What Do You See When You See an Elephant? (How to Tell Any Story Your Way)
Any story you find can serve your cause -- if you know how to mold it and change it appropriately to tell it your way, for your specific goals.
As an author and podcaster, I've learned there are just a few ways to change a story to illustrate the big idea or advance the mission I'm exploring or pursuing. But the process of changing a story you find — especially one others think they know already — can get you tangled up in a web of sentence fragments and rearranged sections and bizarre new additions. It's enough to give up hope.
One storyteller recently gave me a lot more hope. Because he gave me something else: clarity.
Today, I want to share the four things we can change in any story we find to tell it better.
"Better" doesn’t mean more epic or popular. It means more purposeful, more customized to your specific situation and needs — your audience, your goals, your desire to express yourself a certain way, to connect deeper with the world and others around you, and get your creative fingerprints all over the work. “Better” here means “more yours.”
But before we talk about making stories better, I need to tell you my version of a story I found.
* * *
This is a story of a storyteller on a stage telling a story which itself was a retelling of a story told by another storyteller, who was himself retelling a story originally told by ... well, we're not exactly sure.
Got it?
If not, no worries. That's kind of the point.
I want to tell you a story I first heard from Derek DelGaudio. He's an American magician and multidisciplinary artist whose one-man show In and Of Itself has haunted me these past few weeks -- especially one specific story from the middle of his performance.
The stage where he stood to tell that story was in the Daryl Roth Theatre in New York. That's where he performed In and Of Itself more than 552 times, telling several stories, including the retelling of a story told by another storyteller who was himself retelling a story originally told by ... well, we're not exactly sure.
If I had to guess, DelGaudio (and anyone who looks like him or me) only knows about this specific story thanks to a poet named John G. Saxe. (That's our second storyteller.) In 1872, Saxe introduced the Western world to an old Indian parable. The parable has appeared all over the world, told slightly differently in different cultures, but the first known written version appears in a Buddhist text from 500 BCE. No one knows who told the story first.
On that stage where he stood 552 times, DelGaudio altered the Indian parable to better say what he wanted to say about the themes of his show: the idea of identity and the labels we apply to others and others force onto us and the problems with all of this.
That's what made this particular storyteller's telling of a story that was a retelling of a story told by another storyteller who himself was — actually? It doesn't matter. What matters is how DelGaudio took a story told for centuries and made it something more personal and powerful.
Let's start at the beginning of his performance, well before his introduced the parable to the audience.
When you watch the film version of his one-man show on Hulu, you hear the voice of DelGaudio narrating to us the following:
"They ask you, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?'
Later they ask, 'What do you do?' Which is just another way of saying, 'What have you become?'
It's not enough to have a name. People need something to call you.
…
(Woof. Maybe sit with that for a moment.)
...
(Right???)
DelGaudio continues:
"So you search. You look at the roles the world offers you, trying to find the one that reflects who you are.
Only a lucky few get to play the part they want. The rest settle for what's left or struggle with what they've been handed. Then we all learn to embrace our illusions of identity."
The story Derek DelGaudio told on a stage which itself was a retelling of a story told by John G. Saxe, who was himself retelling a story originally told by ... well, we're not exactly sure ... is the story commonly called The Blind Men and the Elephant.
If you promise to finish reading my piece, I'd highly recommend you watch DelGaudio's telling before proceeding with my words. (Apologies in advance if the owner of that YouTube channel takes it down after I publish this.) Here it is:
Next, I'll share my summary of the story told by Derek DelGaudio on that stage, which itself was a retelling of -- yanno what? Let's just push ahead, shall we?
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Here's my summary, after which we'll identify the four main things DelGaudio changed to make it his own.
My summary:
Six blind men are walking in a field, when they encounter a thing. They aren't sure what the thing is, so they start touching it to figure it out. But since they're each feeling different parts of the thing, each of the men confidently decides it's something different:
The man who touches the trunk thinks it's a snake. ("Look out, guys!")
The man at the tail says, "Wait, it's just some rope. Just calm down."
The guy touching the ears thinks it's just two big fans. (I'd question how he could possibly correct Snake Guy and Rope Guy with much confidence, but I've seen enough people tweet about science and medicine to know: Dunning and Kruger were onto something.)
"Nope," says the third man, pushing against the elephant's broad side, which doesn't budge a bit. "It's a wall."
"Whoa!" says the man touching the tusks. "This thing is sharp like a spear."
"Girl, you cray," says the last guy, speaking in 6th-century Indian slang. After hugging four round, sturdy, rough things, he concludes, "It's just four tree trunks. Nothing more."
They start debating about what this thing really is, until they finally decide to combine their knowledge. That's when they realize:
It's an elephant.
This parable illustrates how we as humans confuse our own narrow experiences and views with the absolute truth, often discrediting others' narrow experiences and views as somehow less true or entirely wrong. A secondary lesson, perhaps, is that we get closer to the truth if we combine perspectives and experiences.
That's the story as I'd summarize it.
