The Unbelievable Excuse | Mediateca de EducaMadrid

Welcome to The Explainer. Today, we're going to break down a truly unbelievable travel story. 00:00:00

And we're doing it so we can learn the secret ingredients to telling a great one ourselves. 00:00:05

You know, sometimes the absolute best stories, they come from the absolute worst trips. 00:00:10

Okay, so let's just dive right in. We all love a good plan, don't we? Especially for travel. 00:00:15

You get the tickets, book the place, you map everything out. It just feels safe, predictable. 00:00:21

Ah, see, that's where the magic happens. 00:00:27

That's the exact moment a simple trip turns into a story you'll tell for years. 00:00:30

And that is precisely what happened to a student named George, 00:00:34

whose perfectly planned weekend, well, it turned into a complete disaster 00:00:37

and, lucky for us, a fantastic story. 00:00:41

Right, let's set the scene. 00:00:45

Any good story needs to start with the before, you know, the calm before the storm. 00:00:47

Our story kicks off with George, a young Spanish student, 00:00:52

having what seems to be a perfect, totally problem-free weekend. 00:00:55

So here's our guy. Meet George. 00:00:59

He's from Spain, studying the Czech Republic for the summer, 00:01:02

and to make the most of it, he decides to pop over to Vienna for a quick weekend trip. 00:01:05

So far, so good. Everything is going exactly according to plan. 00:01:08

But, of course, it's the journey home where things start to go spectacularly wrong. 00:01:12

And this right here, this is the turning point of the whole story. 00:01:19

How you describe this moment, well, that makes all the difference. 00:01:22

Let's break down how to really make it pop. 00:01:26

So our first tool is all about building suspense. 00:01:28

And you do it with two key tenses. 00:01:31

First up is the past continuous. 00:01:34

That's your was-ing tense. 00:01:35

It's awesome for just setting the scene, kind of painting a picture of what was happening. 00:01:37

Then you bring in the past simple. 00:01:41

That's the short, sharp action that interrupts everything and kicks off the drama. 00:01:43

And here it is in action. 00:01:47

See that? 00:01:50

He was enjoying the journey. 00:01:50

It's calm. 00:01:52

It's peaceful. 00:01:53

It's the background. 00:01:53

Then, bam, a Rivezer checked his ticket. 00:01:55

That one simple little action completely shatters the piece and throws the whole story in a new direction. 00:01:58

So the reviser, a blonde woman, she drops the bombshell. 00:02:04

He'd hopped on a train that wasn't a direct route. 00:02:08

He completely missed his stop. 00:02:10

And now he wasn't just off course. 00:02:12

He was miles off course, heading closer and closer to Poland instead of his home in Brno. 00:02:14

Big problem. 00:02:19

Okay, let's follow him into the next chapter of this disastrous night. 00:02:20

Because a good story isn't just one bad thing happening. 00:02:24

It's usually a whole series of problems that just keep getting worse. 00:02:27

And believe me, George's night is about to get a lot worse. 00:02:31

Now, to keep your story from becoming a confusing mess, you need to connect the dots for your listener. 00:02:35

And that's where sequencing words are your best friend. 00:02:41

They're like little signposts. 00:02:44

Then this happened. 00:02:46

After that, they just guide people through the events step by step. 00:02:46

This timeline just perfectly shows how things went from bad to worse. 00:02:51

The reviser told him, you got to get off at the next station. 00:02:56

That station was a town called Prorov. 00:02:59

He had to get off there and just wait for the morning train. 00:03:02

So he steps off the train into the total unknown. 00:03:06

I mean, just picture it. 00:03:10

It's one o'clock in the morning. 00:03:12

The last train is long gone. 00:03:14

and he is all alone in a town he has never even heard of what do you even do in that situation 00:03:15

so his first thought is okay i'll just wait it out in the station not great but hey it's a roof 00:03:22

he even buys his ticket for the 5 a.m train but just when you think he's hit rock bottom 00:03:28

a cleaner comes over and politely tells him that his only option for shelter is now gone 00:03:33

the entire station was closing down for the night so this is it this is the absolute low point of 00:03:38

George's whole trip. He's been kicked out of the train station into the cold, dark night. And in 00:03:45

any story, moments like this are a golden opportunity to make your audience really feel 00:03:50

what the character is feeling. Which brings us to our third tool, adjectives. Instead of just saying 00:03:54

the situation was bad, you can use powerful, descriptive words to paint a picture of how 00:04:00

he's feeling. It's all about showing, not just telling. It lets your listener step right into 00:04:05

his shoes. So with literally nowhere else to go, George finds a spot in a little garden near the 00:04:11

station. And this is his reality now. He's lonely, he's exhausted and sleepy, he's freezing cold, 00:04:17

and of course he's worried and probably pretty frightened being all alone in a strange place. 00:04:23

All he can do is wait for the long hours to pass until that 5 a.m. train finally shows up. 00:04:28

So finally, after a sleepless, freezing night, George gets on the right train. He actually makes 00:04:34

it back to bruno but his little adventure isn't over just yet now we get to the grand finale 00:04:40

of course he did after everything he's been through he sprints to his class totally exhausted 00:04:46

probably looks a mess and he walks in late now he has to stand there and explain himself to his 00:04:53

professor in front of the entire class and here is the punchline when he tells the professor the 00:04:58

whole story the wrong train almost ending up in poland being stranded in pretrev sleeping in a 00:05:04

garden, it is so crazy, so full of terrible luck, that it sounds completely made up. It sounds like 00:05:09

the most ridiculous excuse a student could possibly invent. This slide just brings it all home. I mean, 00:05:14

look at the difference. The column on the left? That's just a boring list of facts. Nobody cares. 00:05:21

But the version on the right? By using the past tenses, the sequencing words, the adjectives that 00:05:26

make you feel something, you transform that boring list into a story people actually want to hear. 00:05:30

So let's recap our toolkit. 00:05:36

All it takes are these four simple steps. 00:05:38

You master these and you can make any story, 00:05:41

whether it's a huge disaster 00:05:44

or just a tiny little problem, truly engaging. 00:05:45

This is basically your cheat sheet 00:05:48

for turning any experience into a story 00:05:50

that's worth telling. 00:05:52

So think about it for a second. 00:05:54

We've all had those trips 00:05:55

where things just go completely off the rails. 00:05:56

The difference is, 00:06:00

now you have the tools to tell that story 00:06:01

in a way that people won't just believe, 00:06:03

they'll remember it. So what's your story? 00:06:04

The Unbelievable Excuse - Contenido educativo

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