ANDREW LINDERMAN
Writer. Teacher. Consultant.
Workshop Descriptions
STORYTELLING 101: HOW TO TELL AN AMAZING TALE
STORYTELLING 201: ADVANCED PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP
STORYTELLING FOR BUSINESS PEOPLE
STORYTELLING FOR FASHION DESIGNERS
Upcoming Shows and Workshops
Stories With a Splash: 3 Tips for Surprising Your Audiences
As most of my friends know, I've been following the Golden State Warriors, a professional basketball team, as they've moved closer to securing an NBA Title. By all accounts, the team is outstanding: creative ball-handling, precision shooting and solid defense earned them the best regular season record in NBA history. But what makes the Warriors so popular among sports fans and the general public alike?
The answer is obvious to anyone who watches the team play: the element of surprise.
The Warriors win games with surprise offensive bursts (i.e. Steph Curry's 17-point overtime performance) that leave their opponents flat footed and their fans in awe. To help you tell stories that take shock and amaze, here are "3 Tips for Surprising Your Audience". Follow these guidelines and you'll have your audience cheering you on in no time.
1. Unpack Expectations. The first step in creating a huge surprise is to unpack any expectations surrounding the surprise in question. What did you anticipate would happen in the situation? What actually happened? Surprises exist in the space between expectation and reality, so take time to unpack both elements.
2. Build Suspense. Once you've laid out all of the events and expectations, begin to reconstruct the surprising moment with the goal of highlighting the discrepancy between what you were lead to believe and what actually happened. At every turn, ask yourself: "If I were an audience member, what would I be thinking?". If you (the storyteller) can "figure out" the surprise, it's unlikely you'll be able to pull one over on your audience. Allow the suspense to build organically by slowly ratcheting up the stakes.
3. Offer A Final Surprise. After you've paid off your audience with the surprise you promised, the last step is to provide a surprise after your audience believes the moment is over. The final surprise turns the initial expectations on their head and leaves the audience wanting more.
Pretty surprising, huh?
Listen Up! 5 Tips to Becoming a Better Listener
As many of you know, I've written a lot about the importance of active listening in the storytelling process. Active listening is useful in a myriad of ways: improved verbal comprehension, increased sensitivity to friends and coworkers, and enhanced creativity and problem solving abilities. But how exactly do you become a better listener? What steps or processes can you implement to glean more information from conversations and feel better connected to the people around you?
The answer is very straightforward: listen for stories.
To help you uncover stories and become a better conversationalist, networker and public speaker in the process, here are "5 Tips to Becoming a Better Listener". Follow these guidelines and people will be lining up to talk to you before you know it.
1. Check In With Your Thoughts. The first step to becoming a better listener is to do a quick check of your mental state. Are you feeling happy or sad? Angry or excited? Are you dwelling on a past conversation or mulling over something you need to do in the future? Ask yourself: What's preventing you from being present in the moment? If you take a moment to do a quick self-diagnostic before entering into a conversation or telling a story, you'll become more present and connected immediately.
2. Check In With Your Body. After you've cultivated an awareness of your thoughts, take a moment to connect with your body and the impact it's having on your listening. Are you feeling tension or pain in any area? Is your breathing heavy and strained or easy and light? How's your posture? If you're struggling to connect with your thoughts (step 1), reverse the order and check in with your body first. As you become aware of any areas of tightness or pain, take a series of slow, deep abdominal breaths ("in through your nose and out through your mouth"). Your abdomen should expand as you inhale and contract as you exhale. Concentrate on your breathing as you go through the process; this will ease your mind by removing any distracting thoughts while simultaneously dissipating any physical discomfort you may be experiencing. You'll instantly feel more relaxed.
3. Check In With Your Conversation Partner. Once you're fully present with your mind and body, cultivate an awareness of your conversation partner oraudience. How is the person standing or sitting? Is the person making consistent eye contact or the person avoiding your gaze? If the person is speaking, what sort of tone is the person using? Is there any variation in the tone? By shifting your attention onto your conversation partner, you'll be able to get out of your head while simultaneously discovering how the person is reacting to you in the moment.
4. Listen for Judgments, Explanations, and Analysis. As your conversation partner is speaking, listen for the judgments, explanations, and conclusions the person is drawing. Judgments often take the form of "positive" adjectives (i.e. good, bad, smart, stupid, etc), but can also take the form of comparative(better, worse, smarter, etc…) or superlative (best, worst, smartest, etc) statements. As the person talks, take note of when s/he uses these statements. Often judgments come with explanations, justifications, or rationalizations attached to them (i.e. "She was the best boss because she always inspired confidence"; "The reason he's a terrible employee is because he doesn't follow directions"). Explanations are often followed by conclusions ("The conclusion is…" or "The moral of the story is…") that offer a logical basis for the judgments and explanations. If you listen for these rhetorical tics, you'll have a better sense of what's happening cognitively, psychologically, andemotionally with your conversation partner. It will ground you in the present, which in turn will reconnect you with your conversation partner.
5. Clarify Confusing Points and Ask Questions to Elicit Stories. The final step to improving your listening is to request clarification and ask follow-up questions to illuminate stories. Whenever you hear judgments, explanations and analysis, you have the opportunity to ask follow-up questions to unpack your conversation partner's experience. The goal here is to get additional information about a situation (i.e. what happened), NOT to illicit further judgments, explanations and analysis. I strongly recommend avoiding "Why?" questions, since answers to "why" questions often start off with "Because…" Instead, rephrase "why" questions as: "In what way is…" or "Is there a reasonfor…?" Instead of getting a simple justification or explanation, your conversation partner is more likely to respond with a story. And then you're in a more interesting, engaging and fun conversation.