DelGaudio's version:
I won't give you the entire thing verbatim, and I hope you did or will watch his performance. Regardless, DelGaudio makes four crucial choices when sharing his version -- all of which alter the story just enough to suit his needs. These choices also help the story resonate deeper with his specific audience, as well as receive his specific message better. Through it all, it’s clear that only DelGaudio could have told this story this way. In that sense, it’s his story. Even though it’s not “his” story. But it’s undeniable: this isn’t some general telling of a previous telling of a previous telling. This is personal to DelGaudio, his message, and his audience.
So what does he change about the story to achieve that? These four things:
He adds something.
He subtracts something.
He reveals something.
He extracts something.
He does this for a reason many of us need to spend more time thinking about when we communicate: He knows what the story is for.
He's not just trying to grab and hold attention. He’s going somewhere. He’s trying to inspire reflection and action. He’s trying to say something that matters about something specific. His show is about identity and the labels we place upon each other.
Here's what he did to shape a very old, oft-told story to work better in his specific situation.
Add Something:
In my summary before and in most tellings you'll find, the setup sounds something like, "The men encountered a thing and decided to investigate." Other tellings start with a slightly different but equally simple premise: the men had always wanted to meet an elephant so they could figure out what it might look like (by feeling it), and one day, they did.
But DelGaudio doesn't set up his story quite the same way. It's not a plain description. Instead, he adds a bit more personality and hints at a larger point-of-view which serves the broader purpose of that story, that segment, that show.
He doesn't just say, "The men encountered a thing and decided to investigate." Instead, he says:
"They don't know what this thing is, so these guys decide, instead of just moving along, instead of just minding their own damn business, they're going to stop. They're going to investigate it, and by God, they're going to figure out what this thing is."
Did you catch that indignation? It's really clear in the performance, but you can sense it in the transcript thanks to phrases like "minding their own damn business" or "by God."
Why do this? Why add these details to an otherwise common, simple, straight-ahead setup found everywhere else? Because this story is a means to an end, and DelGaudio knows the destination.
Later, he’s going to reveal something and extract something. The story’s setup isn’t just for the story’s later action. It also has to set up those two conclusions: what he reveals and what he extracts. His approach is subtle, but if you hear different versions told more generally, then hear his, you might question why he’s doing it this way. But when he arrives at his destination, it suddenly clicks. He was laying important groundwork, building towards something meaningful.
That's the thing about effective storytellers. They aren't just distracting or entertaining you. Their stories are purpose-selected and even more purpose-built. They know stories they find or stories they experienced don’t arrive fully-formed. You don’t merely plug them in, or find them on Wikipedia and repurpose them elsewhere, untouched. For storytellers like DelGaudio, there’s an intentionality behind the details they choose to add, subtract, or allow to persist in the story. It’s not just about the story selection. It’s story customization that makes the story work.
DelGaudio shapred this parable to fit perfectly inside a show about identity and the absurdity of humans using their own narrow perspectives of life to apply labels to others … “instead of just moving along, instead of just minding their own damn business.”
Subtract Something:
You’d assume that anyone who tells a story called The Blind Men and the Elephant immediately reveals three key details: There are some men. They are blind. There’s also an elephant.
But DelGuadio, maybe surprisingly at first, doesn't tell us that the men are blind.
Instead of saying, “There are six blind men,” he simply says the story is about "these six dudes" who encounter a thing. Only later, he says:
"...and by God, they're going to figure out what this thing is. But there's a problem with their idea: All six of these guys are blind, and even though they're all touching the same thing, they're all touching a different part of it, so they all think it's a totally different thing."
(You might consider this a type of reveal, and I suppose it is. But there's an even larger reveal coming up in his show. We'll get there in a moment.)
DelGaudio removes a detail most would never consider removing — again, not because he’s a genius (though he might be) but because he’s focused on saying something specific, and he pressed the story through that lens. By NOT knowing the men are blind until later, it helps the story further illuminate the ridiculousness of humans forcing labels onto others.
“There's a problem with their idea,” he says. Wait. Why?
Because the men are blind.
Because we're all blind to the truth of another person’s life. It makes no sense to proceed the way we do — to need more than a name, to need some other label to force on others. These labels aren’t grounded in enough truth to be anything more than (as DelGaudio calls them when he opens the show) illusions.
Ah, you might think, I know where this is going. Each of us is blind, like the men in the story. We can only perceive a narrow piece of the whole truth. But if we combine our understandings, we can see the full elephant.
The thing is, it’s right when you think you see what's coming that effective storytellers reveal something you didn't.
Reveal Something:
DelGaudio ends his version of the parable like this:
Anyways, the point being, these guys argue amongst themselves for quite awhile, and it was not until they learned to communicate and work together that they were able to see that the thing they were all touching is just an elephant.
Now, this is an old story. There's lots of versions of this really old story from all around the world. I have read every version of this story I could get my hands on, and I noticed every version of this story has one thing in common:
There's not a single version of this story that takes into consideration what this experience must have been like ... for the elephant.
