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Everything you need to know about storytelling in five minutes

On Wednesday I spoke to the Public Relations Society of America’s Charlotte chapter. They’re a good group. Sometimes I speak off the top of my head at this sort of thing, but this time I actually wrote out some thoughts, so I thought I’d post them here in the spirit of Austin Kleon’s “show your work” idea.

If you do any kind of storytelling for a living, these are probably basic ideas … but maybe not.

Thanks for having me here today. I want this to be more of a conversation than a speech. I don’t need much time for a speech, because today I’m going to teach you everything you need to know about storytelling in five minutes.

But first I want to tell you a little story.

My wife has this uncanny gift for finding the worst possible movie on TV at any given moment. The other night she landed on the SyFy channel, on this movie called “Collision Earth.”

I’m gonna try to come up with a quick synopsis that does this movie justice.

The event that gets the action going is a solar flare so powerful that it knocks the planet Mercury out of its orbit and sends it hurtling toward Earth. This would be bad.

Along with knocking Mercury out of its orbit, somehow this solar flare also magnetized Mercury, so as it heads for Earth, cars and stuff start flying into the air to meet it.

There’s ONE scientist who knows how to fix this. In fact he has built this giant battering ram in space for just this situation. But for reasons I never did quite follow, this scientist was fired from NASA years before, and his giant battering ram was unfinished and left out in space to rot, and now, of course, NOBODY WILL LISTEN TO HIM.

It just so happens that this disgraced scientist’s wife is an astronaut whose spacecraft is — you won’t believe this — orbiting Mercury. But the solar flare hit the ship so hard that a little while later, the other astronaut on board keels over and dies.

So he’s on the ground trying to save the Earth, and she’s up in space trying to save the Earth, and they’re actually talking to each other via ham radio — I don’t even wanna get into how THAT happened.

There’s not nearly enough time to tell you all the ways this movie is ludicrous, so I’ll give you just two:

One, this giant magnetized planet that’s flying toward us is just sucking cars off the earth, EXCEPT when the disgraced scientist needs a car to get somewhere; then his car stays on the ground just fine, even as other cars are being sucked off the planet right in front of him.

And two, this astronaut up there, when she needs to move around the spaceship, she doesn’t float through the capsule in zero gravity … she just gets up and walks around like she’s at the mall.

I have only scratched the surface of how stupid on every level this movie is. But we watched the damn thing all the way to the end. When it was over, I looked at my wife and said “Why did we do that?” But the truth is, I knew why.

And here’s where I tell you everything you need to know about storytelling in five minutes.

First, I’m gonna draw three objects.

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This is a sympathetic character. It’s probably someone you like, but at the very least it’s someone you’re emotionally invested in. You care what happens to this person.

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This is a hurdle. It’s an obstacle of some kind — could be a bad guy, could be a physical challenge, could be some sort of internal emotional demon.

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And this is the pot of gold — some kind of goal, some kind of reward, physical or emotional or whatever.

A story is the journey of this character you care about, confronting and dealing with this obstacle, to reach this pot of gold.

In addition to these three pictures, you need to answer two questions:

1. What’s the story about?

 2. What’s it REALLY about?

Here’s what I mean.  What the story’s about is literally what happens in the narrative — who this character is, what goal he or she is trying to reach, what obstacle is in the way. The unique set of facts.

What the story’s REALLY about is a way of saying, what’s the point? What’s the universal meaning that someone should draw from this story? What’s the lesson?

When you think about it that way, you’ll find that you end up with a second obstacle and a second goal.

Think about the first Rocky movie. What’s it about? It’s about a no-name boxer in Philly (sympathetic character) who gets a chance to fight the champ (obstacle) and goes the distance (pot of gold).

He doesn’t win the fight — they saved that for Rocky II. The goal isn’t always the ultimate prize. Sometimes the goal is completing the journey. Proving you can go the distance is a worthy goal in itself.

But what’s the movie REALLY about? In a larger sense, the obstacle is not Apollo Creed. The obstacle is Rocky’s own self-doubt. The goal is making something of himself, not just out of pride but so he can prove himself to Paulie and feel worthy of Adrian’s love.

Why is that second layer of meaning important? Because not everybody is a professional boxer. But all of us have doubted ourselves and had other people doubt us. All of us have had the universal feeling of knowing that going the distance is a victory in itself.

That’s what makes stories matter: when you read or watch or hear a story about a total stranger, in a completely different world, and you recognize that story as your own.

