Storytelling Mastery: How to Tell Better Stories

1. 1 Introduction: Hello, I'm Brian Birmingham. I'm a professional copywriter and writer, and I'm teaching this course mostly because to be really straightforward, I love storytelling. It's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember and got ultimately to where I am now where I get to write for campaigns for major movies. I wanted to put together a course that was a little bit different from a lot of storytelling courses out there. I want to step back from writing and from public speaking and from all the kind of niche areas of writing and look at storytelling from the broadest possible viewpoint. So we're going to look at all the fundamentals of the mechanics, I guess, that make a story work. But we're also going to look at some other less definable, more abstract qualities of storytelling that bring stories to life and really make them work. I think looking at a broad scope of storytelling will give you a better sense of what a story can be, what a story can do, and how you can bring your stories to life in new and exciting and interesting way. Are all written stories that we're going to look at in this course. And then we're also going to look at some videos for stand up comedy, for on screen presentations, for business pitches, and then do some interactive stuff with more of the day to day storytelling you might encounter in your life, such as a job interview and informal social situations. So let's take a look at the way storytelling comes into our day to day lives. 2. 2 Storytelling is for Everyone: Storytelling is for everyone. Again, this is not just for writers. Every writer has to have a grasp of story, but I think all of us have to have a grasp of story as well, because this is just a part of human nature. This is how we make sense of the world around us a story when you think about it is just kind of taking all of the chaos of life and everything that happens to us and around us and compartmentalizing it and organizing it into something that makes sense to us. I think this is just the way our brains are wired. It's how we make sense of the world around us. And with that being the case, this is how we're able to connect other people. Stories the biggest power of story, I think, is its ability to connect people. And so starting to look at it that way. If you meet someone on the street and say hello and have, you know, exchange some small talk, you're going to get a sense of who they are on a very surface level. But if you know a story about them, even if it's just the smallest, slightest most mundane thing, you're going to feel a stronger connection to that person. You're going to understand them a little more. It'll help you to develop more empathy for other people in your life. So looking at storytelling as a means of connection is essential, if you want to be a good storyteller. Similarly, story is a means of expression. I think if you're from the perspective of the storyteller, there's a saying in writing, you should write to express, not to impress. And I love that quote because it just takes so much pressure off of us as storytellers if we're called upon to tell a story or if we're writing a story, you don't have to be the most impressive thinker of your generation. You don't have to be some literary giant or some incredible impressive person. You just need to give people a sense of yourself and who you are. That's the only thing you have to do as a writer. So don't worry about trying to be important. Don't worry about trying to impress people. You just want to tell people who you are in whatever way you're going to choose to do that. And that's what's going to create that connection. That's what's going to give your stories weight, and that's what's going to resonate with your audience. And again, it's just part of our day to day lives. We use it every day. We encounter it every day, whether we realize it or not, and starting to recognize that will be really good for you as an aspiring storyteller. That note, you have interesting stories to tell, and I think this is something that we all probably grapple with on some level because it's easy to feel like, you know, you read these literary masterpieces or the stories of these impressive people and think, like, Well, my life is nothing like that. I'm just an ordinary person. Nothing's happened to me. I don't have anything to say. But that's absolutely 100% not true. And so many people feel that way. And even if you feel that you have interesting stories to tell, you're going to go through those phases of feeling like you have absolutely nothing. You have just that resounding self doubt about your own experiences. But I promise you you have interesting stories to tell, and we're going to go over everything in this course that you need to kind of bring them out and bring them to life, polish them up a little bit, and make them resonate with your target audience. And on that note, it isn't just your experiences that tell others who you are, it's your perspective of those experiences. So that also takes some pressure off. You don't have to have had the most incredible thing happen to you or have done the most incredible just have to have a point of view on things that happen to you. And once you start to think about your take on the world and your take on events of your life, that's the core of your story, and that's what people are going to resonate with because that's what you're going to be expressing and that's what others are going to connect with. So remember that, it's all about your perspective and your point of view, not so much about the events and experiences that surround that perspective and point of view. 3. 3 Situations in which Storytelling is Relevant: So, lastly, let's take a quick look at situations in our day to day lives when storytelling might be relevant. Obviously, written word. If you're a reader, if you listen to music, all that's based in story, rooted in story for the most part. Workplace situations, if you're interviewing for a job, if you're giving a presentation, a pitch, trying to win business, being able to tell a good story and connect with people you're speaking to is going to go miles in helping you achieve those goals. Advertising obviously, advertising is thrown at us every day, and the key point of any great advertising is to connect with the target audience, and how do you connect with an audience ideally through story. Social situations, of course, speeches. I know a lot of us get called upon to give speeches, even if we don't want to. I've certainly been there. Having a better understanding of story, I think, has helped me a lot with those situations in the past, comedy, film and theater, and then also even wordless mediums. So like I said, I want to take a broader view of story. And if you think of story through the lens, so to speak, of a photographer or a painter or an instrumental musician or a graphic designer, all of these artists, all these people expressing themselves are doing so with story. A photo is going to tell you a story, a painting is going to tell you a story. It might just not use the same core elements that we're going to look at, but that's the general purpose of these art forms and mediums. So all these different things have the same things in common. They're all about expression and connection. And I'm going to hit that a few times throughout this lesson because I really think that is the core of any great story is expression on the part of the storyteller in connection with the target audience. Then of course, they all utilize fundamental storytelling elements, and we're going to get into those as well. So we're going to start with some broad strokes and then get a little more specific as we go and then look at different examples in which storytelling can come into play. So Exercise one, choose your medium. A note on this. Exercises are totally up to you. This is optional. You don't have to do it. And I know everyone coming to this course is coming with potentially a different aim. Maybe you have a story that you're working out right now and you already know what your medium is. You know you're going to write a short story or an essay and you're going to try to use these lessons to bring it to life a little bit. That's great. You've got your medium. Don't sweat it. If you want to take one of your life experiences or one of your ideas for a story and workshop it through this course with the lessons we're going, these exercises will kind of just walk you through the step by step of putting that all together. So if you haven't thought about it yet, think of what medium you might want to use to tell your story. And this can be in person. You know, if you just want to workshop telling a story at a party, that's great. If you're working on a speech, if you're a comedian and you're trying to put an act together, whatever it is, if you haven't thought about it and you want to do these exercises, think about your medium because having that in mind will put context to everything we're going to cover in future lessons. That's the start for this. We've got a lot of ground to cover. I'm really excited. I think this is going to be a lot of fun, and I'll see you in the next section where we're going to talk about broad strokes essentials of storytelling. 4. 4 What does it take to tell a good story: So before we dive into some of the fundamental core elements of what makes a story work, we're going to look at some broad essentials that are necessary for any story to resonate with an audience. And a lot of these might seem kind of like common sense to you, but I think it still bears worth saying at the start of this lesson plan to get us started off on the right foot. So the first thing to keep in mind is that you have to have a personal interest in the story you're telling. Whether you're telling a story or writing, if you're not invested in it, you cannot expect your audience or your listener to be invested in it either. Make sure when you choose a story to tell and share that it's something that matters to you and that you're invested in what you're saying. Because if you are, that will come across. And if you aren't will also come across. So keep that in mind, personal interest in what you're saying, very important. There's a great Kurt Vonnegut quote, Pity the reader, at least it's attributed to him. I'm sure a lot of people have said this, and it's a great thing to keep in mind when you're writing or telling a story. Essentially, consider how your story is going to be perceived by your audience and why your audience should care. You don't have to have a fully fleshed out answer to this. Just starting to think of the way your story will be perceived by others is going to make you a better storyteller, because we've all had those encounters with people who will talk on and on about themselves forever, and we have no interest in what they have to say, because they aren't thinking about us. They're just trying to impress instead of express. So make sure you think of how your story will be perceived by your target audience, by whoever you're speaking to, and just keeping that in mind is going to bring your story to life in different ways beyond what you might expect. Relevance to larger context. In other words, make sure you have a point in what you're saying. If you're in a job interview, for instance, and you're sharing a story about a trip you took to Costa Rica, unless that's relevant to an answer to a question you're giving or to a question that's been asked, it's just going to be random and out of the blue and out of context, and it's not going to do you any favors. Make sure whether you're writing a story or not, there should be some relevance to a larger context. There should be a point to what you're saying in what you're writing. Similarly, keep in mind a perspective that communicates something about yourself. We talked about this earlier. You want to look at stories from the point of view of how it has shaped you or what you took out of it as opposed to simply stating what happened. Make sure you're keeping that in mind as you're telling a story. What does this mean to you? Why is it worth telling to you? How has it changed you or given you a different opinion or outlook or simply just what's your angle on what's happening? Well, think of the perspective that it contributes to the broader situation. This is the relevance to the larger context as well. What perspective are you bringing into a conversation or into a greater dialogue? If you're talking with someone, how is your point of view going to enhance the conversation or express a different side of yourself? So these are all just background things to make sure you have in mind to think of how the mechanics of your story are going to come into play. Make sure you're seeing it from all angles, and this will just give you a good handle on more or less just knowing what you're doing, knowing why you're telling the story you're telling, and why you're writing it. On that note, it's worth mentioning that some stories are just inherently interesting or fun or entertaining and that's totally okay. I think with this and with a lot of stuff we're going to cover, it's really easy to overthink things, and that's not what I want you to do at all because sometimes a story is just funny. Sometimes a story is just great and fun. You don't have to hit all these marks, you know, you just want to share something that you think is interesting. And if it matters to you, if it's interesting to you, then it's going to be interesting to your audience as well. So that being the case, keep all of this in mind, keep the point you're trying to make the relevance to the larger context in mind. But if it all comes down to, I'm sharing this story or writing the story because I love it, and it's hilarious or it's super interesting and worth sharing, then there's nothing wrong with that. Go for it. But just starting to think about these things is important to make sure that your stories are going to have the biggest impact that they can possibly have because that's going to put you in control of the telling. So with all that being said, we're ready to head to the next lesson. 5. 