Matthew Dicks
Storyteller & Author, Storyworthy · 1 appearance on the record.
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Matthew Dicks is a multi-time Moth GrandSLAM champion and bestselling author of books including Storyworthy and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. A longtime educator, he coaches business leaders and trains corporate teams on narrative structure and public speaking.
48statements → 3claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.98/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓
2 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
3 assertions · 1 opinion · 42 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Matthew argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Matthew Dicks on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Matthew Dicks said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
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 …”
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…”
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…”
Dicks: Wonder Woman portrays female hero as incapable without male sacrifice
“It's a story about a woman who is incapable of winning her own battles unless a man sacrifices his life and therefore inspires her to defeat the bad guy.”
Dicks: Lying in stories destroys audience trust
“The phrase, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story, I hate that. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say. When we lie in our stories, we can no longer be trusted.”
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…”
Dicks: Business speakers are forgettable because they exclude personal stories
“I'm always fighting with business people on this, because they never want to bring their personal life Into the business world, which is why they are round, white, and flavorless. Why they're all forgettable. Why everything they say is ultimately forgotten. Be…”
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…”
Dicks: Focusing early on spelling and grammar ruins writing for kids
“If you're talking about spelling, Grammar or handwriting, you're making a terrible mistake. You're making writing unfun.”
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…”
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…”
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 …”
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.”
Matthew Dicks: Stakes, Suspense, Surprise, and Humor Drive Audience Interest
“And then to maintain entertainment throughout it, I'm always thinking stakes, suspense, surprise, and humor. Those are sort of the four Mount Rushmore ways to maintain interest, regardless of what you're doing.”
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…”
Dicks: Storytellers should maximize delay when audience anticipation peaks
“So an hourglass is the idea that once you know you have the audience's attention and they're dying for the next sentence, you make them wait as long as possible. You flip the hourglass over and let the sand run.”
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…”
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…”
Dicks: Preceding tragic story moments with laughter magnifies emotional impact
“Right before I'm gonna tell you something terrible in a story, I like to make you laugh so that the terrible thing hurts more. It increases the contrast.”
Dicks: Stories work best when kept in the immediate moment
“I would say that most of the time, maintaining stories within the moment is probably the better way to go, but that one is, that one operates a little differently.”
Dicks: Beginning a story with expository background is a mistake
“That's how most people start the story, which is, I need to teach you a whole bunch of stuff so that the story will make sense. That's the worst way to begin a story, because no one has ever sat down and said, boy, I hope he teaches me a lot of stuff before he…”
Dicks: Most storytelling mistakes happen at the beginning and the end
“So I would say most of the mistakes are made in the beginnings of stories where they fail to Engage the audience. And at the ends of stories where they fail to actually say anything.”
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.”
The other half of the tape: Matthew Dicks's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode on the Knowledge Project. every mention, with the transcript →
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Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Matthew Dicks: The Storytelling Expert | Sep 3, 2024 | 1h 39m |