Back in Germany, I taught English to a lovely Italian student (pictured above with an Aussie flag!) – he spoke Italian and German beautifully, but was a beginner at English. Despite knowing virtually no English grammar and guessing at vocabulary by trying out English-sounding versions of the German and Italian words he knew (quite a successful strategy, actually!), Antonio managed to tel me long stories and keep me entertained for most of our lesson time. Unfortunately that meant his English probably didn’t get much better, but I remember one day he taught me a lesson about writing and story-telling, quite by accident.

At the time, Antonio was planning a holiday in Spain with his family. They would stay at an apartment belonging to a colleague, the same place they had stayed four summers earlier. And he told me that one of his biggest hopes for the trip was that he would find his favourite sunglasses. (Ah – the hook!). “Why?”, I asked, of course. He went on to tell the story (not his exact words …):

Last time I was there, we went to the beach one day when there were big waves. Now, four years ago, my big daughter Viviana was not 12 years old, she was eight. And Vanessa was not nine, she was five. And so we went into the water, and I had one daughter on each hand.

We were jumping in the waves, and then far away I could see that there was a mini tsunami coming. And I didn’t want my daughters to be scared, so I turned them around, so they couldn’t see it. When the wave came, we did a big jump all together. The water washed over the top of my head and then it ran out again. I checked on my left hand, I still had one daughter there, and on the right hand, I had my other daughter. But then I looked up, and something was different. Everything was suddenly very bright.

That’s when I realised my sunglasses had been washed off my head. We looked everywhere but we never found them. But this year when we go back, I think I will find them somewhere on the beach.

Almost anybody else would simply say, “I lost my sunglasses last time when a wave went over the top of me and my daughters”. Antonio did perfect “show, not tell”, he kept me in suspense, and he made me laugh. All that with very little English. When I’m trying to write a good story, I have to remember this and avoid fancy words or complicated sentences – a great story can be told very simply, you just have to tell it in Antonio’s way.