5 Stories vs Anecdotes: So let's take a look at stories compared to anecdotes. I think these two often get mixed up, so it's worth just laying out the differences between the two so you know. Story simply put is going to have more narrative structure. It's going to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. It's going to be more complex, and it's going to utilize the essentials that we're going to go over in the lessons ahead. An Anecdote, on the other hand, as it's defined is just a short, amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. This is typically going to be just a small event that's recounted from your personal experience that you'll share if it has relevance to a larger context. It doesn't have to have the complexity of a full story or all the elements of a full story. So let's say you're talking with some friends and you're all sharing injury stories, and you say that you once broke your wrist after you slipped on a banana peel. If that happened to you, I mean, I'd like to know that. I think your friends would probably like to know that as well, and you can share that without having to go into all the details of a full story. So it's kind of the event core of a story. A story can be shaped around an anecdote, but it doesn't have to have all of those layers. So I was talking recently, actually, just about an old job I had before I started writing professionally. I was a page at CBS, which meant that we helped sit audiences for different TV shows, like, you know, reality shows, multi camera sitcoms recorded in front of a live studio audience. So I was at one of the shows recording for a sitcom. We had just let all the audience out. And I was by the parking lot, and the showrunner, the creator of the show, the head writer was out there standing there, and I was standing next to him. And at the time, that was my ultimate goal was to become this person. I wanted to do what he did. And so I told him, I said, you know, I really want to do what you do someday. And he looked at me and you just looked off in the distance, and he sighed and he said, Don't do it. Then this family showed up and he walked away, and that was that. And I've told that anecdote a bunch of times. It's not a full story, but I love it because it's something that just I'll never personally forget happening because it was kind of a crazy thing to happen and definitely a little bit shocking. But telling that is just me sharing an anecdote. And the point of all of this is that a lot of the stories you're going to tell people are just anecdotes, and that is perfectly fine. Just want to make sure that as we go forward, you're not trying to do too much with what you have. Make sure that the key thing you're trying to do is just to express and connect with others. If you're writing a novel or if you're writing an essay or a memoir or whatever it might be, then yes, we're going to use all the elements ahead. You need to make sure that your full story utilizes the key elements of a full story. But in more informal settings or in more conversational settings, don't take an anecdote and try to turn it into something else because you're going to convolute it, and it's just going to get muddled and you might lose the emotional impact of it. So know the difference just so that you don't try to do too much with your anecdotes, and it's perfectly fine to share anecdotes. Not the same thing as a story. It's just good to know that as we go into future lesson too. Now for our next optional exercise, what is your story? Again, maybe you came to this class already with a story in mind that you want to tell and you want to fine tune and get it into good shape. And if that's the case, then great. You already know, you don't have to worry about it. But if you're not sure and if you chose a medium that you want to tell a story with in the last exercise, then now we change to think of what that story is. For now, you don't have to think about any specifics. You don't have to think about all the events, you don't have to put a shape to it or structure to it. You just have to know what that story is that you want to tell. What's the idea behind it. I put some thought starters together here in case you were looking to get started on something. These are just a few questions to get your mind thinking of a story you might want to tell in a personal essay in person, in a job interview, whatever that might be. Consider a time when you learned a valuable lesson about yourself or about life in general. Pretty straightforward. Again, this, I think, is one of those things where a simple question like that can go to show that you have more interesting stories than you know. You just need to think of the right ways to bring them out of yourself because we all have these moments that we learn something about ourselves. And this is true for the other thoughts Targars as well. What has been the greatest adventure of your life? And if you haven't had a great adventure, then there's probably a story in that, too. So think about that more broadly than just the question would dictate. How did you come to know your best friend, and how has that relationship changed over the years? Friendships, relationships, these are great ways to get into a story because these are moments that change us as people. These are people that change us and shape our world view. So kind of thinking of a good friend or a strong relationship in your life and how that's affected the way you see the world is a great source for a story. Probably my personal favorite and one that I would maybe be most interested in knowing is has an important moment or event in your life ever gone comedically awry? And I think we all have these moments. We all these times when we've embarrass ourselves when something hasn't gone the way we want it to, and these are always kind of a great starting point for a story. So you don't have to use these thought starters, of course, but these should hopefully just kind of get you thinking about simple, easy to answer questions that you have for yourself that can be brought out into a story. So get that together. You don't need to organize it, like I said, but just have that idea and then we'll move on to the next lesson and look at the foundations of great storytelling. 6. 7 The 5 Essentials of Storytelling: So we're going to look at five storytelling essentials. These are what I feel are the most foundational elements of story. And if you really get into this, you could get into a really long intricate debate about the structure and shape of stories. There's so much that goes into making a great story work. There's so much to be analyzed and broken down. There's different opinions about this. But I want to make this as foundational and simple as possible. So we're going to just take these five elements. And I think, as long as you have these, you have enough to make a story work. So these elements are conflict, stakes, plot, message, and character. That's it. Just if you remember those things, you've got the basic building blocks for any great story, as well as everything else we've already discussed. So we're going to go into these in a little more detail in the lessons ahead. We're going to start with conflict. 7. 8 Conflict: So conflict, I put this number one because simply put you can't have a story without conflict. Every good story needs conflict. A conflict is what drives the narrative, and without conflict, there's no message, there's no lesson, there's no point to anything having happened. Conflict is at the core of every story. Basically, we'll get more into this with character, but you have a character who's going to want something and have a hard time getting it. That's the basic model every story is built on. And if there's no conflict, then nothing is going to happen in your story. So in quality storytelling, we use conflict to escalate and intensify the tension, and this is going to get your audience more interested in what's happening. Conflict is going to move the story forward. It's going to define character and highlight your key points and themes. Essentially, in any great story, you want the tension to build and release. You want the tension to continue to build throughout because that's going to keep us invested. The more you can do that through conflict, the more you're going to highlight who your characters are, what your story is and how it can really be brought to its fullest potential, and how it truly expresses yourself and the points that you're trying to make. So think about conflict as a way to just continue moving the story forward. If you don't move the story forward with conflict, you're just going to have kind of this treadmill of events that might not have the impact that you would want it to. So let's consider conflict and stories in different circumstances. If you're interviewing for a job and you tell a story that has no conflict, that's going to be that's not going to give your prospective employer any sense of your character growth or development or who you are or anything you might have learned from a difficult situation, which is kind of the whole point of what you want to express in that situation. If you're watching a lecture or presentation or giving one, if there's no conflict, then there's no lesson to be learned. If everything just works out well, then that's that. There's not much point to it. And if you're watching a film or if you're reading a novel and there's no conflict in the film or novel, then nothing's going to move the story forward, and it's going to be really hard to have anything to invest your attention in there's going to be not much to grab onto, not much to care about. So conflict really is necessary to keep that story moving and to keep your audience interested. So without conflict, you can have an anecdote, but you cannot have a full story. For instance, let's say, if you're a big Harry Potter fan and you go to the grocery store and you see Daniel Radcliffe in the produce section and you go meet him and he's really nice and you share some jokes about apples or whatever, and you go on your way. It's an anecdote. It's a great anecdote. I would love to hear that if that happened to you, but it's not a story necessarily because there's no conflict there. It works as an anecdote because it's an interesting account of something that happened to you in your life if you're lucky enough to have had that happen to you. But there's nothing to drive a story forward. It just falls flat right there. So conflict is necessary in story because without it, you can't move anything forward. So remember that, I think that's probably the most fundamental element of any story. So now that we have a grasp on conflict, let's move on to stakes. 8. 9 Stakes: So our second essential storytelling element is stakes. So stakes are the consequences of your protagonist or your main character or you, if it's a story about you, the consequences of your protagonistic set or failure against the central conflict in your story. So what I'm going to look at that is basically to simplify it, what is the worst that can happen or what's the best that can happen. The greater the potential success or fallout your main character is going to have in the story, the more invested the audience is going to be in that story. So sometimes you'll hear people talk about raising the stakes and how you have to raise the stakes to keep things interesting. And sometimes it's easy to forget what that actually means. The simplest way to look at it is the more the conflict increases in your story, the greater fallout or success your character will experience from that conflict. So stakes can be external or internal. If they're external, they're going to be inflicted by the outside world. If they're internal, they're going to be driven by emotion, desire or need. I think to kind of break this down, the easiest way to look at it is to think of for external stakes, for instance, say you have someone who's trekking through the jungle and they get lost. And so now they're lost. That's their conflict. They don't know where they are, and the stakes are kind of low level. Maybe they'll get out, maybe they won't they're going through, and then they come across a Jaguar and startle it. Now the stakes are greatly elevated because it's a life or death situation and you don't know if they'll get out of it. And that makes N audiens care about what's going to happen next. For internal stakes, take something as simple as a love story. Say you're following someone, a protagonist, a main character who falls in love with someone else, the more and more they fall in love with that person, and the less we know about how the other person feels, the greater the emotional stakes are for that person. That's just a simple ratcheting up of conflict that's just going to be below the surface. It doesn't have to be as extreme as the Jaguar example. Nevertheless, the stakes are going to be raised as the story goes on. The conflict is going to increase, and that's going to keep us invested in what happens next, because that's going to determine what happens to your character, and that's going to shape who your character becomes and what their worldview is going to be. So simply put, stakes make us care what will happen next. Conflict is essential for a story, but the stakes from that conflict are what's going to drive audience interest in your story. And that audience could be the person you're talking to or the thousands of readers or viewers you're trying to reach. So make sure that you are clear on what the stakes of your story are when you're putting it together. 9. 10 Plot: Let's talk about plot for a little bit. And like everything else in these essential elements of storytelling, you could do a whole course on plot, and it could be 1 million hours long, basically. So I want to look at the most fundamental elements of what a plot is. I think the simplest way to think of that is to look at plot as structure. So this is how you're going to choose to reveal the key elements of your story to your audience. And when you look at it that way, I think it makes it a lot more tangible because it can get very tricky if you get too complex with it. So think about what the story beats that you have, what the story beats you want to tell, how you're going to increase the conflict and raise the stakes as the story goes on. And then how are you going to string together all of these key moments along the way to keep your audience interested in what you're saying. So as a storyteller, if you're telling a story about yourself or if you're writing fiction, you have all the elements you need. You have the beats you have to hit. You know point A to point B, or maybe you don't, and you're figuring it out along the way. That's fine, too. That's up to the writer. But whether you have it upfront or you find it along the way, you hold all that information, and your plot is going to give structure to that information. And that structure is what's going to resonate with your audience. So you have to choose what to reveal and when to reveal it. And the more you can hold back from your audience until just the right moment, the better. So if we go with the previous example I brought up in stakes, if someone lost in the jungle encountering a Jaguar or a leopard, if they're telling that story and they just say, I got lost, and then I ran into this animal and I thought I was going to die, but I got out. You just gave away the whole story, right off the bat, and didn't tell it in any way that's going to make an impact on your story. It doesn't give a perspective on the teller or the writer, and it isn't very interesting for the audience to just have all that information front loaded. You want to sparse this out, layer in those key moments as you go. That being said, the simplest way to look at plot in the most basic form is a beginning, middle, and end. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, you're just going to set up the premise, what the story is, and you're going to get the audience's attention. The middle is where you're really going to increase the conflict, raise the stakes, build that action as you or your protagonist or your characters head towards their goal until that ultimately reaches a climax. And then in the end, that conflict is resolved one way or another, and your main point is. Plot, you really just need to practice it because there's different ways to tell stories. Some people like to tell non linear stories and jump back and forth in time. Some people tell very straightforward stories, some people tell long stories, short stories. Whatever your personal style is going to be is going to come through practice. Getting an understanding of plot and how to structure and organize your stories and your thoughts is going to be essential in defining you as a storyteller. So just practice it. Don't feel like you have to have everything figured out right off the bat, because it's going to come over time, and it's going to come naturally as well as with hard work and dedication. Just know that when you're plotting a story, you're telling the story through your plot. You're finding the structure that's going to work to give your story its greatest impact. So you want to have that beginning, middle, and end, but you want to make sure that you're telling it all in a way that's going to engage and interest your reader and give your story the greatest impact it can have. So, practice, practice, practice, you're going to get great with plot overtime, but keeping those key things in mind is a great place to start. 