Referring to your own earlier stories

Benjamin talked about the Moth storyteller Ed Gavagan referencing one of his earlier stories in a later story:

The thing is then,

he gets up and tells another story at the Moth,

and he does that thing that I myself would hate

and that’s why I try never to tell the same stories here

at all

which is where you have to reference one story

in order to be able to tell the other

And I’m like

oh God,

do you need like,

an index

to be able to follow what somebody’s saying?

But then to what degree is context,

to what degree are you telling new people versus old?

If you have a reputation and a history with the audience it changes how you talk to them. I’ve seen this in the last few months with Will’s stories about first his brother’s motorcycle accident and then his mother’s death. The two stories were connected, and when he told the story about his mother’s death he didn’t go into too many details about his brother’s accident because we had heard all about it already.