Storytelling with Impact | Narrative

Interviewing From a Historical Perspective

July 7, 2020/in Discrimination, History, Humanity, Interview, Narrative, Podcast/by Mark Lovett

The process of crafting an impactful story often begins with identifying events and insights from your life’s journey, but such stories become more compelling and diverse when they include the experiences of others, as additional voices will broaden and deepen the narrative landscape, allowing audience’s to better understand the point you’re proposing, or the lessons you have learned.

One way to do this is by interviewing people who can offer listeners/readers a perspective that expands beyond yours. As with the disciplines of writing and speaking, interviewing is an art form that one must study and practice. When clients ask me how to conduct interviews I steer them to the On Being podcast, hosted by Krista Tippett.

Her interviews with renowned scholars, writers, poets, scientists, and religious leaders explore the most fundamental and profound questions. What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? And who will we be to each other? If you’re looking to sharpen your storytelling skills, consider this podcast is an interviewing masterclass.

The podcast recently replayed a timely episode recorded on November 17, 2016: This History is Long; This History Is Deep – it’s an interview with Isabel Wilkerson. By reading the transcript while listening you can identify when Krista is diving deeper into a particular topic, or moving their conversation into new territory.

…our country is like a really old house. I love old houses. I’ve always lived in old houses. But old houses need a lot of work. And the work is never done. And just when you think you’ve finished one renovation, it’s time to do something else. Something else has gone wrong. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

Creating a Vivid and Continuous Dream

June 7, 2020/in Audience, Fiction, Narrative, Nonfiction, Writing/by Mark Lovett

John Gardner was an accomplished author, literary critic and university professor – a rather rare combination. He was one of the best teachers of fiction writing, and his two books on the topic, The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist, have helped thousands learn the craft.

If you read my previous blog posted titled The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but?, you’ll know that my approach to personal storytelling is to stick to what’s true and not delve into the world of fiction. That said, we can still learn much from the methods used to write fiction, which is why I’m sharing a few quotes from Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist that apply equally to nonfiction.

…the best stories set off a vivid and continuous dream…

We’ve all been there. Reading a book that you can’t set down or watching a movie that has you leaning forward, barely breathing. When you get lost in a compelling story, the ‘real’ world has a way of disappearing, replaced by the narrative at hand. It’s a common experience with great fiction, but is also happens when we see a speaker live on stage that has everyone in the theater spellbound. While there are many factors at work in such situations, word choice and an eye for detail are key elements.

…one sign of a writer’s potential is his especially sharp ear – and eye – for language. The better the writer’s feel for language and its limits, the better his odds become.

As with most talents, this comes naturally to some, but most of us have to work at developing this illusive skill. The good news is we can learn it with practice. Noticing cliche words and phrases, or those lacking imagination or specificity. Our story’s first pass often contains a lot of safe language. Words that easily come to mind, and work okay, but we can do better.

We need only to figure out exactly what it is that we’re trying to say – partly by saying it and then by looking it over to see if it says what we really mean – and to keep fiddling with the language until whatever objections we may consider raising seem to fall away.

Writing and revising is tedious, but it’s the only way to move from just okay to excellent, from a general to a more specific meaning. If the goal is to give a speech, as opposed to writing an essay, then the process will involve rehearsing and editing so that the words don’t just read beautifully, but sound superb. How do we do that?

Every Word Matters

Challenge every word. Does it convey the meaning you intend? Is it ‘beautiful’, or ‘superb’, or ‘elegant’? And how will your audience react to the use of a particular word or phrase? One technique I recommend is to record your talk, then play it back as though it was a podcast. Your ears will pick up issues with word choice (as well as tone, volume and cadence) that your eyes frequently miss. We hear differently than we read.

The good writer sees things sharply, vividly, accurately, and selectively (that is, he chooses what’s important), not necessarily because his power of observation is by nature more acute than that of other people (though by practice it becomes so), but because he cares about seeing things clearly and getting them down effectively.

Choosing the most appropriate words is, to a large degree, dependent upon the vision that the writer is trying to convey, and this is where John Gardner brings in the concepts of sharp, vivid, and accurate. How you describe a person, place, thing or event affects the listener’s ability to create the same image in their mind.

Sometimes it helps to think like a movie director who creates a visual story that surrounds the character’s words. In memorable cinema, everything in a scene is intentional and conveys an intended meaning. When done well it transports us into a vivid and continuous dream.

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Behind the Scenes of The Memory Palace

May 21, 2020/in Art, History, Humanity, Narrative, Podcast/by Mark Lovett

I’ve been a podcast listener for many years, and at the beginning of my daily walk I’ll open the PocketCasts app on my phone to find an episode that will indulge my storytelling addiction. There are podcasts which live there temporarily – I’ll add and delete as my desires change – but several of them have a permanent slot in my listening rotation.

The Moth, This American Life, 99% Invisible, Radio Diaries, Ear Hustle, The Kitchen Sisters, Longform Podcast and Unfictional are on a brief list of shows that have become long-time audio companions, friends I can trust to expand and challenge my perceptions. Another member of that illustrious list is The Memory Palace, a podcast I fell in love with day one.

Created by storytelling genius Nate DiMeo in 2008, you could say it’s been around the digital block a few times. Nate’s no stranger to audio, having spent a decade plus in public radio and heard on landmark shows such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Marketplace.

The Memory Palace is not unusual in one sense, as it simply presents historical vignettes about people, places and past events. Its uniqueness comes from DiMeo’s ability to pull a single thread from a complex tapestry of facts and feelings, then offer it to us as a bespoke narrative. Like a wandering medieval minstrel, he takes his audience on a magical exposition of the past, somehow condensing hours of exposition into mere minutes.

As much as I love the well-polished episodes that he produces, it was a special treat to hear this behind-the-scenes conversation with Radiolab’s Robert Krulwich on storytelling and life. It’s a conversation that revealed pivotal moments early in his career, alongside his passion for, and approach to, crafting stories that can touch people.

Whether you’re a professional storyteller or just aspire to gain a greater mastery of the art, DiMeo’s journey from nearly clueless to consummate creator will change your perspective on telling stories in the digital age.

A Conversation About the Memory Palace with Robert Krulwich

“…the lesson that it showed me, was that audio storytelling on the radio had the power to reach into your life and could change your day…”

“…the most profound thing of journalism is finding the real person in there, and being able to draw them out, and to find a type of truth that goes beyond mere facts…”

Learn more about Nate DiMeo in this beautiful article by Sarah Larson in The New Yorker, and this insightful piece by Joshua Barone in the New York Times.

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The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but?

April 28, 2020/in Narrative, Public Speaking, Storytelling, Truth/by Mark Lovett

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

We’ve all heard this question, or something similar, asked of witnesses in television or movie courtroom scenes. And for anyone who has served on a jury, you have heard it first hand. But what does this question really mean, is it a reasonable expectation, and if so, how does it pertain to the practice of telling personal stories?

While it’s true that we tell personal stories to each other all the time – every conversation can be thought of as a story – in this article I’m referring to stories that we plan to share in public; in print, on stage, radio shows or podcasts, and thinking about the nature of truth when we’re telling these stories.

Although the practice of telling such stories has been around for millennia, the desire to hear them, and the opportunities to do so, have increased dramatically in recent years. As we’ve become more connected, and technologically savvy, we’ve developed a thirst for story that seems to be unquenchable.

Millions tune into broadcasts, view videos, or attend live events with a desire to hear stories about our shared human experience. Stories about who we are and where we have been, stories about the struggles we’ve endured, and the universal hope for a better future.

In my coaching practice I’ve had the pleasure of working with hundreds of folks who want to tell impactful personal stories; professional speakers and novices, students and academics, entrepreneurs and CEOs, prison inmates and special forces, scientists and creatives.

During the process of developing their storylines the topic of truth often comes up when many say, “It’s impossible to remember every detail. How truthful does my story need to be?” And their difficulty in remembering the truth is especially troublesome for experiences and conversations that happened a long time ago. Our memory can be rather permeable.

That’s when I’ll bring up the The Moth. I listen to a long list of podcasts each week for story inspiration, and The Moth remains at the top of the list. I never miss an episode. They host live storytelling events, and feature the best ones on The Moth Radio Hour. When it comes to truth, they address the issue best, in my opinion, by announcing during each broadcast:

With this in mind I encourage speakers to do their homework and verify everything they can, especially any statistics, research data or historical references. When it comes to the topic of personal experience, they should reach out to anyone mentioned in their story to verify the facts, or at least hear their side of the story to be sure the essence of the narrative is true.

The reason is straightforward. If any aspect of a story is untrue, the entire narrative becomes suspect. One bad apple can, in this situation, spoil your story’s impact. When trust is broken between the storyteller and their audience it becomes difficult to repair. You need to connect with your audience from a place of honesty and integrity.

Should you ever have a desire to embellish your story as a way to make it stronger, I would counter that you don’t need to make things up in order to make a point, and if you feel you do, there’s something fundamentally lacking in your story to begin with, something that lying won’t/can’t solve. Instead, rethink your premise, and dig deeper into your narrative in order to find experiences or related information that supports the meaning of your story.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion,
but not their own facts. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan

But there are other elements in personal storytelling – ideas, insights, beliefs and opinions. This part of your narrative is not based on empirical facts, but rather your view of the world, how you see things, what is true for you, which is subjective rather than objective.

An audience wants to hear your opinion – it’s how they connect to you as a person and come to understand the meaning of your story. But there should never be any confusion as to whether your words are presented as fact or opinion. Expressions such as, “It seemed to me“, “The way I see it“, “The way I felt was“, can let the audience know that you’re shifting from fact to opinion. Done well, they will come to better understand the journey you’ve been on.

You must be the guardian of truth within your story, as it becomes a reflection of you.

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250 Filmmakers Tell 1 Pandemic Story

April 7, 2020/in Coronavirus, Covid-19, Narrative, Storytelling, Video/by Mark Lovett

The depth of storytelling is without limits, which is why I often tap into the brilliance of other individuals and organizations to expand my own wisdom and perspective on the art. And that would explain why I’m a big fan of Muse Storytelling. As masters of video production they not only produce world-class film, but they are world-class givers, sharing their expertise with the film industry at large, as well as the global community.

Amid the crisis we now know as COVID-19, they decided to send the world a message of hope based on the poem Lockdown by Brother Richard Hendrick, as read by spoken word artist, Marshall Davis Jones, with the stunning visual representation by a global team of filmmakers.

Born from a feeling of isolation and a fierce desire to find purpose in the face of helplessness, #ChooseHopeStory is the collective effort of over 250 filmmakers across the globe to share stories of compassion and unity amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic.
A global team of filmmakers came together over the course of just ten days to develop the creative, bring together footage, and edit the four-minute video while filming up until the last day on several continents around the world.
Each filmmaker brought in their own unique perspective of the pandemic in the film creation – from an expectant mother who is 33 weeks pregnant to a therapist and filmmaker who is struggling with the anger that the uncertainty has caused him.
To continue sharing the stories of these incredible moments amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Muse and their community are challenging people from around the world to continue to come together with stories of hope, sharing their inspiring moments on social media with the #choosehopestory.

A heartfelt thanks to Founder Patrick Moreau, CEO Rebecca Rapple, and the incredible team at Muse Storytelling for producing this message of hope and human resiliency.

Lockdown

Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.

Brother Richard Hendrick

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