10. 11 Message: There's a famous quote by an old playwright named Los Heart that goes, if you want to send a message, call Western Union. This is an old quote, so that was back when you had to use companies like Western Union to send messages. And a quick fun fact about that quote are fun for me or people who like movies. It's often misattributed to Samuel Goldwyn of Metro Goldwin Meyer, but it is actually from the playwright Moss Hart. So typical just a writer not getting credit for something for almost 100 years. Um, the point of that quote, if you want to send a message, call Western Union is not to try to shoehorn messages into movies or books or whatever story you're telling, because that's not why an audience typically goes to watch a movie. They don't need to be preached to or lectured or whatever. And there is some truth to that, I think. And so when we talk about message here, I'm not talking about it in the sense of you trying to work a moral into whatever story you're telling or want to write. It's more about knowing why you're telling the story. What is the point of telling the story? Remembering that sometimes stories are just interesting and fun. But why this message that you're getting across is going to vary by the context in which the story is being told and the medium through which it's told. What this is really about is understanding the why behind the story you're telling. Why are you telling the story you're telling? I think just thinking about having that intention behind it is going to give it that much more impact. Of course, as writers, especially, we might write a story and have no idea why we wrote it. We might not know what it means or what it says about us or what we're trying to do with it. I fully not only support that, but encourage it. You should write without having to think about why you're doing it all the time. It's more of thinking about it after and kind of looking at it and saying, Well, where did this come from? What does it mean? And if you have an answer, great, if you don't, great, but just putting that thought into it and knowing what the kind of message you're conveying what your story is and what the point of it is, is going to make it come to life that much. I think another way to think of this maybe is as theme, you know, kind of theme is a little bit separate of a concept, but what's the recurring idea? What's the motivation behind you telling this story? Think about the relevance to the situation in which the story is being told. So again, if you're writing a creative piece, a novel or essay or whatever, then maybe the relevance is just peer expression. That means of just telling your audience what you have to say. Um, but if you're at a party or on a date or at a job interview, the story you're telling should have some relevance to the moment at hand and to the context in which it's being told. So understanding where you're coming from with that is essential. There should be some emotional resonance, too. When you're talking about when you're telling a story, what is the emotional connection you're hoping to achieve with your reader or with your target audience? So just starting to think about these things a little bit and your stories and the stories that you tell the stories you write is going to just bring them to life that much more because you're going to be more in command of what you're doing instead of just flying by the seat of your pants and hoping something sticks. So think of your message, think of the why behind your story and let that kind of shape and guide the way that it comes to life. 11. 12 Characters: Save the best for last year because in my mind, characters are the most important part of any story. You can have a bad story with great characters, and that's going to be much more interesting than a great story with bad characters. And the reason for that, I believe, is that we connect with characters more than we connect with situations, events, and experiences. That's what tends to draw us into stories are the characters that resonate with us and that we remember long after we finished reading a book or watching a movie. So characters give a story context, and the most interesting part of how you utilize your conflict, your stakes, your plot, your message is how it has an impact on your characters. So if you look at the examples we were talking about earlier with someone who treks into the jungle and comes across a a Jaguar and what they do next. That's not as interesting as knowing who that person is because who that person is and why they're there is going to open up so many more possibilities of what that story is than that situation alone. Even if that's you, why were you there? How did you react? What did you do? What did it mean to you? That means more than the events that happened. Likewise, that's true for the other example we touched on with someone who falls deeper in love with someone who they don't know if they're loving them back. Who is that person and why does it matter so much to them? What are the potential effects on them as a character if things go well or if they go bad? These kinds of questions just open up a story way beyond any circumstance or experience or event can. That's what's going to give your story weight and that's what your audience or your readers or whoever you're talking to is going to resonate with the most. Think about characters more than anything else with your story because the way that everything affects them is what is at the heart of your story. 12. 13 Main Characters: Let's take a quick look who the main characters in your stories are going to be in any story, really, who they'll be. So you're always going to have a protagonist, and a protagonist is going to be the hero of the story or the main character. And in every good story, a protagonist has something that they want. And that's more or less what a good story is about is a protagonist trying to get what they want. Oftentimes, a protagonist will also have a need. Usually they won't know what this need is until they reach the end, and it's usually in opposition to what they your conflict is going to stand in the way of your protagonists getting what they want. Your stakes are going to determine what the consequences of that quest is going to be of them getting from point A to point B and whether they succeed or fail, what that will mean for your character and how that will shape them. And the plot is going to tell us how they get from point A to point B and how they learn. So all these pieces kind of work together. And the same is true for other types of characters. On the other side, you have the antagonist. So this is the primary oppositional force to your protagonist. An antagonist can be a character or it can be a circumstance that's standing in the way of your protagonist getting what they want. Similarly, an antagonist wants to achieve something, and often it's in direct opposition to the protagonist goal. This oppositional force, this extra source of conflict is going to be something that shapes your protagonist as a character and gives us something as an audience that we can relate to. Then in addition to your protagonist and antagonist, you have supporting characters. Your supporting characters are going to assist your protagonist on their journey. Similarly, a lot of antagonists have supporting characters as well who support them on their journey. Assistance can be emotional, physical, mental, or all three. Your supporting characters are going to help to drive the story forward and to shape your character as the story comes together. And it's going to make your stories more dynamic and give them some shape. I think it's worth thinking about all of this because, you know, this is really sort of technical stuff that goes into making a story work, and it's all necessary for a story to work and for characters to work. But when we're looking at storytelling broadly, rather, each of us really kind of wants to be the hero of our own story. We tend to contextualize our lives in that way. We tend to see ourselves as the hero of our own story. We are the protagonists in our own lives. Seeing ourselves this way shapes our perspective and our world view, the way we view ourselves, the way we view our stories, and the people around us. I think this is where great stories come from. As you as a character taking in your world view and viewing yourself a character and seeing what you want, what you need, who you are as a person, and who and what has changed you as a person, for better or for worse. So this allows us to see our flaws, our shortcomings, the lessons we learned, our growth along the way. All this stuff is more integral to a story, I think, than anything else. Kind of having characters that if you're telling a story, characters you can relate to or understand, and for reader, characters who we feel like we can get behind, who we see a little bit of ourselves in maybe Characters are, I think, the most fundamental part of any story, but characters are only as good as the other elements of your story that you have working. So if you don't have a great conflict, if you don't have great stakes, if you don't have a great message behind it all, then characters can easily fall flat, not be challenged enough and not kind of come across on the page or in the telling as well as you might think about who the characters are and the stories that you want to tell. This isn't part of the exercise, but it's kind of something good to have in mind. I think a lot of great stories really begin with character. Sometimes you have an idea for just a person and you don't know who they are, but they kind of just pop into your imagination and start to take shape. And I think when that happens, you truly can build a whole story just around knowing who that character is. So think about character seriously, take it seriously. Don't breeze by it when you're writing your stories because it's going to be one of the most integral parts to your stories coming to life. So in the next lesson, we're going to look at some additional elements to enhance our storytelling. 13. 14 Style: Let's take a look at some additional elements to enhance your storytelling. The first thing I want to look at is style. So style is often referred to as voice. I think if you're a writer, you're probably familiar with hearing this. Someone says, What's your voice? They want voice driven work. And they talk about authors or writers movies, whatever it might be having a distinct voice. This really means is, this is what makes the story you're telling uniquely your own. So how is your personality and your perspective going to come through in your writing or the way that you tell your story? And so just a note on these slides, too, I say, told or telling a lot in this, and this is synonymous with writing for the purpose of this exercise. So how is your personality and perspective going to affect the story being told the story you're writing, whatever it might be? I think you can have the same exact story, and if you give it to two different people, they're going to tell it in a completely different way. Let's say you have a premise for a story and you give it to one writer, you give it to another writer. Both of them are going to come away with something different. If you give it to a speaker or a comedian, two different comedians, they're going to have a completely different point of view on what that story is and where it goes. This is what's so great about storytelling, and this is also part of why you have such interesting stories to tell because your stories are always just by nature, going to be unique to yourself. Finding that style is really a way to fine tune the way that you tell stories and express yourself authentically. You want to let them showcase your personality and who you are and let that come through in the telling or the writing. Biggest point with style is to make sure that you're making it your own. I think every single person who wants to write has gone through this process where you start writing something and you're reading an author you love or you're watching movies you love. And then all of a sudden you realize you're basically unwittingly emulating that author. You're going to write in a style that's not yours. It's theirs because that's what is drawing you to want to write and tell your story. That's a perfectly natural thing to do. It happens to literally every single person who wants to write, but becoming conscious of style and becoming aware of different styles is going to affect your ability to pull out what makes you unique and what makes your stories your own. Let's take a look at some style examples in literature here. This first example is from Kira Jane Buxton. She's a great writer. She wrote a series of books. There's two right now. I think there's going to be a third called Hollow Kingdom, and this is a story about a crow during the apocalypse and the crow narrates the story. Already right there, you can get a sense of what the style is going to be. Let's take a look at an early section of that book. Big Jim and I were in the yard. He had a paps blue ribbon beer in hand, classic Big Jim and was stooping intermittently to yank out a weed the size of a labradoole. Things grow heartily in our state of Washington emerald moss, honey crisp apples, sweet cherries, big dreams, caffeine addiction, and acute passive aggression. Where was I? Right. A summer evening glaze of gold varnish coated our yard with the fat frog fountain in that smug faced gnome that I've been trying to sabotage since I moved in. And then Big Jim's eyeball fell out. So, off the bat here, you can tell, this is a very unique style. It's not really comparable to many other people. It's distinct to Tekia Jane Buxton in the way that she writes, and the way that that book unfolds. And it's very fun. It's very funny if you're into this kind of stuff. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it. But this just kind of goes to show how your style can set the tone for your story right off the bat. So let's take a look at a very different example. We'll look at Ernest Hemingway with the Old Man in the Sea. This is the first sentence of the book. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream, and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish. Pretty much right to the point, which is why a lot of people reference Hemingway's style as being distinct because he kind of created this way of writing that's extremely concise, extremely to the point, doesn't use any flourish or big words except where necessary. This first sentence essentially serves just as an answer to what the title is. The Old Man on the Sea, it tells you exactly who the Old Man is and what his problem is. You can see just two very different approaches to story here, obviously two very different stories. But the way that they're told sets the stage for the way that the whole story will unfold as you continue to read it lets your reader or your audience know what they're in for. Let's take another look at a style example here, one of my favorite writers Kurt Bonegut. This is in the opening pages to his popular book, Slaughter House five. Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He's walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. So what I love about Vong in this book in particular is just the way he can blend serious subjects. This is a book about war, book about war with these kind of fantastical sci fi elements. And that's a very distinct blend of genres, and he does it better than a lot of people have ever done it before, and a lot of kind of followed in his footsteps. But he sort of was the one to set the tone for this type of writing. And I love this style just in the way that it lets you know off the bat, like all the other examples, what you're in for. And it does it in a way that's fun and entertaining as opposed to trying to be dark or heavy or whatever you might expect out of a war book. