When I was a boy, I had a dog named Happy. Don’t judge.
Happy wasn’t allowed on the furniture and he knew it. But, whenever left alone in the house, he took advantage of the situation by sleeping on the couch. Although we never had any hard evidence of his canine transgressions, like an eye-witness or a photograph, we had plenty of circumstantial evidence.
He acted guilty.
His favorite spot on the couch felt warm to the touch.
He was the only living being in the house all day.
Storytellers love circumstantial evidence because all stories are based on it. Think about the situation in the terms of the StoryHow Mantra:
A story is the result of people pursuing
what they want
Happy wanted a comfortable place to sleep.
We didn’t want him on the furniture.
He chose to do it anyways, thus setting up a story for when we returned later in the day.
Characters (people or sleepy dogs) are the seeds of any story. Storytellers plant them in the fertile ground of circumstance and then water both with what each wants.
Consider the circumstances that brought your customers to you. Which ones can you use to build your next business story?
Photo Credit: Bain News Service, Publisher. Judge W.W. Foster in judicial robe. , 1910. date created or published later by Bain. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ggb2004004866/
In the movie White Men Can’t Jump, Rosie Perez plays a woman obsessed with becoming a contestant on the game show, Jeopardy. Writer/director Ron Shelton builds upon this throughline (StoryHow PitchDeck card #40) by creating scenes that show her studying an array of unlikely trivia topics including foods that begin with the letter Q.
Writers use foreshadowing (StoryHow PitchDeck card #58) to place seemingly innocuous facts into a listener’s mind early with the goal of retrieving them later. If done well, the value of those facts balloon from inconsequential to indispensable, as it did when Rosie’s character not only landed a spot on Jeopardy but much to her and the audience’s delight, also drew the category foods that begin with the letter Q.
It’s all in the storytelling. Had she not wanted to be on Jeopardy (throughline) or studied Q-foods (foreshadowing), the scene wouldn’t work. But, because Shelton combined both storytelling techniques so brilliantly, the scene is funny and memorable. If you said, “I’ll take foods that begin with the letter Q, Alex,” at a dinner party, I guarantee that you’ll evoke a few smiles–an amazing feat considering that the movie came out twenty-five years ago in 1992.
Much has been written about the relationship between story and our long-term memories. We use mnemonic tricks to remember lists of unrelated things or recall scenes from quarter-century old movies. But, the relationship between story and memory runs much deeper than that. Human memory and story are interdependent. Memories can’t work without stories and stories can’t work without memories.
Master storytellers exercise listeners’ short and long-term memories. They add new facts to old memories to establish familiarity and context. Without the ability to exercise both forms of memory, stories fail.
Consider a dinner scene with four people: a brother, his sister, her son, and his daughter. To make the scene work, the writer banks on:
a) the listener’s preconceptions of family dinners b) the listener’s ability to remember the relationship between the family members.
But, what if that listener has a faulty short-term memory–one that lasts only a minute. After one minute, the relationship information evaporates, forcing the listener to infer from preconceptions of typical family dinners. Such a deduction will likely result in the incorrect assumption that the two adults are the collective parents of the two children.
Storytellers are memory workers. They place facts into short-term memories while retrieving others from long-term memories. If done well, magic happens. The storyteller creates both a long-term memory and a trigger-phrase to retrieve it–such as foods that begin with the letter Q.
At first glance, Mary Clarke Brenner lived an ordinary American life. She got married, raised her children, and unfortunately got divorced. But that’s where her story deviates from the norm. She raised those children in Beverly Hills, California and once they were grown, she traded her plush life for becoming a nun and serving the poorest-of-the-poor, starting with those incarcerated in a La Mesa Prison in Tijuana, Mexico.
I first learned of Mother Antonia through her biography, The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail. Reading about someone in a book is one thing, but being in her presence is another. She radiated goodness–a force that she used repeatedly to bend the impossible to her will, such as persuading the Roman Catholic Church to recognized a two-time divorcee as a nun.
My favorite story of her persuasive powers came from 1994 when she single-handedly ended a prison riot. The day started as any other day, with her leaving the prison to run some errands. She returned to find the prison on fire with armed prisoners on the inside and law enforcement plotting to retake the prison by force on the outside. Rather than waiting for that ugly situation to play itself out, she walked through the gates and into the middle of the fracas.
“Madre Antonia!” some prisoners called out, as they saw the white of her habit illuminated by the glow of the fires. They pleaded with her to leave so she wouldn’t get hurt. That’s not what the 68-year-old had in mind. Instead, she demanded that they end their nonsense by handing over their guns and returning to their cells. Powerless in the presence of this unarmed little old lady, the hardened criminals complied.
