Writing for Organizers: The Bishop Miege Trick

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I used to do high school extemporaneous speaking.

Somehow, this was not the nerdiest thing about me in high school. 

Here’s what high school extemporaneous speaking is: you draw a question like “who will be the next leader of France? “

Then you have a half hour to research and put together a seven minute speech to answer the question. 

What a hobby. 

High school extemporaneous speaking, like all lonely countercultures, had many distinct norms. 

The walk, where you move in a circle from point a to point B with your hands in a particular place. 

The mistrust, where if anyone asked to look in your research box or borrow a file folder, because that’s what we had in 2006, they were trying to con you. 

And, most infamously, to me and one friend from high school I am no longer in touch with: the bishop miege trick.

Bishop Miege is a Catholic high school in the suburbs of Kansas City Missouri.

Gillian Flynn went there. 

It is not an all girls school, something I did not know until I started writing this email.

Every girl that went to Bishop Miege and competed in extemporaneous speaking always started their speeches with the same pattern. 

I’m even doing it in this email.

Here’s the bishop miege trick: 

Each one of these girls would start their speeches with the most banal story about other family members “when I was a little girl,” or “my mother always told me before I mowed the lawn… “ (okay well, they never said mowed the lawn. Upholding gender norms was a big part of Kansas extemporaneous speaking.)

You tell a story that describes exactly what you are going to talk about for the rest of your argument. The story mirrors your analysis.

Later, writing essays for school, or even later, trying to get organizers to understand why I wanted them to tweet, I found myself doing the bishop miege trick unconsciously all the time. 

Because as goofy as it sounds, it’s probably one of the better ways to explain information to others.

The Bishop Miege trick builds on all of our weirdo neural pathways to help us retain information.

Of course, I’m a cool adult now, and I don’t need to write about high school all the time because I’ve worked through all of it and I am totally fine, haha. 

So my stories can be a lot crazier than “the time my dog ran away which is just like what happened in Indiana state politics last week.” 

They can be about how I was really really bad at my job, just like Elizabeth Banks in the hunger games.

Or, you know, how the things we say about our day-to-day lives in 2020 might show up in the future, 2050.

And: I’m totally doing it right now.

Because even though I’m writing about the bishop miege trick, i’m also writing about structure in writing.

Because the way that we structure anything: our writing, how our day went — it’s all a story. 

We’re constantly making up stories about what’s happening to us and what’s going to happen in the future.

And sometimes, the easiest way to understand the story you’re telling?

Is to tell a different one, one that’s a little simpler.

Maybe it’s one you’re already obsessed with for some reason you can’t put your finger on.

Maybe it’s something your family does that bugs you, but you don’t know why.

Tell that story, and see what happens.

That’s the bishop miege trick.

So — for practice.

Tell me a story about something mundane, or even better: embarrassing. 

Then, connect it back to something bigger, a story you’re still trying to figure out the edges of.

good luck.

• H