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it just tells you this is what his style is. This is what it's going to be, and this is how the book is going to go. And I think that's just great. So next, we're going to take a look at setting. 14. 15 Setting: Let's take a look at setting. Simply put, setting is the time and place in which your story takes place. And this is going to impact the tone of the story you're telling. A story set in the desert is going to be very different from a high seas adventure, for instance. So giving your audience a sense of where they're going to be or where the story is going to take them off the bat is going to help to enhance the story you're telling and really bring them in. I think it's an easy thing to kind of overlook when you're writing or telling a story because it seems secondary or can easily seem secondary to the characters to the plot, to everything that's happening. But setting is crucial for your story because it just impacts everything else that's going to happen. It gives context to the message that you're sharing, and it lets people know what they're in for. So let's take a look at a few examples of setting. We're going to start with an essay and then an excerpt from a novel. First is an essay by Joan Didion called Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream. This was written in 1966. And if you're familiar with Joan Didion, she was a very she's one of the most prominent California writers probably of all time. She's also one of the most prominent writers of all time. And if you're not familiar with her, certainly go grab some of her books, her essays, her novels. They're very dark and just interesting and brilliant and a I won't spend too much time there, but she was great with setting. And I think she wrote about California in a way that was very different. And this opening passage from this essay sets the stage for a story that's not your typical breezy palm trees, beachy California. So let's take a look at this. This is a story about love and death and the golden land and begins with the country. The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by the San Bernardino Freeway, but is in certain ways an alien place. Not the coastal California, the subtropical twilight and the soft westerlyes off the Pacific, but a harsher California haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot, dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and winds through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves. October is the bad month for the wind, the month when breathing is difficult and the hills blaze up spontaneously. There's been no rain since April. Every voice seems a scream. It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread wherever the wind blows. So that sets the stage pretty clearly where that essay might go. And like I said, this isn't the California you typically read about. And this is also why setting is so important because you could say, Oh, this is set out in East Los Angeles. And that doesn't give you a sense of what the context of the story is and where it's going to go. So using your language, using your ability to describe where you are, the way that she does so well here is going to go a long way in just giving your stories that extra weight and that extra punch and really kind of drawing your reader in and letting them know what they're in. Let's take a look now at an excerpt from Frederick Bachman's novel Bear town. And this novel is set in a fictional town called Bear town in Sweden. And this first passage kind of gives you a sense of what the town is, for a novel that's named after the town in which it takes place, you've got to do a pretty good job letting your reader know off the bat where they are. So let's take a look at this excerpt for Bartown. Town wakes early like it does every day. Small towns need a head start if they're going to have any chance in the world. The rows of cars in the parking lot outside the factory are already covered in snow. People are standing in silent lines with their eyes half open and their minds half closed, waiting for their electronic punch cards to verify their existence to the clocking in machine. They stamp the slush off their boots with autopilot eyes and answering machine voices while they wait for their drug of choice, caffeine or nicotine or sugar to kick in and render their bodies at least tolerably functional until the first break. Out on the road, the commuters set off for bigger towns beyond the forest. Their gloves slam against heating vents, and their curses are the sort you only think of uttering when you're drunk, dying or sitting in a far too cold pujot far too early in the morning. So I love this example because again, you could just say, this is a small town in Sweden. It's a small town out in the forest or out in the woods, and it's cold. Um, but the way that he describes it gives you not just a sense of the place but a sense of the people there and a sense of the general energy of the town and the sense of what these people's lives are. And just in those two paragraphs that does so much to pull you into the story and let you as the reader, know what you're in for, and it gives so much context to everything that comes later in the story. So setting just plays a very crucial role in your story, and I just want to make sure you don't overlook it. It doesn't have to be overthought just like everything else, but it needs to be factored in if you want your story to have some weight. So next, we're going to take a look at imagery. 15. 16 Imagery: We've looked at style and setting. Style is going to be the way that you tell your story that's unique to you. Setting is going to let your audience know where your story takes place and when it takes place. I imagery, very straightforward, it's just about your ability to describe what's happening, the detail you include, and the kind of language you use to help your audience visualize the story as clearly as possible. I think this is where you can really get creative with how you choose to describe certain events in your story so that your audience can picture it in their head. So if someone's telling you a story, some storytellers are great at putting you right in the scene and you can just see it as clearly as possible. And then sometimes things can be kind of vague, and the more vague you are with your story, the harder it is going to be for people to connect with it. So using imagery well is an essential element of bringing your stories to life let's look at a few examples here. I'm going to start with Gabrielle Zevn's book tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Like everything that we've touched on, Great read, highly recommend if you haven't read it yet. But I think this passage is a great example of imagery. But the game room was not empty. A boy was playing Super Mario Bros. Sadie determined he was a sick kid and not a sibling or a visitor like herself. He was wearing pajamas in the middle of the day. A pair of crutches rested on the floor beside his chair, and his left foot was surrounded by a medieval looking cage like contraption. Estimated the boy was her age, 11 or a little older. He had tangled curly black hair, a puggish nose, glasses, a cartoonishly round head. In Sadie's art class at school, she had been taught to draw by breaking things down into basic shapes. To depict this boy, she would have needed mainly circles. I went back and found that passage for the purposes of this chorus simply because of that last sentence because it stuck with me so well. That character who was introduced there as a kid, he comes back he's in the whole story, and he grows through the story. But that description of him stuck with me the whole time I read it because you can picture that so clearly. Obviously, she sets the scene of the game room with the video game. He's an 11-year-old boy. His foot's broken. He's got the crutches. But I love that description of breaking things down into circles and thinking of him in that way because it just kind of paints that picture right off the bat in your head. So let's take a look at one more example here. This is from an author named Kevin Wilson. Great author. This is a short story called the choir director affair, the baby's Teeth. This is the baby, and yes, those are teeth. They are not important. Don't think about them. Nothing special this baby with teeth. Usually, it is only a snaggle tooth, a single perfectly formed tooth and a tiny mouth unlike the full set on this baby. Still, it has happened before. It is happening now, will happen again, Jesus Christ, get over it. It is nothing to get upset about. They are only teeth, forget we even mentioned it because it doesn't matter. The baby, the teeth, the pacifiers, not until they are unrecognizable. I also went back to find this one because this short story really stuck with me when I read it because it's a pretty distinct image. And the reason I chose this in addition to the other one is that this image is very unique to the story. It's not something that's going to come up typically. Describing a character physically, visually, that's something we all are going to do in our writing and our storytelling. Talking about a baby with a full set of teeth is a pretty unique image. And I think what I love about this is you could so easily just rely on the uniqueness of that image being what puts it in your head. You can just say there's a baby with a full set of teeth, and we're all going to see that in our minds for better or worse. But the way it's described and the way that he tells you or the narrator of the story tells you just not to worry about it and not to think about it makes you think about it and visualize it even more. So that's just a great use of style. In fact, to bring that imagery to life in a unique way. So imagery, straightforward. I'm sure you already know this, you understand it, you've used it in stories before, but really start thinking about the distinct, unique, specific ways that you can bring imagery to life in your story as in these two examples. And so once you kind of get a handle on that, that's going to also affect your ability to tell stories the way you're going to write in your own distinct style in the way that you're going to read and interpret stories as well. So let's move on to our next element, concision. 16. 17 Concision: Let's talk about concision. This is essentially how you're going to tell the story in the most concise way possible to deliver the most impact. And this is worth mentioning because I think we all have those friends or know those people who will just tell a story and they'll talk on and on and on and on without getting to the point. You just have to nod along. No along and just wait for the story to eventually wrap up. You don't want to be that storyteller. You don't want to be that storyteller in life. You don't want to be that person on the page, either. I think thinking about concision is essential to being a good storyteller. This is more about focusing on not losing your audience's attention. Also not losing sight of clarity of what you're doing with your story and where you're trying to get. I think that's the point of everything I'm talking about here is just being intentional with all of these fundamental storytelling elements so you can make sure you're giving your stories the impact that they need. I think the best way to think about this is to just make every word matter. So concision can kind of translate to making it as short as possible. That's sort of what it means. And in a way, that's what I mean, but more than that, I just mean making your words count. You don't have to try to cut every single word out. Just make sure if you have a word in there, if you're speaking or writing that it's there for a reason. And starting to think about each individual word, each sentence being there for a reason is going to put that intention behind your story that's going to give it that extra punch. Let's take a look at a little example here. This is not from any work. This is just an example of how to make something more concise. You could write something like this. She reached toward the door handle, pulled it open, and climbed inside. She sat in the driver's seat and pulled on her seat belt and buckled it tight. She held the key between her fingers and pushed it into the ignition. She turned the key and the car started, she began to drive away. That's technically fine, but you could also just say she entered the car and drove away. So just get to the point. Sometimes there's a reason for needing to draw things out, but there has to be a reason behind it. It can't just be to add literary flourish or what have you. Make sure you're just getting right to the point and omitting all the needless words that you don't want in your story. So with exceptions to this rule, I think there are writers we're going to look at ahead even namely David Foster Wallace, who's kind of a maximalist writer. Writes his prose is very dense. You'll have sentences that go on for pages. That's not concise. However, every single word counts. So he makes it work. And there are certain writers who can do that well. And if you're that type of writer or storyteller, that's great, as long as you can recognize that and make it work for you. But then the other side of the spectrum are the Ernest Hemingways or writers of that sort who just get directly to the point with as few words as possible. So make sure you're using your words wisely. You're choosing each word carefully, and you're making it count to just make sure that everything there has to be there ought to be there, needs to be there for your story to work. And that will give your stories a lot more weight and punch than you might even realize. So let's move on to our next optimal exercise, and you probably guessed it. We're going to use these essential elements to start to bring our story to life and give it some shape. So you have your medium and you have the story you want to tell now start thinking about the elements we just covered. What is the conflict in your story? What are the stakes? How are you going to sequence the events of the story to make it have the most impact? What's the message behind it and who are the characters? And then also consider style setting imagery and concision. So for this, what I would recommend if you're following these exercises, if you're writing a story is to just go one by one through these and start to think about what each thing is. If you have a story in mind, what's the central conflict of that story? Once you know that, you can think about what the outcome of that is going to be for the main character, whether it's you or not, and how that affects where you're ultimately going to go in the end. What's the message behind it? Is it just an interesting, fun story? Are you trying to share something about yourself that you haven't shared before, whatever that might be, start to think about that. Who are the characters in the story. And then what are you going to do to sort of put those? I don't want to say bells and whistles, but kind of the bells and whistles on it to really bring it to life with your style and your setting and your imagery and your word choice to give it the most impact. So you don't have to start making all of this coalesce just yet, but starting to think about that, you'll start to see your story take a little more shape than you might have seen earlier. So take some time, think about this, and then whenever you're ready, we'll move on to the next section. 17. 