task. For example, a novice writer might reveal the story’s goal in a line of dialog, but a master storyteller might reveal it in such a way as to also add insight into the speaker’s personal issues, the nature of his or her relationship to another character, and also to illustrate an aspect of the story’s thematic message.

Stories in which each moment means only one thing are usually not particularly involving as they do not reflect the complexities of real life. Further, with single appreciation moments, there is only one way to appreciate a story. But the great masters of storytelling include so many multi appreciation moments that each time a book is re-read or a movie seen again for the umpteenth time, the focus of the audience attention during the unfolding of the story is never along the exact same path twice.

Each trip through the story opens new insights, provides new experiences, and reveals new surprises as new interpretations and understandings are exposed every time through the journey.

So, to keep your story, be it novel, screenplay, stage play, or even song ballad from being a one-time experience and coming off as a point-by-numbers approach to structure, consider employing multi-appreciation moments in your storytelling to enrich the experience and create an atmosphere worthy of a master storyteller.

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Storytelling Tip 5 of 50 – “Building Importance”

By Melanie Anne Phillips

This tip is excerpted from my book, 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!

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Trick 5

Building Importance (Changing Impact)

In this technique, things not only appear more or less important, but actually become so. This trick was a favorite of Hitchcock in such films as North By Northwest and in television series such as MacGyver. In an episode of The Twilight Zone, for example, Mickey Rooney plays a jockey who gets his wish to be big, only to be too large to run the race of a lifetime.

Usually things become more (or less) important as a result of their implications or of changing contexts.  As the old saying points out, “for want of a nail the horseshoe was lost” and eventually, because of that lacking nail, the entire war was lost.

Someone might have an allergy that is an annoyance until it helps authorities locate a device planted by terrorists.  Someone whose only claim to fame is that they can hold their breath longer than anyone else might survive to rescue others in a room filling with smoke.

Or, on the contrary, a doctor whose entire knowledge-base and clientele revolves around treating an incurable disease might find themselves without value when a cure is unexpectedly discovered.

The fun part of this technique for a writer is that you have the option to play the very same thing as becoming important or becoming unimportant or even having it flop back and forth.  For example, an electronic currency trader may suddenly find himself without value in a zombie apocalypse, only to discover that his skill for tracking subtle patterns allows him to predict the movements of the zombie herd, only to be without value once again when the herd mutates and becomes chaotic in their movements.

So, to liven up a story, look for opportunities both close to the core of your story, such as with Mickey Rooney as that jockey, and also look for fun changes of fortune (of importance or value) not only for characters with unique traits or skills, but also for items as in MacGyver or that infamous horseshoe nail.

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Storytelling Tip 4 of 50 – “Message Reversals”

By Melanie Anne Phillips

This article is excerpted from my book,  50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!

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Trick 4

Message Reversals (Shifting Context to Change Message)

When we shift context to create a different message , the structure remains the same, but our appreciation of it changes. This can be seen very clearly in a Twilight Zone episode entitled, Invaders, in which Agnes Moorhead plays a lady alone on a farm besieged by aliens from another world. The aliens in question are only six inches tall, wear odd space suits and attack the simple country woman with space age weapons. Nearly defeated, she finally musters the strength to overcome the little demons, and smashes their miniature flying saucer. On its side we see the American Flag, the letters U.S.A. and hear the last broadcast of the landing team saying they have been slaughtered by a giant. Now, the structure didn’t change, but our sympathies sure did, which was the purpose of the piece.

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Storytelling Trick #3 of 50 – “Meaning Reversals”

By Melanie Anne Phillips

This storytelling trick is excerpted from my book, 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!

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Trick 3

Meaning Reversals (Shifting Context to Change Meaning)

Reversals change context. In other words, part of the meaning of anything we consider is due to its environment. The phrase, guilt by association, expresses this notion. In storytelling, we can play upon audience empathy and sympathy by making it like or dislike something, only to have it find out it was mistaken.

There is an old Mickey Mouse cartoon called Mickey’s Trailer which exemplifies this nicely. The story opens with Mickey stepping from his house in the country with blue skies and white clouds. He yawns, stretches, then pushes a button on the house. All at once, the lawn roll up, the fence folds in and the house becomes a trailer. Then, the sky and clouds fold up revealing the trailer is actually parked in a junkyard. Certainly a reversal from our original understanding.

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Click below to learn about my story consulting service: