Friday, April 3, 2015

Start in the right spot

Yesterday when I dropped my daughter off at school one of the office staff was waiting to talk to me. She asked if I'd gotten the note when I picked up my daughter.

" no," I said. "I didn't pick up my daughter yesterday. My husband did."

The woman continued talking about the note and how it was supposed to be delivered, and said something about a lunch order, and then the bell rang.

Impatient, wanting to get out of the way of the beginning of class, I asked what I needed to do. I assumed Sylvia needed money to pay for a lunch.

"No, no. You don't need to do anything. We sent home the money with the note."

Now totally confused I waited as she finally explained the whole story. My daughter took some money from our car (the keeping of money in the car scandalized them, but that's a different matter) and wanted to put in a lunch order. I had to explain to her she can't just take money and buy lunch, it has to be placed in a paper bag and I have to write on it.

The experience made me think about hooks in story telling. When telling a story it's essential the story starts with the right information to get me to pay attention--tell me what the conflict is. Then I'll pay attention to the boring but necessary backstory so I can figure out how to address the conflict. Amazing how understanding storytelling shows up everywhere.