This is a great post and I feel it adds a lot of value to the platform.
One of the things I find I struggle with is exactly this. I find that my stories tend to:
- Be very long with extraneous detail
- ADD all over the place
- Get an unexpected laugh in the middle of the story that results in a bunch of questions that distract from my actual point or what I thought was interesting about it
- Bore people or cause them to lose interest
So this is very helpful. Granted, I've been lucky enough to hear you speak on this topic a few times @decimus.
But I really appreciate this post because it puts this framework in writing and frames it as something you can work on. As with everything, it starts with awareness.
Thanks @ryanbaer I'll be sure to do more posts like this in the future.
With the stories that go all over the place:
Tell the story out loud and record yourself -- write the story down word-for-word and see if you can focus it on one topic. In other words, rewrite the story and memorize it again. Tell the better version next time.
Doing this, you very well may end up with multiple stories about the same topic. For example, I could say Iron Man is my favorite movie because I can empathize with Tony Stark's obsessing over his particular hobby or I could say Iron man is my favorite movie because the film inspired me to want to write screenplays. Both might be true, but I may tell the stories to different people for different reasons.
I will write more about this topic in a future post.