Stories connect us as human beings. In fact, they’re part of what MAKES us human beings.

Of course, I’ve oversimplified a lot here today. Most good stories are dense and complicated, with many characters and lots of obstacles and elusive goals. Sometimes they jump around in time and space. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what they’re really about.

But this basic framework — these three pictures, those two questions — lie at the heart of it all. If you don’t have them all, you might have something, but you don’t have a story.

Why did we stay up way too late to watch the end of that stupid movie? Because for all they got wrong, they got the heart of it right. They made us care about this goofy disgraced scientist and his walking-on-the-floor-of-the-spaceship astronaut wife.

The story was about saving the earth. But it was really about love, and the amazing things two people can accomplish when they believe in each other. They can move mountains — not just mountains, but whole planets.

So when the astronaut used her husband’s space battering ram to knock Mercury out of our path like a giant galactic cue ball, I went to bed happy and satisfied.

Because I was reminded, once again, that a good story can save us all.

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The swans in the hotel room

I’ve been on the road a lot the past year or so. After a while the hotel rooms all feel the same. This is fine with me — all I need is a place to work, a comfortable bed and hot water in the shower. If there’s a sofa and HBO, bonus. Maybe I can finally see “Game of Thrones.”

Having said that, all those similar hotel rooms have similar little irritations. Too many pillows on the bed. Not enough shampoo in that little bottle. Curtains you can never get all the way closed to keep that laser of sunlight from hitting your face at 6 a.m.

The main problem is that moment when you first wake up, and the room looks the same as a hundred other rooms, and you can’t remember where you are.

The other day I checked into a Fairfield Inn in Smyrna, Tenn., a Nashville suburb. When I opened the door to my room, this was on the bed.

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I thought it was a heart. I emailed the photo to my wife, who immediately said it was two swans. As soon as she said it, I saw the swans, too.

I don’t know how many Fairfield Inns you’ve been to in your life, but you don’t usually see swans.

When I went back down to the lobby, I asked about it. The manager said I should see Mindy, the head of housekeeping.

Her full name is Mindy Ledford. She has all kinds of pins on her nametag — awards for good service. About three years ago, she said, the hotel staff was talking about ways to make the place memorable. Somebody brought up how cruise ships made animals out of towels and put one on the bed in each cabin as a little surprise for the guests. (Maybe you had heard of this. I hadn’t. Most of my experience on the water has been in a bass boat.)

Mindy went online and found a couple of places that show you how to make the animals. She taught the other housekeepers. Now they make the swans for anybody staying in a king room, and elephants for anybody staying in a double. If you’re staying more than one night, and you leave them a nice note, they’ll make you another. They also rotate animals down by the pool. Mindy can make a dog, a monkey and a lobster.

One guy who’s a regular at the hotel is getting her to teach him how to make them.

Something I’ve come to appreciate in life is a thankless job done well. My mama was a waitress for a long time, and she was so good at it that travelers requested her when they came through town. I’ve watched the guys at the car wash who clean out the cup holders and vacuum under the seats. I’ve seen the movers who covered our furniture with a double layer of quilts so it wouldn’t bang around in their truck.

I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to clean hotel rooms for a living. The only time anybody notices is when it’s done wrong. There’s no rule, not even much of an incentive, for these housekeepers to do a little extra. But they do it anyway.

Mindy’s idea worked. The Smyrna Fairfield Inn is, in fact, memorable.  I won’t forget how much it means to give people a little more than they expect.

I think I was right about the swans the first time. They do make a heart.

P.S.: When I got back to the hotel, a few hours after talking to Mindy, this was waiting on the bed. They make turtles, too.

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Turtles ain’t easy.

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100 words on… the Daytona crash

I’m reading David Carr’s junkie memoir “The Night of the Gun.” He talks about the carefully acquired skill of shooting up cocaine — how the goal is to get as high as possible without overdosing. This is roughly the same goal of NASCAR. Only creeps watch just for crashes. But fans want to see drivers mash the gas and swap paint — to push all the way to the edge of a terrifying wreck. The problem is, going that fast, sometimes you get a terrifying wreck. The tally this time is 28 injured. I’m always surprised it isn’t worse.

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100 words on… Chipper Jones

 

photo-3The Braves announced Tuesday that they were retiring his number. He was in camp to help with drills. He showed up in full uniform, down to the can of dip in his back left pocket. He wore shades, so you couldn’t see his eyes. “I’ve put the cap on it and closed it tight,” he said. “But I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t miss 7 to 10” — game time. He kept staring out at the field. “It all went by so quick… 19 years.” Then he got up and went out there to teach younger men.