18 Written Stories: In this section, we're going to take a look at written stories. So this obviously includes fiction. That'll be novels and short stories. Non fiction is essays, journalism, nonfiction books, poetry and lyrics for music, and then audio visual mediums such as film and theater. In the lessons ahead, we're going to look at the elements that we just covered, the essentials of story in full stories rather than just excerpts to see how they come into play and give these stories their shape. To start, let's take a look at fiction. We're going to start with the novel, a man called Ove by Frederick Bachman. If you haven't read it, this does include spoilers, if you want to read it. Again, I recommend reading it, but if you don't that's fine. You can follow along anyway, or you can skip this section and go on to the next one, whatever works for you. But we're going to cover the way these elements play out in this story. That being said, let's tie in. Let's start with just a little bit of a backstory about this novel. This was Frederick Bofman's debut novel. If you know of him now, you know that he has become one of the biggest writers in the world probably right now. His novels are popular in pretty much every country where people read and he's had massive success and it all started with this book right here. The book came about because he was working at a Swedish magazine, and a colleague wrote a story about watching a man named Ove explode with rage while buying tickets at an art museum. I kind of just a funny premise in general. So Fredrick Bachman's wife read the blog and compared him to the man in the story. So then Frederick Bachman started writing blog called I am a man called Ove talking about his own pet peeves and annoyances. He turned that into what the book ultimately became or that was kind of impetus for him writing the book. And just like so many writers, the book failed to gain traction. A bunch of publishers said, but they didn't really see any financial success in it. Then, of course, it became a gigantic success. That's a little backstory to the novel. Let's dive into how these elements come into play throughout it. So first, let's take a look at conflict. If you read the story, you know that Ove is a ermudgon. He is depressed, lonely, a misanthrope. And then of course, he gets these cheerful new neighbors, this young family moving in right next to him. So right there you have conflict. He's at war with the world and everyone in he gets the worst possible neighbors he could possibly imagine for himself. So the stakes, we learn right off the bat that Ove is ready to take his own life. So that's pretty high stakes right there. I would say that those are internal stakes. He's dealing with a lot, clearly. He's a grumpy person. He doesn't get along with anyone, and he's ready to end it all as soon as we meet. So where does the plot go from there? First, we get an impression of Ove. We get kind of to know who he is as a person and kind of know why he's written off by everyone around him, by everyone in the neighborhood. He's just a grump, and we see him at face value for who he is. In the middle, the story changes. It becomes this story of love and loss, and we start to learn more about him as a character, and we learn about the death of his wife through this unlikely friendship that kind of comes to be with his neighbor. In the end, Ove ends up changing we change having gone through, learned his story, and he passes away in a way that's a lot more peaceful and at ease than the way he was about to at the start of the book. What's the message of this book? This one it's easy because it's actually written right on the front cover. I pulled back from the front cover of the book. It says, at first glance, Ove is most certainly the grumpiest manual ever meet. Never Trust first impressions. Whole novel, what I love about it is it's really just kind of a character study. It really just takes you from getting to know this person on the surface level to getting to know everything that makes him who he is and to make you just completely care about him and empathize with him and to invest yourself into what's going to happen next with characters in this book are Ove Sonia, that's his wife who passes away, who we meet through the flashbacks in Parv his new neighbor that annoys him to death at first and then ultimately comes to bring out the best in him. The reason I chose this book, other than just everything being so well executed in these elements that we talked about, is that Frederick Bachman doesn't consider himself an author, I've read that he doesn't consider himself an author, but rather a storyteller. And what he means by that is that he doesn't have the language of these great authors, you know, the Herman Melville's or Cormac McCarthy's or, you know, like the Joan Didion example we looked at. He really just takes a story he has in mind and tells it in the cleanest, most straightforward way he possibly can. And I think ironically, he has developed a very distinct style of his own as an author, and people are copying him all the time now because of what his style is. So um, if you haven't read him, if you haven't read this book or other books by him, if you want to tell stories, if you want to write stories, I think he's a great author to study just because of the simplicity with which he writes and the way he can kind of draw readers into stories. And he just uses these elements that we talked about so masterfully that you don't even realize it's happening as you read because you just get so pulled into it. So great novel, great writer, highly recommend, and just great use of these elements. 18. 19 Short Story: So now we're going to switch gears and take a look at a short story. So this story is called Where Are You Going? Where Have You Ben by Joyce Carroll Oats. Um, this story was written in 1966, and so it's an older story, and this is going to be a pretty hard pivot from the kind of charm and humor of Frederick Bachman's writing. So like I said, at the start of this course, I really want this to explore a broad range of stories. And the purpose of that is to show you the way that these essential elements come into play through all stories, regardless of subject matter, tone, medium. These are all just fundamental foundational story elements. So this story is available in your course resources. So if you're going to read it for the next lesson, go ahead and do so. And so I want to give a little backstory before you do that, though. So this story was influenced by a real serial killer at the time, named Charles Schmid, who was targeting teenage girls. And Oates dedicated this story to Bob Dylan because she was inspired to write it after hearing his song, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. So I would recommend also after or before you read this story that you take a look at the lyrics of that song, because I think that's just a really interesting way to see how different stories can be shaped and told through different lenses. Bob Dylan has always been traditionally kind of cagey and enigmatic about the stories behind his lyrics, which I think is just a really cool part of him as an artist. We don't really know what it's all over now Baby Blue is about. It's up to interpretation. It could be inspired by this. It could be something completely different. Regardless, Joyce Carroll Oates heard that song in 1965, which is when it came out and was inspired to write this song or sorry, this short story about this serial killer influenced by the song. So that just kind of shows how the power of story can be transferred from one artist to another, from one storyteller to another, and kind of told and morphed into these different lenses and perspectives, which is great. What's unique about this story, it's about a killer. It's told from the perspective of the victim. That's who the main character of the story is going to be. It's a unique approach to violence in that the violence in the story is inherent, but it's never it doesn't exist on the page. It's not expressly written. There's no gratuity. There's nothing that really delves into darker side of this other than just the looming suspense and dread. And on that note, this story is kind of unsettling and dark and not a very easy read. So if you're not comfortable with the subject matter, that's perfectly fine. We have plenty more examples in the courses or the lessons ahead, so don't worry about it. If you want to sit this one out, I totally get it. Just want to make sure that you know what you're in for. Again, I wanted to highlight this story because Joyce Carroll Oates is one of the greatest writers of all time and this is a brilliant story. She uses these elements to maximum effect in this story to do what she's after. So if you're interested and you want to charge ahead, then go ahead, pause, read this story, read or listen to Bob Dylan song if you'd like to as well. We'll break down how these fundamental elements come into play and where are you going? Where have you been? Let's start with the conflict. In the beginning, it starts with Connie and the disconnect that she feels from her mother and from the rest of her family. This is an example of the way conflict can ratchet up because when you start reading the story, you might think that's where this is going. Obviously, it gets more tense when Arthur friend and his friend Ellie, arrive at her house when she's there alone. And then it gets more intense when you realize that he knows her name. He knows where she lives and he knows her family is gone. So that tension just ratchets up in those short pages very fast, and that changes the whole dynamic of the story, and that pulls us into it because we start to realize how dire the situation really is. Likewise, Arthur presents himself as a harmless, innocent character at first, and we get the sense of who he is, but then he continues to have these slip ups and show his true character in that ratchets up the conflict in the intensity, as well. Then he continues to persist and persist to get Connie to come with him in his car, to join him in that persistence and that lack of him backing down. And the more he drives that, the more the conflict increases. Threat increases as well, and then we realize how dire the situation truly is. So let's talk about the stakes in all of this. So obviously, we learn pretty soon that Connie's entire life is at stake. We get a sense of who this person is, of what he's after, and we learn that her being alone in that house with no one around is putting her in a situation where it's suddenly life or death. Take a look at the plot. In the beginning, it's just a portrait of a 15-year-old girl at the time, and it's just innocuous and banal and something that we can all relate to with the mundanity of everyday life and kind of what her life as a teenager looks like. Then, of course, she spots Arthur for the first time in one of those early scenes. In the middle, Arthur friend and his friend Ellie arrive when Connie is home alone. In the end, after everything that happens, she ultimately leaves with Arthur friend. What's the message in this story? This is a new perspective on a familiar story, and it explores the doom and the lack of all other possible outcomes. As the story goes on, we start to see that there's no real way out of this for Connie, and that increases the tension and the drama throughout um what I mean by new perspective on a familiar story here is that in that time, especially in true crime, you would see these stories about serial killers, murderers, whatever. They were often told from the perspective of the serial killer or the murderer because that's what people are the most fascinated about and victims could tend to fall to the wayside or be supporting your side characters. Putting Connie front and center in this story gives a completely different view on a true crime type story. And then so also, there's a lot of subtext and a lot of up to interpretation here. I think if you look at this story online and kind of if you go into any discussion forums or read any essays on it, there's a lot of small things that come into play, the numbers on his car, his boots not fitting properly, and even Arthur friend's name and kind of what all that means. So I think Joyce Carroll Oats does a great job of slipping all of these subtle things into the story to really amplify her message and to leave us as readers with something to think about, interpret, and ponder over and to make sense of the story more as a whole. The characters, obviously of Connie, Connie's family and Connie's friends. That's who we meet in the beginning. We kind of see the disconnect between them, her connection with their friends. And then when Arthur and Ellie come in, their clash with Connie is what drives the whole story. And as you can see with that, this story and Frederick Bachman story completely different, but all of them use these same elements. They also use the other elements we talked about with style setting, um, imagery, concision to bring their stories to life. But all of these are foundational. All of these are what a story has to be built on for it to work. And these are two authors who use it to great effect in their storytelling. So next up, we're going to look at a non fiction piece of writing by David Foster Wallace. 19. 20 Nonfiction: Now we're going to take a look at a piece of non fiction writing. And this is an essay by David Foster Wallace called Shipping Out on the nearly lethal comforts of a luxury cruise. So this essay is available in your course resources. So I would recommend taking a moment to pause, go read that, find a nice spot, just sit, enjoy it. It's a bit of a long essay, but it's a great read. I highly recommend it. So maybe pause this here, go give that a read, and then we'll kind of look at how he uses these elements in his writing. Okay, so a little bit of backstory on shipping out. So this was written on assignment for Harper's in 1996. And essentially, David Foster Wallace wrote a lot of essays like this. He wrote one a few years before where he went to an Illinois state fair and just kind of described his experience there. He's so good at just doing that at just going somewhere and describing what his take on it is that Harper's paid him to go on a luxury cruise and report on his experience. That was the assignment simple as that. And I love this example because I think all of us have had those stories where we go on vacation and people ask us how it is, and you tell them everything was great. And it's not that interesting, and that's fine. You know, if there's nothing more interesting to say than you had a great time, that's perfectly fine. I think this exemplifies the way that conflict can drive a story and make it something completely different and unique to the person telling it. This story is a form of expression that's very unique to David Foster Wallace. At the same time, it's something that we can all relate to. Um, so this was originally titled A supposedly fun Thing I'll Never Do again. He has an essay collection in which this essay is included, and that's the title of the collection. If you're interested in this reading more, it's a great great collection. And just a great title, too. It kind of tells you a lot about what the story is right off the bat. So this is an alternate take on a travelogue, and that's what I was talking about before. A lot of traveloges, especially in the 90s with people waxing poetic of every place they went to and talking about how wonderful and beautiful it was. That's great. But it's not that great of a story, and I think having someone's distinct point of view, worked into a story makes it so much more interesting. I mentioned earlier, he can seem anti concision. He writes really long essays. He writes really long he wrote really long books rather. Um but every