budding
Raise the stakes with an elephant
The big obvious thing everyone can see. Name it early so people know where the story is going.
An elephant is a large and obvious thing that everyone in the room can see. It’s the reason the audience is there and it tells them the direction of the story.
You want to bring this up as early as possible to give the story some direction, to tell people what to expect. It helps raise the stakes because it makes people more invested in the story.
You can even make the the elephant change colour halfway. Which is not about changing the direction of the story but the initial perspective of the story.
Like making people think a story is whether or not someone will get a spoon from the child which then transforms into how the child used the spoon to help his entire class.