Did you spot the reveal? It’s the final line of course. But why turn our attention to that idea? Well, if you watch his performance, you'll first notice it serves as a punchline. He plays it for laughs. That alone might be enough to pivot from the expected conclusion to this unexpected line. But that's not the reason DelGaudio made this choice. Not entirely.
You see, this particular storyteller wanted to take a story told for literal centuries and reveal something that perhaps nobody has ever considered.
I don’t think it takes a genius to do something like this (though he just might be a genius). No, I think the only reason he or you or I could take a story we find and tell it our way — even a popular story told thousands of times, maybe even for centuries — is because we’re being more specific. We’re not being more brilliant. We’re trying to say THIS, arrive THERE, help the audience see or do THAT. We press the material we find through the specific lens we bring with us everywhere, and in doing so, we create something new.
It’s his show. It’s your message. It’s my mission. It’s the messy bag of humanity we haul with us to anything we make. Most of us leave this part to chance. At best, we assume and we hope that our presence in the work will alter it somehow, making it ours. At worst, we don’t even see it. But DelGaudio does. He leaves nothing to chance. He intentionally shapes the story for his own purposes.
Once he's done that, once he’s set it up for his audience — adding something, subtracting something, revealing something, customizing the story to become his own -- he can now pull something out of the story in a powerful way.
Extract Something
There’s a difference between good storytellers and effective storytellers. Good storytellers might grip us, but effective storytellers move us. They move us towards meaning. In doing so, they inspire reflection and action.
Here’s what DelGaudio says when he extracts a powerful insight from the parable:
Think of it from [the elephant's] perspective for just a moment. Imagine you are standing alone in a field minding your own business, and six perverts come out of nowhere and start fondling you. And then they start arguing about what you are, and they can't decide. They can't figure it out. So they form a really creepy committee, and they discuss what you are. And they come back and go, 'Hey, we talked about it. We figured it out. You're an elephant, Elephant.'
What if they're wrong? I mean they ARE blind.
Or in this instance, what if they're right in the first place? What if these blind guys didn't stumble across an elephant? What if they really did stumble across a magical creature -- something that had a snake for a nose and tree trunks for legs and a wall for a body -- and then they just convinced each other, 'Eh, it's just an elephant'?
And worse than that, what if they could convince IT that it was just an elephant? And then what if this thing, what if this magical creature, didn't have someone around who knew it? Someone who saw it for what it really was and LOVED it enough to say, 'No, they're all wrong, and you're more than that'?
I don't know.
Maybe that's why we don't see those types of magical creatures roaming around anymore.
…
(I need a moment again.)
...
(I know, right?)
I'd ask you:
What do you see when you see an elephant?
Is it clear? Is it nice and neat and prepackaged for you or by you? Is it a long and jumbly list of things? Is it even possible?
Or how about: endless possibilities. Not one narrow label. Endless possibilities.
Isn't that the hallmark of being creative?
Isn't that how we can tell more powerful stories: by looking past preconceived notions and preexisting labels to see what others can't, won't, or don't?
To make something from nothing or to make something our own? To remix, rebuild, revise? To add, subtract, reveal, and extract?
Others place labels on YOU all the time, and it's likely that this alters the way you see yourself, pursue your work, and live your life. They tell you: You're a marketer. You're a blogger. You're an accountant. You're in a creative rut. You're the type who suffers from writer's block. You're a practitioner. No, you're a manager. You're smart. You're not smart. You're suited for corporate work. You're better off independent. You're the silly one. Nope, you're the serious one. You're the one whose ideas never seem to pass muster with the boss, the client, the audience. You're a rockstar. You're an imposter.
What if they're wrong?
I mean they are blind.
Or in this instance, what if the version of you they encountered initially was correct? What if others don’t stumble upon a marketer, a blogger, an accountant, an imposter? What if they really did stumble across a magical creature — something that had the abilities and interests of each of those things and more — and then they just convinced each other, “Eh, you’re just THAT thing”?
And worse than that, what if they could convince YOU that you are just that thing? And then what if you — a magical creature — didn’t have someone around who knew you? Someone who saw you for what you really are and loves you enough in that moment to say, "No, they're all wrong, and you're more than that"?
I don't know.
Maybe that's why we don't see magical creatures roaming around the internet anymore.
What do you see when you see an elephant?
When you encounter a moment, an idea, a story, a turn of phrase … your own reflection?
Is that thing just that thing? Or it could be something else? Something more? Something they haven’t noticed before?
See past the labels. Go beyond the current version, the conventional wisdom, the widespread understanding.
Add something. Subtract something. Reveal something. Extract something.
Make it your own.
When I see Derek DelGaudio, I struggle to label him. I suppose he's a storyteller?
He's a storyteller who stood on a stage.
He's a storyteller who stood on a stage telling a story which itself was a retelling of a story told by another storyteller who was himself retelling a story originally told by ... well, we're not exactly sure.
Got it?
If not, no worries.
That's kind of the point.