Tale of A Drowned Car
Packed with practical narrative tips
Hi friend,
How are you? I hope spring has nicely sprung for you :)
Sometimes you bump into a live story by chance.
Last Easter Sunday while we were taking a walk by the South Pointe Park inlet, in Miami Beach we came across a large crowd gathered as if for a Shakespeare on-the-water show.
Only in this case, it was people who were watching rescue teams pull out a car a drunk driver drove off the bank earlier that morning.
The driver was able to swim safely out of the car. So no tragic story here.
An interesting aspect here was the visual layout. The squared sitting area allowed for a comfortable watching from 3 angles.
And like a theater’s curtain that reveals and hides characters as the story progresses, here the turquoise waters played this role as you’ll shortly see.
I was standing next to a bunch of people happily chatting away about their lunch plans for the day, while occasionally throwing jokes like “What if they lift the car and then it drops back in?”
Occasionally, a diver went down to ensure cables were tightly tied for the crane to be able to lift the “heavy fish.”
At times, the unfolding story felt like a screenwriter wrote it with a gradual build-up.
Why do I say that?
With the first pull, the driver’s white baseball cap surfaced up, triggering jokes about what size the cap was to which the cop on a police boat that fished it out said smiling: “No size” which drew even more laughs.
With another hard tug, next surfaced the driver’s belongings like sneakers, deodorant, and a Pringles box. One of the onlookers even spotted a laptop.
How about that?
While all this was going on, all of a sudden a giant cargo ship passed by.
Onlookers instinctively commented “Good thing, there is no bridge here” in light of the recent bridge disasters in Baltimore and Oklahoma.
After close to an hour of waiting, the grand finale, the payoff, the release, or the story’s resolution came into full view.
The car was finally lifted out of the water to happy cheers and applause.
Practical tips
What struck me in this story are a couple of useful narrative elements.
The endless patience folks had while waiting, the side jokes, updating newcomers about what had happened, the growing build-up, and the final payoff when the car was visible.
All these elements tell you something about human nature, community dynamics, and live storytelling.
Speaking about storytelling, I bet you’ve noticed that the Setting and Conflict already happened in the past.
People exchanged explanations about the possible event that caused the car’s driver to go overboard. Yet, they did not witness it.
All this action I describe above is in essence act 3 - the Resolution.
People at present time are experiencing the long process of lifting the car with a gradual build-up of a series of mini-events to keep it interesting.
They stayed on because they could imagine various ways of how the resolution event may look like. The car lifted, the car lifted and dropped, what state would it be in? etc.
This uncertainty and pure human curiosity kept people glued to the unusual spectacle.
Despite the unusual circumstances, you have good lessons here for telling stories from your live events.
First off, you don’t have to tell the entire story, some parts could be inferred.
Pacing the narrative with mini-events, not rushing too fast to the resolution, visual variety (e.g., cargo ship entrance), humor, and above all a focus on an unusual theme that captures massive attention.
Best,
- Shlomi
Shlomi Ron
Founder/CEO, Visual Storytelling Institute
story > visual > emotion > experience
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