single word of his still counts and he makes it count and he uses it to maximum effect in his writing. Let's take a look at the conflict. Right off the bat, we learned that in this situation, he's completely out of his element and he's not the typical passenger on a luxury cruise. He calls out the artificiality of the environment. The cruises marketed image compared with its reality, his inability to enjoy the luxury or relax, which is the whole point of the cruise compared according to its marketed image. Let's take a look at the stakes. Obviously, in this situation, the stakes are relatively low. They're mostly internal and emotional and he really uses the lack of true stakes for effect in the way that he exaggerates them and writes with humor. He writes about being pampered to death on the cruise itself being nearly lethal. But you still feel for him because you can get a sense of how uncomfortable he is in the story and from his point of view. And those stakes are just as valid as external stakes that put pressure on a character. You know what he's going through. We understand what he's going through, and that makes us care what's going to happen next. So how does he structure the plot of this essay? The beginning, he opens with those vivid descriptions of the cruise, and that's a great example of a combination of both style, setting, and also imagery. It really lets you know where you are and what the experience was. Middle, he goes on to talk about the cruis' tendency to commodify leisure and the performative nature of luxury travel. This is expressed through his experiences as well as his interactions with the crew and fellow passengers. And then he ends with that great story about the hypnotist show that kind of serves as a symbol for the whole cruise experience. And I think that's a really unique way to kind of bring it all together because this is a story in which there aren't typical there's not that typical ratcheting up of conflict and reaching a big climax and then having a big conclusion. He's making a point and he's expressing his perspective and his point of view of this experience, and he structures it in a way that builds very nicely, very gradually, very slowly, but more than anything, it serves as an expression of his own viewpoint and his mind and his way of seeing the world, which was very distinct and intricate and pretty different from most of us. What is the message of this essay? It examines the measures that we take in pursuit of leisure. And examines the contradictions inherent in our quest for leisure. So he talks about the superficiality of manufactured relaxation, the sense of emptiness rather than true relief, and how you can feel more trapped than disconnected in these scenarios. So, you know, a lot of the cruise kind of serves as an example for a lot of things that market this idea of being pampered and losing yourself in luxury when in reality, it just kind of makes you feel suffocated. Explores ideas of escapism and our tendency to try to find meaning in manufactured environments, the complexities of seeking fulfillment in material goods and material things. A lot of this sounds like it could be taking a heavy approach, but obviously he writes the whole thing with a lot of humor. He's got a great sense of humor. He's a very funny writer. And that humor kind of amplifies that message to me because it makes me as the reader and us as readers, able to understand his point of view, rather than having it feel like he's just preaching to us or telling us these things. So let's look at the characters. Obviously, David Foster Wallace himself is the primary character in this story. It's written from first person point of view from his own experiences. He wants to try to enjoy the cruise. You can tell he kind of goes into it with an open mind, but then the way his brain works, he analyzes everything to a T. Staff are characters, the kind of performative nature and the extreme care they take to make sure that everyone is relaxed and the way that that stresses him out factors into the story. Fellow passengers, this is a great way to highlight a lot of different viewpoints from the one that he holds throughout the story. And then the antagonist you could argue with the cruise itself and just the overall experience. Again, no matter what type of story you're writing, no matter whether you're writing fiction, a full novel, a short story, an essay, all of these factors are going to come into play, and all of these serve as a different means of self expression and connection. And so I think highlighting these three different viewpoints in these written pieces, you can tell that Frederick Bachman, Joyce Carroll Oaks, and David Foster Wallace are very different people. You feel like maybe you have a better sense of who they are as people and maybe what their worldview is that's what a create story does. It allows people to express a side of themselves that you don't typically get to express in day to day life, and utilizing these elements is the way that you can structure that expression and structure that viewpoint that you have that you want to share with the world, however you choose to do it. So next up, we're going to take a look at a film and see the way that these play into that. 20. 21 Film: Next up, we're going to take a look at the way our story elements come to play in a film. And we're going to look at the film past Lives written and directed by Selene Song. And once again, unfortunately, this is not available in the course resources. If you haven't seen it, it is available to rent or to buy. So if you would like to rent or buy or watch it, before we go through this, then I would recommend you go ahead and do that because there are spoilers ahead. But at the same time, if you don't totally fine. You can skip to the next lesson. You can watch this anyway and go watch the movie later. Whatever works best for you. But let's go ahead and dive into Past Lives by Selene Song. Just a quick backstory on this one. This story I chose not only because it's a great movie that's worth watching, and there's several reasons I wanted to look at this movie in this course, but this is a semi autobiographical story from Celine song based on her own life experiences. And this is a fictional movie, but it just goes to show the way that you can pull experiences from your own life, put them into this structure and turn them into something else and turn them into this meaningful and in this case, this really kind of poetic and beautiful expression. And I think the way she took that experience and turned it into this movie just works so well that it's a great study and just structuring a story around your own experiences and events in your life and something that means a lot to you. Let's take a look at the conflict. It's a fairly straightforward conflict. Childhood friends, Nora and Hasan grow apart as their lives take them in different directions. The story follows Nora as she leaves Korea for Canada and then New York, and she gets married, ultimately comes to question the life that she and her old friend Hasung might have lived together. In the complexities of life, getting in the way of our life path is sort of the central conflict that increases as the story goes on as we get to see the path their lives take and wonder what might have happened if they took a different path. The stakes, even for a very kind of slow moving movie like this are pretty high, but they're subtly high. There's the element of true love. And then there's the consequence our choices play on the path that our lives take. So those are simple straightforward stakes, but they have huge implications for who these characters become. These are things we can all relate to. These effects who we become as people, the choices that we make in our lives and what they ultimately lead us to do. So it's kind of a combination of external and internal stakes coming into play for all characters in this movie. Take a look at the plot. It's a very simply structured plot, which I love. It starts in 1999, South Korea. Nora and Ha Sung are classmates. They start to develop feelings for each other, and then Nora's family immigrates out of Korea. Then the middle section is just 12 years later. Learn Nora's New York, trying to become a writer. Hasang reconnects with her. They resume a long distance connection, and there's that long sequence of them talking over video calls. But Nora pauses it to focus on her writing and her career and why she went to New York, and then she marries Arthur, and they lose touch again. And then the end, just like the jump from the beginning to the middle goes 12 years later. It's 2023. Hasang visits New York and sees her for the first time in all that time. And then Arthur, her husband starts to wonder if he's standing in the way of her destiny. So again, all of this feels so subtle, but the conflict is just under the surface the whole time, and it continues to build, and the stakes continue to build as the story unfolds, and we start to wonder who these characters might have been in a different version of their labs. So the message, it's about following passions, of course. You know, Nora went to New York to focus on being a writer, which if you're a writer, all of us can relate on, you know, following that dream versus any other or maybe to the detriment of any other choices you make in your life, life's many possible paths. Again, the choices we have to make, sometimes we have to make sacrifices along the way, destiny and whether that exists and if it does, what that means. And relatability, I think that's kind of the big thing here. By Celine song telling her story, her way through these characters and through this film, she's crafted something that we can all really relate to and understand. Even if we haven't been in this exact experience, we all know those ideas of the possible paths our life can take. And I think the way that factors into this story makes it works well for everyone who watches characters in the story work brilliantly, too. So there's three main characters, Noah Hasang and Arthur. And I think a lesser writer might have seen this setup with these three characters and thought, Okay, well, Arthur has to be the antagonist. He's the one standing in the way of what should be. But the approach she takes is so different and so brilliant and making him a really sympathetic character. He's someone who's not trying to stand in the way. He just kind of ends up there and wonders if he should be there. That's so much more relatable to us than a typical villain character or someone standing in the way of a great love story. And I think that makes us see all these characters through a different lens and empathize with them more. In doing that, it really highlights all these other storytelling elements and brings them to life in a way that they wouldn't be brought to life otherwise if it was too, shoehorned or if she was trying to follow a formula. This story is kind of free flowing, almost, or it seems like it is on the surface. It's very slow moving. It's very subtle, but all these elements come into play just so perfectly. They're executed so well. And that's really what gives this story so much weight. So I hope you watched it if you didn't go watch it, and I think this is just another great example of the way, but using the right elements in your story and using them well is going to maximize the impact of your ability to tell that story. Wrap up this written story section. Once again, we have, this is a relatively small sample size, of course, for writers. But all of these writers are coming at their stories from different perspectives, from different locations, from different times. These stories all could not be more different from one another, but all of them work, and all of them do exactly what a story should do, which is express the author's point of view or their view of the world, and it connects with us as an audience. And whether it connects with you or not is obviously going to be subjective to the audience. It's not every story is going to connect with everyone. But I think all of these are executed perfectly, and all of these use the elements that we're looking at perfectly well. So start to pay attention to these in your own writing or in your own reading rather as well as your own writing when you're reading a novel, watching a film, start to look the way that different artists use these elements to bring their stories to life and to maximize their impact because they're straightforward, just conflict stakes message, plot characters. They're seemingly straightforward, but there's so much that you can do with them, but that foundation has to be there for a story to really be brought to life. I think these four examples do it really well. I hope you thought so too. Next up, we're going to move on to the next section and we're going to look at spoken stories. 21. 22 General Principles of Storytelling: So we've taken a look now at the way that our storytelling elements come together in our written stories. But now we're going to look at spoken stories, and I think this is going to be more relatable to the day to day life storytelling that we talked about earlier. So before we dive into how our story elements work in spoken stories, let's look at a few general principles. First and most obvious is to speak clearly. Don't rush. Don't mumble. This goes without saying, but I think kind of unconsciously, a lot of the time, if we're not comfortable speaking in front of a group or just generally, it's easy to mumble our words or just try to get through it as fast as we can. But being articulate and being able to say what you mean and say it with intention is a big part of being a great storyteller. And a long time ago I heard this, and I don't even know how much weight there is to it, but someone said one of the great things about the way Frank Sinatra sings is that he hits the ends of his words really sharply and clearly, and that kind of makes the words pop a little more. And I feel like I don't know how old I was when I heard that, but it stuck with me. Not necessarily in the sense of me wanting to hit the ends of my words clearly to speak clearly, but just kind of in how nuanced public speaking can be and how nuanced our speech can be. So starting to think about that a little bit more, think of the way you talk, the way you deliver stories. That's going to be really important to giving your stories some life and some energy. Talked about having a personal interest in the story you're telling. This is true when you're writing a story, but it's especially true when you're telling a story to someone. If you're interested, that is contagious. That comes through in the way that you tell your story. And likewise, if you're not interested, that's also contagious. Your audience can tell, and then they're going to feel your lack of interest. They're not going to be interested, and the whole story will fall flat, no matter how great it is. So if you're interested in what you're telling, which you should be if you're telling a story, and if you need to kind of muster that interest, make sure you do it because that's going to be essential to your story having the impact that you want it to have. Who you're speaking to. This goes without saying, I think. You know, if you're delivering a eulogy at a funeral, you're not going to be testing out stand up comedy material necessarily. So knowing your audience, knowing the context of what you're saying, where you're saying it, who you're saying it to is really important. I've seen a few terrible wedding speeches in my day, and they're memorable for all the wrong reasons. And that's a lot because the person delivering the speech didn't really think through where they were or who they were talking to. So make sure you're always conscious of who you're speaking