Matthew Dicks
41 statements across 1 episodes · 15 bullish · 5 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Sep 3, 2024 by Matthew Dicks · said 2 times in 1 episodes since 2025 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Matthew Dicks's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
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brought up most by Shane Parrish (2)
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2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Matthew Dicks, oldest first
Sep 3, 2024 neutral
Dicks: Never lead narrative storytelling with a topic sentence
“You've been taught to write in a boring way, which is topic sentence and supporting details.
That's a disastrous way to write.
Because you're right.
Once you present the topic sentence, people know you're going to provide some evidence, and unless I'm like a n…”
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew Dicks: A Real Story Must Center on Change Over Time
“So a story is about change over time. Usually, it's sort of a realization. Like, I used to think one thing, and now I think another thing. That's most stories. Sometimes they're transformational, meaning I once was one kind of person, and then some stuff happe…”
Sep 3, 2024
Dicks: Stories Require Personal Change to Linger While Anecdotes Fade
“So an anecdote doesn't have to have change over time. It's essentially one of those, hey, this funny thing happened to me. Isn't this crazy? But it tends not to linger. You know, a story ideally is the kind of thing that when I tell it to you, you're thinking …”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Sep 3, 2024
Sep 3, 2024 negative
Sep 3, 2024
Dicks: Stories With Unresolved Endings Resonate Longer Than Neatly Resolved Ones
“When a story is not complete, when there are still unanswered questions at the end of a story, when the audience can sort of play it out a little bit on their own, those stories tend to hang with an audience much more. So we want our stories to not be wrapped …”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Dicks: Laughs in the first 60 seconds relieve audience anxiety
“If I make you laugh, In the first 30 to 60 seconds of a story, you now feel at ease. Because an audience always has that concern. This concern that this is going to get awkward for us because you're not gonna do a good job. Many, many times I have sat in an au…”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew Dicks: Small micro-moments are more powerful stories than extreme events
“If we start to recognize that our lives are filled with stories, that they're everywhere, that we don't need enormous moments in order to carry the day, and instead small moments are actually some of the most powerful moments we can ever share.”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Dicks: Revealing a plan in advance creates tension when it fails
“A backpack works especially well when a plan is not going to go well. You know, the Ocean's 11 movies, they tell you how they're going to rob the casino before they start robbing the casino, because things are going to go wrong. And you have to know what's goi…”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew Dicks: Storytellers must highlight their own foolish mistakes, not hide them
“If I did something stupid over the course of the story, I'm not going to remove the stupid thing I did in an effort to make myself look better. In fact, I will enhance the stupid thing I did, because I know that's what audiences really want. You know, that vul…”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Dicks: Multi-decade stories work best framed within a short present-day timeline
“Nobody wants to hear a forty-year story. A forty-year story sucks, right? So what we do is we turn the forty-year story into a week-long story, which is, my son is getting ready to go to camp And I don't want him to make the same mistake I made, so I'm gonna t…”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Dicks: Humor following difficult story beats provides relief and signals safety
“If you have to tell a part of a story that's really difficult for people to hear, a laugh after that can afford a breath. It can allow people to go, okay, I just heard that bad thing, but he made me laugh. He must be okay. Now we can move on.”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Dicks: Storytelling transforms ordinary objects and products into meaningful symbols
“When we tell a story about something like a spoon, something as simple as that, it suddenly becomes not a spoon anymore. And the better we are at telling stories about ourselves, the people we love, the products we make, the services we offer, you know, all of…”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Dicks: Compelling trailers establish relatable stakes without revealing resolutions
“We want to make sure that people understand sort of what the problem the character is facing, what that problem is. And Make sure that it's something that we all can go, yeah, I get that. But not solve the problem, or even let us know if the problem will be so…”
Sep 3, 2024 negative
Dicks: Stories should minimize physical descriptions in favor of actions and emotions
“People often think of stories as an attempt to describe something when actually nobody ever wants to know what anything looked like, unless it's relevant to a story. What people really want is to know what you felt, what you said, and what you did. And so if y…”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Dicks: Humor alters brain chemistry to boost perceived intelligence and receptiveness
“Humor changes brain chemistry in really meaningful ways. You know, causes you to feel closer to me. Causes you to perceive me as intelligent, even if I'm not intelligent. Makes you feel better about the world. Actually improves your cognition. All of those che…”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew Dicks: Narrative structure matters far more than sentence-level prose
“Structure is everything.
It's, as long as you've structured your story properly, meaning you've started at the right spot in the beginning, and landed in a place of meaning, and you haven't filled it with unnecessary nonsense,
It almost doesn't matter what the…”
Sep 3, 2024 negative
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew Dicks: Memorable Communicators Assume Audiences Do Not Care by Default
“The more you believe that no one wants to hear anything I have to say, unless I'm relentlessly giving them a reason to listen, that's really the difference between someone who is going to be appreciated and remembered and impactful and someone who will sort of…”
Sep 3, 2024
Sep 3, 2024 negative
Sep 3, 2024
Dicks: Stories Should Trigger Emotional Resonance Over Shared Circumstance
“When I tell a story, I'm not hoping that you are thinking, that once happened to me. What I'm hoping is you're thinking, I once felt that way. I once thought that way, or maybe someday I Could feel or think that way. That's the goal.”
Sep 3, 2024 neutral
Dicks: Corporate earnings guidance functions as narrative suspense mechanism
“Earnings calls are just like that. When they give guidance, right, their attempt to give guidance is both to make sure shareholders sort of know the direction of the company, but when they give guidance, you know those People are going to come back at the next…”
Sep 3, 2024 neutral
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew Dicks: Secondhand stories lack the power and vulnerability of personal narratives
“People want to hear the story of the person sitting across from them. They want to know that you're the one speaking because that requires vulnerability. If I tell you a story and it's not about me, the only vulnerability required is public speaking.”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Sep 3, 2024
Dicks: Story beginnings must be in direct contrast to their endings
“Well, they're almost always in perfect contrast to each other. They have to be opposite of some way. If you want change over time, for the end of my story, you know, I've learned a thing. At the beginning of the story, I must not have that thing learned.”
Sep 3, 2024 neutral
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew Dicks: Inactive characters should be cut from stories to preserve attention
“Like, you're just stealing bandwidth from the audience, mentioning that Martin was also in the car. Like, if you don't do anything, you're out of the car. You're irrelevant to me at that point because you're irrelevant to the audience.”
Sep 3, 2024 positive
Matthew Dicks: Speakers should remember narrative beats rather than memorize scripts
“Which is to say, you probably should never memorize anything that you say. I've never memorized a story or a speech. That I'm going to deliver, but what I say is we remember them. Meaning we understand the beats, we understand what's going to happen, but if I …”
Sep 3, 2024 neutral
Dicks: Isolate punchlines into single-sentence paragraphs for dramatic impact
“They lose the punch in the previous paragraph of, you know, the eight sentences and the punch is the last one.
And I say, take the punch out and make it its own paragraph.
It looks weird in the eyes of an editor because it is associated with the paragraph befo…”
Sep 3, 2024 negative
Sep 3, 2024 neutral
Dicks: Gambling's grip is driven by prediction psychology, not money
“It's essentially just a prediction. It's an out loud prediction about something that's going to happen because human beings are prediction machines. That's why gambling is so difficult for people. It's not really the money as much as it is. I think the Cowboys…”
Sep 3, 2024