Identify the Moments
by Doug Stevenson
All stories revolve around "the moments." In the context of the Nine Steps of Story Structure, "the moments" usually take place in Steps Four and Five: Encounter the Obstacle and Overcome the Obstacle. There are two key reasons why it's important to understand and identify "the moments" in your story.
First: When choosing and identifying stories to use in a speech or presentation, you need to look for times in your life where there was a "moment" of crisis, challenge or realization. Our best stories revolve around those moments because those are the times when we made a decision or learned a lesson. Sometimes we call them "ah-ha" moments. I often suggest to my students that they stop looking for good stories and instead look for important "moments." Once you've identified the turning point "moments" in your life, you can use the rest of the nine steps to craft the story.
Second: During the performance of a story, it's essential that you give "the moments" the emotional power they deserve. In Story Theater, when you encounter the obstacle (Step 5) and overcome the obstacle (Step 6), you don't just narrate these parts, you Step IN and act out what you did to enhance the emotional power of these moments.
For those of you who are new to this newsletter or to The Story Theater Method, here is a brief explanation of an IN moment is. An IN moment is a present tense re-enactment of a moment in time. It's an acting moment. When you're watching actors in a movie or play, they are most often IN. They are not talking about what happened (past tense), they're acting out the present- tense moments in real time and we, the audience, are watching them.
In Story Theater, we identify the most powerful moments in a story and act them out rather than describe or narrate them in the past tense. The most obvious moments to Step IN are when you encounter the obstacle and overcome the obstacle.
Here's an example of "the moments" in a story:
I recently attended the National Speakers Association Educational Workshop in Denver. After the conference was over, I walked out of the hotel with my suitcases in tow and crossed the street to the parking lot to retrieve my car and head home. It was a cold Sunday afternoon in February. When I tried to open the door to the parking structure - the same door that I had exited from on Friday afternoon - it was locked. Bummer. The wind was blowing and I was tired. I walked down the street to the next available entrance and it too was closed. Why were these doors closed? "Sunday! Ah, that must be the reason." By the time I finally found an entrance that was open, I had walked three quarters around the block and was chilled to the bone.
I took the elevator up to the fifth level and started walking towards my car. I discovered that for some reason I had been let out on the sixth level and had to walk around the lot to find my way down to the fifth level. By the time I loaded my suitcases into my car, I wasnot a happy camper. When I pulled up to the cashier, I held out my credit card only to be told, "We don't take credit cards." I had three dollars in my wallet and the bill was $26.
Sitting there in my car, I experienced a "moment." I had encountered the obstacle - or more accurately: the last straw in an accumulation of obstacles - and within a microsecond I was feeling conflicting emotions and having to make multiple decisions. I was angry, tired, dumbfounded and frustrated. I stared at the lady in the booth and tried to decide whether to be mad at her, mad at the parking lot management, or mad at myself! The "moment" is that moment during the course of any ordinary day when something happens that stops you from moving effortlessly forward. It is where the story turns.
Many thoughts and feelings took place in the flash of an instant. After my initial reaction, I had to move on to decide how I was going to deal with the situation - how I was going to overcome the obstacle.
I realized that my being upset wouldn't serve me or anyone else. I decided to trust that there was a reason for all of this craziness, and I could just relax and find the reason. The lady in the cashier's booth asked me to back up and showed me where to park, so I could go back into the hotel to get some cash.
When I went back into the hotel to find the cash machine, I heard someone call my voice "Oh Doug, I've been trying to connect with you all weekend!" And there, in front of me, was someone whom I had been wanting to connect with, too. We had a great conversation. Then I got my cash, paid the parking lot attendant, and headed home to Colorado Springs.
On my way home, I kept reflecting on how perfect it was that I was delayed in getting to my car and getting out of the parking lot, and that I had to go back into the hotel. There may have been many reasons for these occurrences - some I'll never know - but I was willing to find a reason and that made all the difference in the way I handled the circumstance. Find a Reason.
The "moments" and what we do in response to the moments is what stories are all about. Once you've identified those powerful and meaningful moments from your life experience, you can go back and use steps 1 through 3 of The Nine Steps of Story Structure to craft the aspects of the story that lead up to and provide context for "the moment." The "moments" comprise steps 4 and 5. In steps 6 though 9, you resolve the story and make the point using a Phrase That Pays.
What are the moments from your life experience where you learned something about yourself? When did something happen that taught you a valuable life lesson? Where did all forward motion stop while you were faced with a challenge, obstacle or critical decision that would, for that moment in time, define you?
Find those moments and then, using The Nine Steps of Story Structure, build a story around them.
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