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Essie Mae and Strom

Essie Mae Washington-Williams died over the weekend. She was the secret daughter of Strom Thurmond, the child of Thurmond and a black maid who worked in the family home. Thurmond was 22 when Essie Mae was born. She did not tell her story until he died at age 100.

I have always thought the circumstances of her birth, and the dignity of her life, spoke a profound truth about race in the South, then and now. She stayed quiet as her famous father preached segregation, even though she was the one fact that could end his career. They visited, occasionally. If she dwelled on him, she never said so. She just went on and lived her life. She said in her autobiography: “He trusted me, and I respected him, and we loved each other in our deeply repressed ways, and that was our social contract.”

There is a statue of Thurmond outside the South Carolina State House. It had the names of his four children on it. After Essie Mae came forward, the statue was changed. Now there are five.

When she came to Columbia in 2003, I went down and wrote a column about her. I went back and looked at it last night, and thought about an amazing American life. Here’s the column:

The Charlotte Observer, Dec. 18, 2003

A MYSTERY SPEAKS, AND THE NEEDLE OF HISTORY MOVES;
THURMOND WAS HER FATHER, SHE SAYS, TO AMENS IN COLUMBIA

COLUMBIA — The folks at the hotel were thinking ahead. They opened a path through the service corridor so Essie Mae Washington-Williams could dodge the crowd and slip out the back.

But when the time came, Frank Wheaton, her lawyer, said no.

“Let her have this moment,” he said. “She deserves this moment.”

And he turned her toward the front door.

It’s not often that history shows up in front of you. It’s not often that a ghost puts on a red jacket and walks into the room.

But here she was Wednesday morning. Essie Mae Washington-Williams. The daughter of the late Strom Thurmond. The answer to one of the great mysteries of the South.

She spoke for about 10 minutes in a ballroom at the Adam’s Mark hotel. She didn’t say much more than she said to The Washington Post, which told her story over the weekend. She still hasn’t provided proof that Thurmond was her father, although Thurmond’s family doesn’t dispute it.

But on Wednesday none of that mattered. The rumor was made flesh. Dozens of people showed up just to see.

They brought her Christmas presents. They lined up for her autograph. They waited more than an hour to have their picture taken with her.

“This moment speaks the truth to history,” said Marianna Davis, who went to school with Williams at S.C. State half a century ago. “White men. Black women. Children. All you’ve got to do is look at the black people in this room. Look at all the shades.”

That is just the thing about the story of Williams, and the story of the South as a whole. You can’t reduce it to black and white. The more you try to separate it out, the more it swirls together, all those shades of history.

Thurmond fathered the girl with his family’s black maid. But no one seems to know the details. Thurmond never admitted in public that he was Essie Mae’s father. But he put her through school and gave her money most of her life.

She watched as he came out for segregation, filibustered against civil rights. But she never told her story while he was alive, not while she could hurt him.

On Wednesday somebody asked if she’d seen Thurmond’s 100th birthday party last year, where his daughter Julie announced that she was pregnant with Thurmond’s “first grandchild.” At the time Williams had four grown children.

“I just smiled,” she said.

She says she’s not interested in being a part of the senator’s will. But that doesn’t mean she will do without. She said she started a book years ago, and her lawyer said publishers are lining up with offers. He described her story as “certainly a monumental epic for television or screen.”

But that is the story. This is the person.

She is 78, a retired schoolteacher, living in Los Angeles. She talks with a quaver and walks with a cane. Besides the four children, there are 13 grandkids and four great-grands to add to the Thurmond family tree.

Williams doesn’t want money from the Thurmonds. But she’d like to meet them. And she likes the idea of having her name on the Strom Thurmond monuments, the ones that list his children.

There may come a time, generations from now, when the whole notion of white people and black people are history, when we talk about them the way we now talk about the Tories and the Whigs.

It might turn out that old Strom Thurmond, without intending to, helped history turn that corner.

And it might turn out that a woman with a cane helped show the way, not black, not white, moving slow but still moving, headed for the front door.

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Ideas: overrated. Execution: underrated.

From Hugo Lindgren in the NYT:

Ideas, in a sense, are overrated. Of course, you need good ones, but at this point in our supersaturated culture, precious few are so novel that nobody else has ever thought of them before. It’s really about where you take the idea, and how committed you are to solving the endless problems that come up in the execution.

Read the whole piece, “Be Wrong As Fast As You Can.“