Margot Leitman’s Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You’ll Ever Need was published in 2015 by Sasquatch Books. Leitman first and foremost considers herself a storyteller. She founded and worked as a teacher at the storyteller program at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City and is a five-time winner of The Moth and a winner of The Moth GrandSLAM. Before diving into her storytelling guide, Leitman includes an author’s note urging readers to have a notebook, a tablet, or a laptop at their side to follow along with the writing prompts she provides at the end of each chapter. Throughout the book, Leitman weaves together personal anecdotes, quotations by famous storytellers, Question and Answer style prompts about storytelling, and “Tell Your Story” writing exercises for readers to try. Through her interactive style of writing, Leitman encourages her readers to tell their own stories, bringing them along as she offers the essential guidelines and frameworks any aspiring storytelling would need to get started.
Margot Leitman’s guidebook is broken down into three sections, “Part 1: Getting Started,” “Part 2: Elements of a Story,” and “Part 3: The Performance and Beyond.” Within each section, Leitman includes multiple chapters breaking down the storytelling process, and includes prompts and exercises to urge readers to practice their own storytelling. In “Part 1: Getting Started,” Leitman dispels the misconceptions surrounding the storytelling and writing process. She clarifies what storytelling is, “storytelling is recounting a true experience from your life that has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” and what it is not, “storytelling is not a rant.” Leitman expresses the importance of storytelling frameworks and their universality in many daily instances such as job interviews, speeches, and even dating. Her first prompt to readers urges them to seek out the stories that they already have by writing, “I am” statements until they run out. Inevitably, the first few answers will be more basic or surface level, such as “I am a blonde,” but will eventually expand into more complex statements such as, “I am a former hypochondriac.” To push yourself even further, Leitman includes more advanced versions of the exercise, such as “I was” statements, as well as “_____ is the story of my life.” Through these simple prompts, Leitman encourages her readers to first seek out the stories that they already have, pointing to the reality that everyone has stories within them that are worth telling.
In “Part 2: Elements of a Story,” Leitman goes through each individual aspect of storytelling that one needs to consider when thinking of telling their story, from perspective, to story layering, to character. One of the less obvious elements that is critical in storytelling, Leitman suggests, is passion. Passion can be either positive or negative, but a good story will come from moments where you experienced particularly strong emotions. In regard to perspective, Leitman stresses the importance of letting time pass between the event taking place and talking about that event in a storytelling setting. She includes several helpful questions to ask yourself when considering talking about a specific event, “have you moved on?”, “is it actually over?” and “are you able to take a step back and see what that life event was really about?” Before you go on to tell your stories to an entire audience, it is important to check in with yourself, process the event, and be able to look at it objectively. Finally, Leitman discusses character and prompts her readers to, “think about a book, song, movie, or TV show that has a character you strongly relate to and try to figure out specifically what makes you connect.” Even though the main character is your story will be you, it is still critical to identify and develop that character and decide whether your audience is going to root for them or not.
In the final part of her book, “Part 3: The Performance and Beyond,” Leitman discusses the transitioning of your story from page to stage as she gives tips and tricks for the performance aspect of storytelling. The first step, Leitman explains, is to write out your story word for word, the way in which you would deliver it to an audience with all of your unique colloquialisms. The next step is then to read it aloud to a friend or family member before transitioning it to the stage. She includes some important questions you could ask following the reading of your story such as, “was it easy to follow?”, “did you root for me?”, “could you keep all my characters straight?” and “did you relate?” Once you get that thumbs up from a friend, the final step is to create your “beat sheet.” Rather than memorizing the story word for word, Leitman recommends you memorize your beat sheet. The beat sheet will include simple key words and phrases to help you remember your story in order and should not be any longer than two pages.
Leitman concludes her full-proof storytelling guide with a chapter titled “The Business of Storytelling,” indicating the ways in which you can make some money off of your stories if you wish to proceed with storytelling. Some of these examples include getting your written stories published, writing a memoir, starting a podcast, or crafting your own one-person show. Whatever you decide to do with your stories, Leitman’s book will provide with the tools you need to tell them.
Exercises/Prompts from Long Story Short:
- Fill in the blanks with true statements until you run out
- I am _______
- I was _______
- ________ is the story of my life
- Try this fill-in-the-blank story to help launch you into fearless storytelling. Don’t overthink it, and do not make a list of answers. Instead, make a strong choice and stand by it.
- Throughout my life, I have been haunted by ________
- Everywhere I go, I _________
- I secretly love __________
- I secretly hate __________
- Make a list of ten things you have a visceral reaction to. Think of things/people/places that make you physically react (positively or negatively)
- Write your morning routine
- Fill in this blank and repeat until you run out of memories
- I can’t believe I once __________