I loved listening to Mother Antonia. I mean, anyone who could end a prison riot without firing a shot obviously had wisdom worth listening to. And that’s when she shared a piece that has forever altered my viewpoint.
“Don’t own too many things,” she said, “because they eventually own you.”
She explained that if you owned a car, you needed to take care of it with fuel, insurance, car washes, and scheduled maintenance. If you owned a house, you needed to do the same things on a larger scale. She suggested that the more possessions that you own, the less time you have to spend on other things. However, if you choose to free yourself from the tyranny of possessions, you’ll have more time to devote to other, more important things.
Her concept also applies to storytelling. Beginner storytellers cram their stories with too many ideas, facts, threads, and characters. As a result, they’re forced to maintain them, which draws valuable time from serving their audiences.
The next time you work on a story, think about Mother Antonia’s cell at La Mesa Prison. She considered anything more than a cot, blanket, and pillow as extraneous. Your job as a storyteller is to introduce only the essentials required to tell your story. By limiting these story “possessions,” you’ll free more time to devote your audience.
Don’t own too many things. Because they’ll eventually own you.
For the past year, I’ve been working on a book about proverbs–you know, wise old sayings such as:
Variety is the spice of life.
Haste makes waste.
A picture saves a thousand words.
It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
I’ve studied over 600 English proverbs and want to see if my research applies to non-English proverbs. That’s where you come in. Do you speak another language? Would you be willing to share a proverb from that language? Here are a couple of examples of what I’m looking for:
Language: French Proverb in French: “C’est La vie.” Literal Translation to English: “It is the life.” Equivalent Proverb in English: “That’s life.”
Language: Twi Country of Origin: Ghana Proverb in Twi: “Obi nhyira ne ho na ɔmmɔ ne yɔnko dua.” Literal Translation to English: “Someone does not bless himself and curse his companion.” Equivalent Proverb in English: The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I’ve created a Google Form to collect these proverbs. If you have a non-English proverb to share, just click on the “I’d like to share a non-English proverb” button below to be taken to a short form.
Thank you!
Photo Credit: Tanner, Benjamin, Engraver, and John James Barralet. America guided by wisdom An allegorical representation of the United States depicting their independence and prosperity / / Drawn by John J. Barralett ; engraved by B. Tanner. [United States: Publisher not identified, 1815] Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2010634241/
Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey was a starving musician in mid-1970s Los Angeles. To supplement his meager income, he sublet the dirt floor basement of his apartment to another starving musician. Every morning, Frey would hear his tenant’s tea pot whistle, followed by the sound of a piano. Unknowingly, Jackson Brown was teaching Glenn Frey a valuable lesson.
“I wanted to write songs,” Frey tells the camera in a documentary called, The History of the Eagles, “but, I didn’t know how exactly.” Like most people, Frey imagined the creative process as waiting patiently for inspiration to strike. But that’s when Brown’s tea pot would spout.
“I learned through Jackson’s ceiling and my floor exactly how to write songs because Jackson would get up and he’d play the first verse and first chorus. And he’d play it twenty times until he had it just the way he wanted. And then there’d be silence. Then I’d hear the teapot go off again. And it’d be quiet for ten or twenty minutes. Then, I’d hear him start to play again. And there was the second verse. So, then he’d work on the second verse and he’d play it twenty times. And then he’d go back to the top of the song and he’d play the first verse, the first chorus, and the second verse another twenty times until he was really comfortable with it and you know–change a word here or there. I’m up there going, ‘So, that’s how you do it. Elbow grease. Time. Thought. Persistence.’”1
Folks, that’s the same process to write a story.
Elbow grease. Time. Thought. Persistence.
Sadly, most storytelling resources won’t tell you that. Instead, they’ll offer generic facts about our propensity to tell stories around campfires. They’ll tell you how our brains are wired for stories and that we’ve told them since caveman times. Others will give you high-level advice to “be yourself,” “be transparent,” or to follow some magical storyline formula. And while there’s a trace of truth in each of these vanilla statements, there’s only one way to be a great storyteller. You sit down like Jackson Brown and write. Then rewrite. Then think. And start the whole process over again.
Storytelling is about elbow grease. Time. Thought. Persistence.
There’s no substitution for the hard work necessary to create any story–whether it takes the form of a song, blog post, book, advertisement, marketing content, presentation, documentary, or movie. The best communicators bend the ugliest of first drafts to their will, add some details, remove others, and finally spit polish.