to when you're telling a story and that your story in the context of it is appropriate and fits well with where you are. Then know why you're telling the story you're telling. This kind of goes back to the message idea, and I think just the general idea of having some intention behind the stories you're sharing with others, that's going to come through and you're telling the same way that your interest is going to come through in the telling. So knowing why you're telling it, whether you're just trying to share something that you think is funny or whether you're trying to prove a point, that's going to drive home everything that you're delivering and Be confident. And I think this is a hard thing for a lot of us to do, especially if we're not comfortable public speaking or delivering telling stories to large groups of people or even to individuals. But your confidence, if you can find that when you're telling a story in person, when you're speaking a story, that's going to also breathe a lot of life into what you're saying. Course practice, this is a big thing that can be overlooked, even if you might feel kind of silly, say, if you're going to a party and you have a story that you want to tell someone and you sit at home and practice it in front of the mirror a few times. But a great that's a great strategy to becoming a better storyteller. Just talk to yourself, work your story out, work out the kinks, say it a few times before you launch into it in front of a group of people. And when you do launch into it in front of a group of people, if it goes well, make notes of what worked well. If things fall flat, make notes of what fell flat and make those adjustments. I think learning how to adjust and to recognize what works and doesn't work is a huge part of being a great storyteller. The same way, it's a huge part of being great at anything. It just takes practice. You can't just take all these principles, internalize them, and then wing it and expect to be great. You might be good, but practice is going to really take you to that next level. So don't feel silly. Make sure you feel confident just practicing as much as you want. You can practice with friends. You can practice to your PEPs. You can practice by yourself, whatever it is, make sure you devote practice to storytelling the same way you would to learning an instrument or any other sort of craft that's going to take time to develop your skills with. So those general principles being what they are, let's take a look at some situations in which spoken stories are going to be relevant to you. 22. 23 Formal Situations: Going to start by taking a look at formal situations in which storytelling is relevant. What is a formal situation in this case? I'm talking about job interviews, pitching and presenting, more workplace presentations where storytelling is really going to help you to stand out and to do a better job with these types of assignments. Let's take a look at pitching first. So if you can work quality storytelling into your pitching, you're going to be more engaging. You're going to be more memorable, and you're going to be more relatable to the people you're pitching to. A strict narrative structure, as we talked about, is a little less important in this, but it still should underlie the stories that you're telling in your pitches. And I think making that kind of personal connection is really where you want to focus your storytelling abilities in this type of situation. So what types of pitching am I talking about here? I'm talking about business to business pitches, business to consumer and internal projects. So personally for me in my job, pitching is a big part of what I do. We put together big pitch decks for our clients to try to win campaigns for big movies. And so for example, in one of our campaigns, fairly recently, we were trying to win a Star Wars property. And rather than just launching into our vision for the campaign, we opened with a story about our collective love for Star Wars, just because that set the tone for who we are the way we're coming at the project and what we could bring to the table in terms of our creative strategy and our ideas. So just that little thing, that little opening with a story is a great way in to kind of let people know who you are, to connect off the bat, and then to get right down to what you're there to do. If you can tell a story versus stating the facts, that's going to be more memorable, and that's going to mean so much more to who you're talking to, I think in the business world, especially or in the professional world, rather, things can get kind of by the book, you know, and there's that sort of coldness and distance to it. And if you can work quality storytelling into that world, then you're going to build those relationships and those connections so much more easily than someone who just goes up, stated the facts, states what they're there to do, and then gets out because that's just quick, it's forgettable. It doesn't have any personality. It doesn't have anything to really connect with. Telling a story, it makes it easier for you to make the point that you want to make in a pitch, and it makes it easier to make that connection, as well. There's a resource that is going to be in your course resources section. It's a video from the show Shark Tank. If you're not familiar with the show Shark Tank, it's a series in which people with business ideas pitch their idea to investors, and then they decide whether or not they're going to invest in the product or not. So this particular example highlights someone who had an invention for a clothing item, a clothing item slash accessory and what I like about this video and why I chose it for this course is the way that he comes in and opens with a story. And the story kind of tells you how he came to develop this product, and then that kind of kicks off the rest of the pitch. So go ahead, give Be a watch and then come right back here and we'll break down that story. Okay, so hopefully, you just watch the video. And now let's just take a look briefly at why that works. We're not going to go through all the conflict stay stuff that we did with the other stories, but keeping that in mind, we can still see how the structure is there and how that builds out the story that he told. So there is a clear beginning, middle, and end. He opens with the story of going to the park, putting the sweatshirt over his shoulder, not knowing how to do it, and then coming up with the solution for the product that he pitched to a relatable experience. Anyone who's worn a sweatshirt has been in a similar situation, even if they haven't necessarily thought about it in the way that he did. Very minimal stakes and conflict, and he amplified that for humor, and I think that worked really well because, you know, if your sweatshirts falling off your shoulder, that's really not a high stakes situation. That's not a great conflict to have. But it is kind of an annoying thing that I think we've dealt with. And the way that he uses that to amplify his point and the point of his product works really well in his presentation. Message was perfectly clear all the way through. There was no waste of words. It was concise. There were some Jujitsu moves that maybe could be up to interpretation for how necessary it was or wasn't in that pitch. But the message came through very clearly in his story. I also want to look quickly at his delivery. Again, this isn't necessarily a public speaking course. But the way he told the story, the energy he brought to it, his interest in what he was pitching is apparent right off the bat, and then that makes the story that much more engaging. It gets everyone invested in what he has to say. And then it just sets the stage for what he's doing. Because if he just walked in there, showed them what that product was, what it did, and then tried to sell it, that's going to not work quite as well as just telling a story that we can relate to enjoy and get a sense of who this person is through the way he's expressing himself with that story. You don't have to always go to that level in a pitch, obviously, but opening with a story like that and showing a little bit of your own personality and your own perspective is going to go a really long way in helping you get ahead of these situations. 23. 24 Public Speaking: Let's take a look at stories in public speaking. Public speaking for the purposes of this course, I'm talking about lectures, speeches, such as educational or demonstrative speeches, special occasions, work presentations, whatever it might be, and entertainment, such as stand up comedy. So we're going to look at a few examples and see how our storytelling elements bring these different types of public speaking presentations to life because I think we've all kind of seen those presentations that just fall completely flat. You have someone speaking on a stage or wherever it might be. Just doesn't have the ability to tell a story or doesn't tell a story at all, and it just doesn't work, and everyone's dull and listless and, you know, being able to utilize the power of storytelling can bring these types of situations to life. And I think a lot of us might find ourselves in these situations from time to time and sometimes more than we would even want to. So let's look at a few examples here. So we're going to start with stand up comedy. This is one of my favorite comedians, Nate Bargatzi. If you haven't watched his specials, you should just go watch all of them. You can pause the course and go watch them now and come back or watch them later on. But we're going to watch this video. This is just a section from his first special that came out on Netflix. This is in your course resources. So go ahead and pause this video, give that a watch, come back, and then we'll kind of break down the story elements he used and how they worked to bring this story life. All right, so let's talk about Nate Bargatzi's coffee ordering story. This works for a lot of reasons, as not the least of which is that it's just a very, very funny story. But there's a clear beginning, middle, and end. There's a very simple conflict, and I think anyone who's been to a Starbucks or similar coffee shop can relate to that conflict. Relatable steaks, as well. Again, low stakes and low steaks are great for humor. If if things don't go well, then they end up the way they did in the story. If they do, he gets his coffee and it's less funny. So it's lucky for us it went the way that it did. He structured it very well, delivered it in a really concise manner, as well. So all of this came to play to bring the whole story to life and make it as funny as possible. Each word in that delivery is very carefully picked out, and this kind of goes back to practice, too. I think when you watch great comedians, especially, you can take for granted the level of work that goes into putting a bit like this together. But I'm sure he just like any other comedian has workshop this story over and over and over on countless stages until he got it just right to have that maximum impact that it does. And obviously, not all comedy is story based, but I chose this example because it's great, and it is a very clear story, just about him trying to order coffee, getting the order wrong and the way that all works out. So this is something too that works well because it tells us a lot about him as a person. This is a great means of expression. This is something we can connect to and relate with. I think it's just a brilliant example of delivering a story in a relatable, calm, measured, approachable way and having it work just way beyond anything you would expect for how simple and low stakes it. If you haven't watched this other specials, I would highly recommend it. He's a great storyteller. He does it really well on stage, and everything he does just hits all these points perfectly. So that's Nate Bargazi I hope you enjoyed that. This next example is a story called the ring from The Beast Boys Story Documentary. This was actually cut from the documentary if you ended up watching it. Um, but this is Adock talking about Adam Yao who passed away and sharing a story about his friend that gives us a sense of who Adam Yok was when he was alive, especially for those of us who didn't actually get to know him except through his music and their music. So this is a fun one also in your course resources. Go ahead and pause this here, give that story a watch, and then come back and we'll break down why that works. I chose this example because I think one of the more unfortunate public speaking events a lot of us are called upon to do is deliver eulogies at funerals. I know that's happened for me a couple of times. It's happened to most people I know. And I think if you can do something like he did here and tell a story about your friend that gives you a real sense of who they are as a person and what made them as so unique and so interesting, it really is something that we can connect with as an audience, and it makes us understand the relationship they had and the dynamic they had so much better. His delivery was great, obviously, clear beginning, middle, and end, clear conflict with the ring situation. And the stakes were unknowable, which made it kind of ominous and eerie in a very entertaining way because you don't know if there's this magical power at play or you don't really know what's going on and what's going to happen. And I think that's a great way to get someone invested in what you're saying. It's just to build that suspense, even if it's around something that's ultimately kind of silly, but you're still not sure where it's going to go. Really well structured. I like the way that he used the settings in this story. Obviously, he had the backdrops. But even in his delivery in the words he chose, he gives you a sense of where he is in each section of the story that takes place over a 15 year span. So the way he structured that out and built it and just told the events chronologically and continued to build the tension throughout was a great way to keep everyone engaged in what was happening. Great delivery. You could tell his interest and passion in the story in his delivery very clearly. Clear message. He was telling it to give an example of who his friend was when he was alive. I think talking about someone who has that practical jokes, stamina, as he puts it really gives you a clear indicator of who he was as a person. I think that's a lot of fun to listen. And then the character, too, just himself, his friend, and the weird ring guy all come through to bring this story to life. So that's just a great presentation, really well told, really well delivered. And again, structured perfectly, each word in that delivery matters. There's no fumbling around, there's no meandering off of the main point of the story. The way that he worded that and structured that keeps you engaged the whole time that he's telling the story. So you might not have to deliver something on this level, obviously to this many people to have this. You might not have this goal, for instance, of having to give a real depiction of one of your friends who passed or who is still with us or whatever it might be. But there's a lot that you can learn from this and a lot that can be taken away from how you can take what can be kind of a relatively simple event, whether it's ordering coffee or this practical joke your friend played on you and work it into a story that just plays really well for a big audience and gives us something to enjoy as that audience. So great utilization of all the storytelling elements in both of these examples. So next we're going to move on to more practical, formal spoken story examples. 24. 