The storyworthy Learning Zone

Taking a lesson from my friend, Bengi, I spent this week going through old photos and finding some new stories.

Ever since Bengi has begun digitizing and sending me photos from our teenage days toget...

I was listening to a very well told story last week about a woman struggling with infertility. It was heartfelt, humorous, cleverly constructed, and well framed.

Outstanding in every way except one:

The best gift that I received, and the one that can teach us all something important was this:

A can of my favorite beverage - Diet Coke - encased in jello.

The best thing about this gift:

It someh...

In working with a storyteller, he said, “I figured it wasn’t going to work out, and all my effort had been wasted.”

See the problem?

“I figured…” is a subtle but real signal that his assumption was ...

A simple but effective tip for you:

When appropriate, include the season in your story. I LOVE words that come affixed to a kabillion adjectives because I don’t love adjectives in general.

In my nov...

I had just settled into my seat, preparing for the second leg of my flight from Hartford to Victoria, British Columbia, when the pilot emerged from the cockpit and introduced himself to us. He told us...

I have been listening to many commencement addresses over the past two weeks, and I've been a listener of commencement addresses for a long time.

NPR's The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever, with more...

This is a long one, but it’s also an important one, so please bear with me.

Someone recently described me online as "a profoundly unpleasant person.”

He wrote:

“I friended him on Facebook because I...

I competed at a Moth StorySLAM in Boston earlier this week.

Finished in second place. Lost by a tenth of a point to the storyteller who went last.

So annoying.

Sadly, I remember the second-place fi...

Here's a bit of lunacy:

I was working with a storyteller who will be performing onstage next month. She's nervous. The audience will be sizable, and she's never performed in a setting like this befor...

A storyteller recently asked me for a specific strategy to build suspense in a story.

My answer (and thus my definition of suspense) was simple:

Don’t say everything. Say some of the thing but not t...