In other words: Elbow grease. Time. Thought. Persistence.
So, what do you think? Time to fire up that teapot?
Photo Credit: Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992001211/PP/
Paul Harvey’s voice filled the radio waves for over fifty years. He’s most famous for a show called, The Rest of the Story, where he’d tell a story of a famous person or event, being careful to obscure details that might identify either. The audience would listen in anticipation, knowing that Harvey was setting them up to reveal some delightful secret that tied everything together. He’d then finish each episode with his signature, “Now you know the rest of the story.”
The best way to understand The Rest of the Story is to listen to one.
While it’s always better to listen to Paul deliver The Rest of The Story, here’s a transcript of this episode:
Now, the rest of the story.
Remember these four words. Al was utterly useless. Al was utterly useless.
“I’m nothing but a burden on my family,” he once told his sister in a letter. “Really, it would have been better if I had never been born.”
Al had hit bottom by the age of twenty-two. His parents, impoverished, were no longer able to support him. He needed a job but nobody would hire him. In desperation, Al appealed to an old school friend–a fellow whose class notes he used to copy. The friend’s father had government connections. And a few days later, Al was being interviewed for a position at the Federal Patent Office.
Fred Haller was then director of the agency. He would conduct the interview personally. Haller informed the young man that he needed personnel capable of judging whether a request for a patent had any justification.
“What do you know about patents?” the director asked, and Al replied, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
The director blinked a couple of times–ordinarily he would have terminated the interview then and there, and yet, there was something intriguing in the young man’s frankness.
“Tell me a bit about yourself,” the director asked, and Al forced a smile. What was there to tell? He’d been thrown out of high school at fifteen. With no high school diploma, college was out of the question. So he applied at a technical school, but then he flunked his first entrance exam. So he went back to high school–a different high school–actually because his old high school refused to readmit him.
Now this time he graduated. He was even accepted thereafter at Technical School. But when prospective employers subsequently discovered that he had cut classes chronically and that he had passed exams only narrowly, and had treated professors irreverently, well…nobody would hire him.
Nobody would hire him! And now here he was in the Federal Patent Office asking for a job for which he was not qualified. What kind of a loser could summon up that kind of nerve? But Director Haller was not so certain. Yes, he had heard all of the reasons why he should not hire Al. But what he wanted to hear now were all of the reasons why he should.
You know what? That interview continued for almost two hours and by the time it was over, the director had come to this conclusion: Al was not stupid. He was simply a failure. If he were ever to stop failing and make something of himself, he would first require a large dose of self-confidence.
So Director Haller decided to give Al a break–a probationary job as Technical Expert, 3rd Class.
You see, though, property’s impression of Al is larger than life. He was not destined to guide lesser minds through space and time. In fact at twenty-two, he stood at the brink of utter obscurity. And then he got that job at the Swiss Federal Patent Office. And inspired by his very first unequivocal success, he eventually learned to live up to his best–his very best–and to become the groundbreaking genius the world now knows as Albert Einstein.
Only now, you know, the rest of the story.
Storytellers study the masters. So let’s look at the mechanics of The Rest of the Story.
The Rest of the Story is constructed as a story within a story. This inside-out storytelling technique delivers an outer story that the listener likely knows, through an inner story that keeps the listener from connecting the dots.
The outer story is based on the general knowledge that Albert Einstein was one of the smartest humans to walk the earth. The inner story reveals just enough hints to the outer story, but not enough for the audience to make a direct connection. For example, in the inner story, Harvey chose to call the character Al as opposed to Albert. He then deepened his deception by delivering facts not typically associated with a genius, such as a drop-out loser who couldn’t hold onto a job.
The inside-out story structure holds much value for business storytellers.
Lesson
Description
Stories can be short
The stories found in The Rest of the Story were always under four minutes long. This example story contains only 543 words.
Stories are everlasting
The fact that Paul Harvey’s show ran for a half century proves that stories can cross generations. Consider that this story of Albert Einstein is still relevant to today’s modern audiences.
Stories can have a business model
The Rest of the Story was always broken into two pieces: the setup and the finale with Harvey reading advertising copy in between. Unlike today’s link bait, Harvey’s listeners knew that a valuable payoff awaited them on the other side of the commercial. Had he disappointed them, the show would never have enjoyed such longevity.
I grew up listening to Paul Harvey. His influence on my own storytelling is indisputable. He taught me the inside-out technique of embedding a story within a story.
