How to Tell a Story and Do Live Storytelling at a Moth Story Slam (and Why You Should)

You are smarter, funnier, and more interesting than you think you are. Even if you’re not, to reiterate, everyone has at least one killer story. 

Character is forged in conflict, and the only way to meanigfully grow is to face our fears. If you’re like most other people, you have a serious fear of public speaking, which is much less scary than you think it is and thus a relatively easy fear to conquer compared to a fear of dry-diving off a skyscraper while being eaten alive by spiders. 

It has to be true. Although you’re, as we said, a wonderful specimen of humanity, you don’t have the talent of a Hasan Minhaj , a Mike Daisey , or even George Santos that it takes to pull off a good lie in front of a large group. On stage, you’ll give yourself away, and even if you succeed as a fraud, that life is its own punishment.

It needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our minds are relentless pattern-matching machines that are always trying to connect dots and make sense of the ice-cold absurdity of existence. Life is a mess, but as the auteur of your story, you can decide where it starts, where it ends, and what happens in the middle, as long as what happens in the middle is a) surprising in a way that b) makes sense and c) keeps raising the stakes so we stay engaged and entertained.

Rehearse the hell out of your story. When you get on stage, you’re going to go blank, so it’s better, as a rookie, to memorize the story, word for word. You can afford to loosen up later on, if you want.

Use humor judiciously. If you blow a joke, or if you make a joke that seems forced when it’s supposed to be spontaneous, that will suck the energy out of the room. If you kill, you’ll get a lot of laughs, which is a high-quality problem but will seriously eat into your time. At least in LA, they enforce the five-minute limit fairly strictly. The judges will ding you for going over, plus it’s just rude, selfish, and narcissistic to outstay your welcome on stage.

Don’t talk about pain that’s too fresh. We like you, and we don’t want to be actively concerned for your welfare.