25 Job Interviews: Now we're going to take a look at a situation in which storytelling is relevant for a lot of us, and that is in a job interview. Job interviews, storytelling versus sharing facts, goes without saying everything we've been talking about in this whole course with storytelling being about means of expression and connection, this is the place to do it more than anywhere else. If you just go up and share facts about yourself, you're just repeating basically what's on your resume. If you're in a job interview, you want to be able to give the interviewer an impression of who you are and the way you think and the way you view the world as opposed to just saying, you've done this, this and this, you're good at this, this and this. This is not going to be interesting or memorable. Storytelling is going to create that strong connection with the interview an image of yourself as a person as opposed to just a candidate. Like I said, I think the professional world, especially for me, and I think for a lot of us, you can sometimes feel cold and rigid and you don't see people in the way that you do outside of a professional setting. Trying to connect on that level on a personal level as opposed to just a candidate is going to set you apart from the pack as well. And of course, telling a story can way more effectively demonstrate your strengths, what you do well in the way you think and problem solve, which is what interviewers are looking for. So interviewers really want you to tell stories. They don't want to know the facts. They want to know the person behind the facts. If that was the case, they could just hire based on a resume alone. So utilizing your storytelling elements that we've covered in this course is going to make you a much better candidate when you sit down for a job interview. Let's just look at some typical questions that would be ideally answered with a story in a job interview. Very standard interview question. Tell me about a time you faced a challenge and how you overcame it. What would you consider to be your greatest weakness? My personal least favorite interview question. And describe a time when you made a mistake. All of these kind of tee you up to tell a great story about who you are and to demonstrate your character, your resolve, your ability to problem solve, and kind of who you are as a person as opposed to just a candidate. So for the role play scenario, let's go with this question. Tell me about a time you faced a challenge and how you overcame it. I think almost every interviewer in any job is going to ask that or a similar question. Having this kind of locked in will prep you well for job interviews. Before we get to the role play, here are some things to think about and sort out for yourself. Want to get a pen and paper, if you want to work on your computer, whatever it is, and take all the time you need. Let's just kind of break this down and see how it goes. Conflict are fundamental key element of a story. So in this question, the conflict would be whatever the challenge was that you faced. The stakes are obviously going to be the outcome of you succeeding or failing against that challenge. So what would happen if you didn't overcome it? What would happen if you did? And in either scenario, what does this mean for you? What would it mean for you in that time in that period? Plot. So what are the key events of this situation? I think a good way to do this is to just jot these things down without worrying too much about order at first. Just jot down the key moments that you want to highlight, and then you can put them in order after and find the best sequence to sequence those events and to reveal what you want to reveal in this story. What are you telling the interviewer about yourself and your ability to problem solve? Are you creative? Are you persistent? Are you calm under pressure? Are you a good collaborator? Whatever it is? Think of what the point of the story you're going to tell is and make sure that it comes across clearly. This will be different for everybody, but as long as that message is clear, then that's going to bring everything home for you. Then lastly, we have characters. Obviously, you're going to be the main character in this. But who else was involved? Who's essential to include in this story. Were there other coworkers involved? Were outside, you know, clients involved, whatever that situation might be. And, you know, this doesn't have to necessarily be related to a work related event. This could just be a life related event. I think typically that can be a fine way to answer this question in a job interview. But more often than not, they're going to be looking for something professional related and something in your life that demonstrates who you are as a professional as opposed to as a person. Let's wrap this job interview section up with a couple of questions in a job interview for which a full story might not be needed. Tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you like to do outside of work? When would you be able to start? Some of these can be answered with a story, of course, if you have one that answers it well. But this is kind of along the lines of what I was talking about with stories and anecdotes where you don't want to do too much with what you have. If you start if they ask when are you able to start and you launch into a story about starting a new hobby or something, it might just seem a little off base and not a great answer to the question. So obviously, think these things through because sometimes an anecdote will do just fine. But I think knowing when you want to hit those points when you want to deliver a clear message and structure it with a good story, that's going to help you immensely to connect with those interviewers and come across as a person as opposed to just a candidate. So next up, let's take a look at some informal storytelling. 25. 26 Informal Storytelling: Informal storytelling. So what do I mean by informal storytelling? This is going to be the stories that you tell with your family and friends, and I think it's worth focusing on it because being able to tell good stories is something that you know, obviously you don't want to be overthinking all this when you're talking with your family and friends. But it's going to help you to create those memories and share those moments and connect with people who are close to you. Likewise, it's useful to be a great storyteller in an informal setting in social situations. So this is parties, dates, or just talking with your colleagues at work. So let's kind of look at how we can take the lessons we've learned previously and apply them to the day to day stories we tell in our lives. So let's remember it's okay to share anecdotes, and I bring this up multiple times because I don't want you to have a great story to tell someone and then run through your head thinking, Oh, what are the conflicts? What are the stakes? What's the message? Who are the characters? Sometimes, if you just have these moments that you want to share with people and you just share them off the cuff like that, that's perfectly fine. And there's nothing wrong with just sharing an anecdote with family and friends to, you know, have a laugh or whatever it might be. Likewise, if you do have a full story that you're sharing with people on a regular basis, make sure you refine it, and this comes with practicing, like I said, and there you delivery, pay attention to the reception you get from it and emit needless details. This is one of those other situations where it could feel kind of silly perhaps to practice one of the stories that you might tell at a party or tell to a coworker. But why not? You know, if you're home alone, you've got time to practice, work on it, refine it. If you have a great story, make sure you can tell it to its fullest potential and utilize the lessons we've learned here to kind of really bring it to life. So observe great storytellers. I think all of us have those friends or know those people who can just tell a story off the cuff. Captivate a whole room instantly. And, you know, sometimes you get just sucked into it and you watch. But if you're thinking about being a good storyteller or writer, maybe pay attention to what that person's doing that works well. How are they delivering their story? Like what points are they hitting? How are they structuring their delivery? All these things that come into play. If you start to pay attention, that will impact your ability to tell stories. Well, well as well. Similarly, observe bad storytellers. I think these are also very common people who pop up in our lives, the people who, you know, I think when I think of a bad storyteller, usually I think of someone who just talks about themselves endlessly and doesn't really pay attention to anyone around them because they're doing the opposite of what a story should do, which is connect with one another. Pay attention to what bad storytellers in your opinion are doing and what rubs you the wrong way, what you don't really connect with or vibe with. So kind of take these things, these lessons, and be a little bit of an observer of people in your life more, and that's going to enhance your storytelling skills. Be natural. This is obviously very important. You want to be able to just be yourself when you're telling a story. You're giving people a sense of who you are. You're expressing yourself. And if you try too hard, that's going to come across. So be natural, be interested, be confident in being yourself. And confidence is the other thing I have listed here. Telling a story can be nerve wracking sometimes, even in just an informal setting. So being natural will help you to be confident and being confident is going to help your story to really come to life. So worth noting that becoming a good storyteller in itself is a huge confidence booster. If you tell a story that works well with your friends, family, coworkers, whatever it might be, that's going to do wonders for your confidence and just make you get better and better and stronger and stronger with your storytelling abilities. So to wrap up this spoken story section, I hope you can see now how our fundamental storytelling elements come into play in written stories the same way that they do in spoken stories. And like I said, this course covers a broad spectrum of storytelling when you're looking at novels to job interviews, and on screen presentations. The reason for that is that all of these use these same core elements. And once you learn how to use these in your stories and integrate them into your ability to tell and write stories, you're going to become a much stronger storyteller, and it's going to come that much more naturally to you the more that you do it. So I hope you enjoyed that. We've got one more section, and then we're going to wrap up the course, so I will see you there. 26. 27 Abandon All the Rules: This is the lesson where I tell you to forget everything that I just talked about in the previous lessons. Not actually obviously because everything we talked about, all these fundamentals are essential for written and spoken stories, but I really don't want you to lose sight of what a story is in its essence. So there's stories all around you that you encounter every day. This is going to be in music, instrumental music, even. So if you hear two artists play the same song, each one is going to have a different interpretation of that, and each person is going to express themselves differently through that interpretation, and that's a means of storytelling, if you look at it that way. Photography, obviously, same thing. Two photographers can take a picture of the same building or landscape or whatever it might be, and each one is going to have a different perspective and a different means of expression. This is true in artwork as well. Also in the design that we see all around us in graphic design and in advertising. So story is not just a set of rules that you have to follow and shoehorn everything into and structure a certain way. It's really more expressive than that and should be more expressive than that. And starting to view story that way, even as a writer is going to broaden your creative horizon so much more than trying to limit yourself to a strict set of rules. Rules are necessary, you have to know them, but I want you to always think of what a story can be, what might be a story, and what might be that kind of means of expression, even if it's a little more abstract than something straightforward, like an essay or a stand up comedy bit or whatever it might be. So again, just make sure you don't lose sight of what a story is in its essence. A story isn't always told through words. Sometimes it's just expression alone, and sound image and design can be just as impactful as words can. Make sure after this course, you're looking for the story and everything and letting that influence you and influence you as a storyteller and kind of seep into the way you tell stories, because ultimately, that's going to make its way into your language into the way you talk and into the way you see and compartmentalize the world, which is what a story is all about. So let's wrap up our optional exercise here. And again, this is just for you to do, and hopefully it will help you to fine tune one of the stories that you've been working on for yourself. So we're just going to bring together everything we've talked about. We have our medium. We have our story, the main idea for it. We have the essential elements of storytelling, and now we're going to put it all together. So when you do this, make sure you're doing something that feels unique to you and feels like an expression of yourself. As with anything, writing is rewriting. Don't feel like you have to get this right on the first go, and that applies to writing, speaking, whatever it might be, storytelling can be infinitely complex, and it takes a long time to get a good handle on it. And I think even the best storytellers who've ever lived and who live now are still getting a handle on it as they go. So don't feel like you have to be a master of all this right off the bat. Just keep working at it, keep practicing it, and keep internalizing these lessons that we've learned to kind of give your stories the shape that they need to come to life. Keep at it. Persistence is everything. If you want to be a great writer, if you want to be a great storyteller, just keep practicing it and the more you do it, the better you're going to get at it. Because like I said, at the start of this course, I think story is something that comes natural to everyone. I think it's an inherent part of human nature and when you work at it, you're not necessarily just learning it, you're bringing that side of yourself out and fine tuning it and working on honing that ability to express yourself fully and authentically to connect with the world around. Take your time with it, enjoy it, have fun, and I'll see you in the next section, which is our course conclusion. 27. 28 Thank You: So this section is really just a chance for me to say thank you. Thank you so much for taking this course and for making it this far because I really appreciate it, and I really hope that you've got a lot out of it. We covered a lot of ground as far as story is concerned, and I hope having laid down that groundwork of the fundamentals of storytelling and exploring a broad range of story from written word to spoken word and presentations and informal stories as well, that you have a better grasp and understanding of what a story can be, what a story should do, and what it takes to write and tell a good story. So thank you again. If you enjoyed this course, please mention it in the reviews. If you have any suggestions for improvements for future courses, I'm always open to hearing. I just want to make sure that I'm making stuff that works well for you. So thank you again. I really appreciate it, and I will see you in the next one. Happy storytelling.