Thunderous Adventure?

For my live-tweet, I chose to tell the story of a city-trail walk I took with friends.

As we arrived at the trailhead, the sky turned angry, so the stakes became whether we would we get soaked or not. (Spoiler alert: we did not.) Throughout the walk, I included photos of the scenery around me, a bit of my search for beavers, and updates on whether we were being rained on.

Startinga walk with THAT on the horizon… will we make it? #EXSM3989 pic.twitter.com/j8BDxfg0tf

— Jessa King (@JessaKing12) July 10, 2021

I had a beginning, middle, and end, and included stakes in the story, but I found that a lot of storytelling techniques are very difficult to do without pre-planning, and any structure I ended up with was largely coincidental.

Wins

A few things I did well:

1. The stake I chose is relatable (the threat of being caught in a thunderstorm) and universal (the conflict of “man vs nature”).
2. I included characters (me, nature, the vilainous storm)
3. It’s pretty simple. Just a walk through the woods.
4. This story was written as I talk, so it’s authentic.
5. Bringing in the recurring themes (beavers, ducks, rain updates) created intrigue (although see below, because it could have been done better!)

Fails

Unfortunately, in reading through the thread, there were more things I could have improved than I did right! Here are a few of the things I would try to do if I were to do it over:

1. Including more character and emotion. I was the main character, and I didn’t include much in the way of getting to know the me so that you could root for me. (A few details I might have included: I hate the heat wave we’ve been having, I’m not much for nature, and I love watching a good thunderstorm from the other side of a pane of glass.) I did include the explanation of Pooh Sticks, at least!
2. Including more flow. If I were re-doing this story with the benefit of hindsight, I would have posted more explanatory tweets to tie the story together, and maybe even re-ordered. For example, I would have expanded upon the beaver thread throughout. My family and I used to visit the beavers in this park before the city exterminated them. A few years ago, the city started reintroducing the beavers because exterminating them screwed something up with the ecosystem (I also would have researched whether this was actually a thing or memories of a child!) and so looking for beavers was exciting for me.
3. Including more context. Many of the tweets were very short, caption-like tweets, and upon review, they could have used more explanation. Besides the lack of beaver context, I would have liked to have expanded those like “Babies! So cute!” to something like “We’re in full-blown nature, folks. Ducks (and babies, at that!), squirrels, beavers, oh my!”
4. Including more variety of media. I should have included a video or two, maybe showing the beaver dam, or the wind blowing instead of only photos. Also for some of the photos, I should have either taken them in landscape, edited them, or re-positioned their preview section as I posted them.

Next Time

Live-tweeting as you walk without tripping, slowing down your group too much, or missing anything — especially in an attempt to tell a story — turned out to be more difficult than live-tweeting an event where I post to capture the highlights and/or insights (and also where I’m frequently posting on a computer!). However, the experience did teach me a lot about storytelling, and I think I will be able to do a better job next time.

Note: Apologies also for the technical difficulty: I didn’t realize I was threading on the first tweet only! (Therefore Twitter is not showing the tweets in chronological order, but in some random order.) In any case, I made a Twitter Moment of the live-tweet so you can read it more easily.