How to win at storytelling — Gráinne Maguire

Lockdown is no excuse to not stay laser-focused on your career; as well as candle-making I knew exactly what I needed to do to create Gen Z buzz about myself in the fast moving digital age - take an online storytelling course.

Everyone knows if there is one thing you need to create a viral TikTok it’s the ability to structure a personal story with a satisfying narrative arc.

Enrolling in my online storytelling course almost felt like cheating. I pictured the poor amateurs in the class, all from the US, comparing my effortless showbiz anecdotes with their simple tales of office drudgery.

I already knew what my story would be .

After university I misread a sheet on a notice board and accidently ended up in Italy studying physical comedy. It was only on the second day of class I realised it was Commedia dell'arte not comedy acting, so not larky pratfalls and Charlie Chaplin ankle kicks but stock characters and basically medieval Benny Hill. Now here’s the rub, I immediately hated it.

I was faced with a choice, embrace this pickle I’d plopped myself in and try to learn a new artform, or since everyone on the course was Spanish and Italian, just steal from the entire back catalogue of British comedy and pass them off as my off the cuff improvisations.

Every day for three months I felt like a goddamn comedy god. Remember the C plot in the sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart and A plot in the film Yesterday, where a character passed off the work of The Beatles as their own and ultimately learns it's wrong to steal? Well I lived that fantasy every day for 10 weeks and I learnt and regret nothing.

“How do you come up with all these characters', the other students asked, weeping, after I had just “improvised” the final episode of Blackadder goes Fourth.

“Just trust your gut” I winked and headed to the bar.

Never underestimate what I’ll do to impress gay men in leisure wear. This would be my inspirational tale.

So when it came to our Zoom storytelling showcase I was feeling very confident that my story would end the night on a high. My only real competition was Gunther.

Gunther was a German model and YouTuber who exclusively told stories where it absolutely seemed certain that he was about to be sexually assaulted and then the twist was, he wasn’t.

Bar jobs that were revealed to be orgies, Chinese businessmen who flew him to their compound in Hong Kong because they “liked his vibe” - each story left us slack-jawed thinking, oh my god, “I’m going to need to remember this information for the trial I’ll have to give evidence in”. This must be a ghost telling this story, I wondered, there’s no way he’s getting out of this alive as he regaled a night time private jet to meet a Saudi Prince who’d slipped into his DMs.

But no, like the Roadrunner, he always eluded the catch of Willy Coyote.

When he turned down the orgy advances he was cheerily given a €1000 bonus, the Chinese businessman just wanted to watch Bridesmaids and flew him home safe the next day. This guy was the Forest Gump of Times Up. And when our course teacher asked him what lesson he learnt from the experience it was never what we were all desperately mouthing at him; don't respond to modelling jobs on Craigslist, don’t accept a free holiday from your Twitter mentions, he’d always shrug and reply cheerily “ I guess I learnt life is crazy sometimes”.

The only person left before my turn was a distracted woman from Chicago who in previous workshops told very long-winded stories, the perfect fluffer. My headline set would be a cake walk.

All our minds began to drift off as she started talking about her mom working as a community organiser. Boring, I thought mentally preparing for my spotlight. Then there was this guy her mom worked with who she thought was great. Yawn. Two mins until my story. And how happy she was when she found out he was running for President. RECORD SCRATCH! Have you ever seen absolutely everyone on a Zoom call go from bored to realising they're about to hear a Barack Obama origin story at the same time? It was like when they played the opera music in the Shawshank Redemption. She was half way through describing a funny thing Michelle told her at the Inauguration when our teacher reluctantly interrupted her to make time for our final story. Me.

Your headliner, following a personal Barry and Michelle anecdote and a guy Jeffrey Epstein called “the one that got away.”

I looked at all those beautiful US faces with absolutely no one from the UK and Ireland and knew exactly what personal, vulnerable and soul baring story I needed to share. I’m terrified, I’m scared but I absolutely know for certain what the right thing to do is.

“My name is Grainne and I guess I joined AC12 for the same reason everyone does - nicking bent coppers.”

Things that have annoyed me this week: FEMINIST STATIONARY

Why are they selling notebooks, mugs and mobile covers with words like “Feminism!”, “Girl Power!”, and “The Future is Female!” on it for absolutely no reason? Because what are words anymore, anyway? Does any money go to women’s charities or foundations? Of course not! Why would that matter? Maybe stationary itself has grown sentient?

Can I buy a “Black Lives Matter” phone charger? A “Justice for the Uighur in China” make up bag or “free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe” positivity journal?

Why not use a movement for equality, spanning centuries, that men and women have given their lives for and co-opt it into meaningless words by the institutions that benefit from this inequality, to those harmed by it, for profit?

These dreadful soul destroying products exist because women are so exhausted by the rigged casino of capitalism we need pep talks from our stationary. The modern world has left us so frazzled we need our lunch boxes to reassure us that we got this.

In Beauty and The Beast, Belle, an actual prisoner in a monster's home, got to have a laugh with her sentient furniture. Now she’d need Lumiere to quote Maya Angelou poetry to her, before she could get out of bed.

We were supposed to judge the Wicked Witch for needing her magical mirror to reassure her she was the fairest of them all. Now that’s just basic self care.

Paperchase - god knows I love you but if I see one more notebook with “Fuck The Patriarchy” printed on it in italic rose gold, I will smash a window with it and my defence in court will be, the notebook told me to do it.