Look out, Ireland’s biggest landlocked county, The Chaosettes are hitting the road! From March 5th-7th, we’ll be at WordCamp Ireland in Kilkenny. We’ll be holding a special night in Langton’s on Friday evening from 7:30-10pm, which will include a short storytelling workshop, aimed at helping people to realise that they already have a strong voice. We can’t tell you how to tell a story, but we can show you what you already know.

The best blogs have a strong voice, so we like to think it’ll help with that, too. But mostly we just want everyone to be entertained.

EDIT! Ok, we jumped the gun on the workshop. It’s overcomplicated. So we won’t be doing a workshop, but since we’ll be around WordCamp all weekend, and the only thing we like more than telling stories ourselves is to be told stories by others, do feel free. And since you didn’t ask, we will be looking for willing storytellers among the WordCamp attendees, so contact us (chaosdublin at gmail dot com) if you’re heading down and you’re interested.

Someone’s gonna end up shoving a ball gag/sock/something uncomfortable in Jane’s mouth because she’s bound to go off on some Did You Know This Fact About The Butlers of Ormond Who, Incidentally, Had Their HQ at Kilkenny Castle There tangent. You don’t have to humour her, and you don’t have to listen to her, but for Christ’s sake, just don’t bloody encourage her.

At which point, Jane will cease to talk about herself in the third person.

And this brings us to this little video, which is taken from Kurt Vonnegut’s Bagombo Snuff Box, in which he explains the entirely breakable rules of writing a short story.

The same applies to live storytelling, and to your personal, roughly non-fiction stories. Of course, one thing you should feel more than free to do if you do become a Chaos Thaogahire storyteller (and what better way is there to include yourself in a category that features an OSCAR NOMINEE?) is to change names, details, and any necessary identifying characteristics so that you can focus on being as honest as you want to be. One thing we’ve noticed is that some people are a little reticent to talk about themselves, less out of the fear that someone will find out that they did something naughty and more likely out of worry that they will insult someone who didn’t deserve to be insulted.

But here’s the thing. When you tell a truly honest story about your experiences, you cease to be the hero of your own life. And once relieved of the pressure to revise your past so you come out looking awesome, you stop remembering why you cared so much about your own heroism in the first place, and by default, you reduce significantly the risk of insulting anyone who has come into your orbit.

You never say anything worse about anyone else who appears in it than you do about yourself — because you’re the human at the very centre of it. You’re the buffoon, and the world is your straight man. Not because we want you to humiliate yourself but because the difference between a good story and a great story all depends on just how much of a fallible human being the teller is willing to be. Where Kurt encourages writers to make terrible things happen to even the most likable characters, we would add that while we don’t like to be too prescriptive, or tell storytellers what to do, it should sometimes feel like a struggle between comfortable narratives and difficult admissions. You should feel a little bit of trepidation. You should sometimes feel you went too far, said too much. You should feel like maybe these people shouldn’t know this about you. You should worry at least a little that you’re undermining your own image, or at least pointing to some of the factors that went into its construction.

The audience is on your side — you’re the character they already like — so make the character — that’s you! — do things he or she isn’t proud of. You’re worried that it might shape people’s opinions of you, and it should — and thank fuck for that. There’s a quote about Superman in Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality, where he talks about how Superman would never park his car in a no-parking zone. I am too lazy to look it up right now, but if I remember correctly, it’s about how morally unambiguous he is in his support for the status quo. In other words, Superman is kind of a dick. Superman is a square, but not like how Jane is a square and a prude, he’s a proper square. He’s a morally upright, sanctimonious bore whose value is entirely measured in the gap between his stupid leotard power and other people’s inability to help themselves. Yawnfest. Superman, you’re barred. Just like Edison and anyone to do with The Doors.

What makes a great story is the deft slide along the scales of comedy and tragedy, self-deprecation, self-awareness and that uneasy relationship that we (personally) have with dignity. What makes a great story is the relationship between the expressed, and sometimes totally contradictory intentions of the teller, and the rather vaguer intentions and actions of the other people in it. What makes a great story is tragedy lifted by comedy, or levity weighted down with grave confessions. What makes a great story is fallibility, and as much as we like to go on about the importance of holding two totally contradictory truths simultaneously, one thing that isn’t possible is the coexistence of honesty and infallibility.

Besides, who wants to hear a story about your most dignified moment? The person who is funny without fallibility isn’t funny at all. No, that person is just kind of a cock. Or the pope. Same thing, really.

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