Book Notes: Matthew Dicks — Storyworthy

Before reading this book, I was afraid that I bore people to death. As an academic, I have to talk to students and other researchers about topics that are often a bit dry. I also have to get my point across in writing before readers sink into a boredom-induced coma. This book provided me with some guidance on how to create engaging stories.

The Book

Dicks, M (2018): “Storyworthy — Engage, teach, persuade, and change your life through the power of storytelling”. San Francisco, CA: New World Library.

Review

I picked up this book because it was highly recommended and because I wanted to make my lectures and blog posts more entertaining. The author is a veteran of the storytelling circuit and clearly knows his stuff. The book draws the reader in from the first page, which is not something that I expected from a non-fiction book. In fact, I enjoyed his writing so much that I started to watch his stories on YouTube. I also got all the practical advice that I was hoping for, including exercises to find stories of my own, guidelines on how to structure a story, and neat tricks to make my stories more engaging. The examples and application are mostly geared towards storytelling. Because that is not my interest, I would have wished for some more examples of how these methods can be applied for other…