The Art of Story

A toast or a wedding speech

Birthdays, weddings and farewells

The room wants to feel something about the person you're toasting, and to laugh once or twice. A list of their good qualities rarely gets there, and in-jokes leave half the room out. One small moment, told well, does both.

The shape

One moment, one detail, then land on the person

  1. Pick the moment. One time that sums them up. Small beats grand: a phone call, a car trip, the way they handled a bad day.
  2. Set it up fast. Where you were and when, in a sentence, so everyone can picture it.
  3. Find the detail. The thing you can still see or hear: what they said, what they were carrying, what went wrong.
  4. Turn it to them. One line on what that moment shows about them.
  5. Raise your glass. End on them (and their partner, at a wedding), then stop. Two or three minutes is plenty.

How it can sound

The week Sam moved into our share house, the hot water broke. Most of us complained. Sam came home with a camping stove, two saucepans and a roster, and for nine days we had warm showers in shifts, boiled on the back step at six in the morning. That's Sam. When something goes wrong, Sam is already at the shop buying saucepans. Mia, you've married someone who will never leave you out in the cold. To Sam and Mia.

The one detail to find

An object, or a line someone said. "He was generous" tells; "he paid for the taxi and said it was on his way" shows.

Leave out

Stories only half the room will get, anything about exes, and a second or third story. One is enough.

Build it

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