Storyworthy Summary (C15): How to Make Them Cry

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It isn’t the goal of most people to make someone cry.

And nor should it be yours. Not in your day-to-day life anyway.

But when you're telling a story, if you can create so much emotion in someone that they actually shed heartfelt tears—whether they be from joy, relief, or sadness—then you know you’ve told your story well.

The secret to creating the level of emotion needed to make your audience cry is this:

You must surprise them.

Not only is the element of surprise the best way to elicit real emotion from someone when storytelling, it’s the ONLY way.

Storytelling isn’t like real life. In real life, you don’t need surprise to get an emotional reaction, but in storytelling you do.

To create and enhance surprise in your story, you need to use your words strategically to create contrast immediately before you reveal the surprise.

You must establish expectations so you can then quickly do a 180 on them.

For example, you could describe the beauty of white snow falling on the grass surrounding a tree, then contrast it with the blood of a victim from a car crashing into the tree.

Here are several common mistakes storytellers make that ruin surprise:

Preempting the surprise with a thesis statement. For example, “this is a story about when I …” Instead of starting with the summary statement (the what) followed by the evidence, as a storyteller you must start with the evidence (the why) and then only offer the thesis when and if it’s absolutely necessary.

Not enhancing the stakes. Use the techniques described in chapter nine to enhance the stakes in your story. These stakes increase the level of surprise.

Not hiding critical information. There are many elements in a story that if made obvious to the audience, it will tip them off as to what is going to happen. You may need to tell them the information early on in the story for context, which is fine, but you must disguise it as something non-critical.

One way to do this is to group it with other superfluous information in a list. This makes it seem unimportant.

Another way is to place the critical information as far away from the surprise as possible. If you tell the critical information early in the story, it will float to the back of your audience’s mind, ready to surprise them at the end.

The final way to hide important information is to use laughter to camouflage it. Doing this makes it seem like you were just trying to get a laugh.

These three techniques can be used together for greater effect.

Here are the strategies for preserving and enhancing surprise in a story:

• Avoid thesis statements

• Heighten the contrast between the surprise and the moment just before the surprise.

• Use stakes to increase surprise.

• Hide critical information by obscuring it in a list, placing them as far away from the surprise as possible, and/or building humor around them.

Read the next chapter here.

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