Not a bad conversation starter, right?
Design in Mind: 5 Steps for Telling A Design Story
Over the last three years, I've worked with a number of designers who have great ideas, but struggle to get colleagues or potential backers to see the power of their vision. So if you're a designer, how do you talk about your work effectively without falling back on blueprints or drawings?
The answer, not surprisingly, is pretty straightforward: tell a story.
To help you share compelling design stories, here are "5 Steps for Telling a Design Story." Check out our handy infographic, follow these guidelines and you'll have yet another tool for amazing potential clients or fellow designers.
1. Start with Your Values
As designers know, good design starts with values, or core principles. The first step to articulating your values is to answer the question: What is the experience you want your end user to have of the product? Are you trying to achieve efficiency of space or economy of motion? Is the goal to save time or increase the number of clicks on a particular page? Start with a big idea (i.e. efficiency) and then break it down into its component parts (look, feel, etc). The clearer you are in answering these questions, the clearer you'll be in articulating the overall journey, or experience, you'd like a potential reader, listener or user to have of your design.
2. Identify a Moment of Vulnerability
Since there are no shortage of vulnerabilities in the design world, this part is pretty easy. The challenge here is to try to find a moment where the failure hit a nerve on a personal level. To do this, identify a moment or experience in which the value you want your design to demonstrate (i.e. efficiency) was absent, and the impact that absence had on you. For example, if the experience you want people to have is about spatial layout, think about a time when you were jammed against a wall and couldn't escape, or a time you created a space that had that same effect on someone.
Once you pinpoint the moment, take time to highlight each of the design failings (be specific!), how you reacted (be honest!), and any feelings you experienced, either in the moment or afterwards (make it personal!).
3. Demonstrate a Shift
After you've clearly identified a moment of vulnerability, outline how you responded. What did you do? Did you have any conversations about this design failing? Again, be specific about these conversations and actions. For example, after seeing a cabinet that was placed improperly, did you research and discover any trends in cabinet design? Did you share your experiences with your team? These moments and conversations will provide context for your listeners about both your solution and the design process. Many designers gloss over important details out of fear of bogging the audience down, but a detailed description of your response will actually draw people in by making design comprehensible. Again, be specific!
4. Present Your Solution
After you've created context for both the design vulnerability and outlined your response, walk the audience through your solution. This doesn't need to be a complex breakdown of the idea (unless you're speaking to fellow designers who want to hear it), but it does need to address the vulnerability identified in part 2 and the shift in part 3. Describe how the solution speaks to the initial problem and realizes the design value laid out in part 1.
5. End with a Call to Action
The final part of a good design story is to end with a compelling call to action. Your call to action should articulate what's possible in this new, well-designed world. If you've already implemented your design solution, tell people what happened afterwards. Did the industry embrace your ideas? Did anyone offer praise or feedback? What became possible for users and designers in this new world? Did your solution provide secondary benefits that you didn't initially anticipante?
If you haven't implemented the solution yet, get people excited about the future and you'll be amazed at the response.
How's that for a design hack?
What A Character! 3 More Tips on Creating Great Characters
As followers of this blog know, I've written extensively about Breaking Bad, the Emmy award-winning show on AMC that wrapped its final season a few weeks ago. But I'm not here to praise the expert storytelling (ten Emmy awards), the suspenseful scenes (too many to name) or even the superb direction (Vince Gilligan is among the best in the business).
I'm here to talk about Saul Goodman.
Saul, played by the multi-talented Bob Odenkirk, is one of the funniest and fully developed secondary characters on television. After watching him for five seasons, I've fallen in love with Saul's flagrant scheming and naked opportunism. But what exactly makes Saul so memorable?
It all comes down to character choices.
To help you tell stories with characters as colorful and rich as Saul, here are "3 More Tips on Creating Great Characters." Follow these tips and you may have a spinoff show in your future.
1. Simplify Your Descriptions. In real life, people are complex. Unfortunately, when you tell a story, you only have a limited time to showcase secondary characters, so make your descriptions count. To do this, simply answer the question: Does the description paint a picture of the character for the audience? If the answer is no, make sure to add the necessary visuals to make the description pop out to a listener or reader.
2. Use Metaphors and Analogies. In some instances, it can difficult to reduce whole characters to simple descriptions. This is where the right metaphor or analogy can help. For example, maybe your brother-in-law is a police officer with a buzz cut who sings songs from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in public places (go with it). One possible analogy is that your brother-in-law is like the child of Joe Friday and Lady Gaga. Another possible metaphor is that he's a mix of the Hardy Boys and Fallout Boy. The key to finding the right metaphor or analogy for a character is to identify the unusual or prominent thing about the character and then offer a truthful comparison. Even if the analogy doesn't get a huge laugh, it will at least resonate with the audience. Just remember: analogies should be used to augment descriptions, not to replace them.
3. Serve The Plot. Once you've boiled down your characterizations and/or added an analogy, the final step in the process is to make sure that your character descriptions serve the story's plot. For example, if you mention that your father used to shoot rabbits at the beginning of the story, the audience is expecting a reference to either guns or rabbits somewhere later in the story. If you don't deliver on this promise, they'll begin to wonder why you chose the original description. Once again, deliver what you promise! The upside of doing this is that it's also an easy way to inject humor into your stories.
Feeling better about your characters?
Put a Stake In It: 5 Tips for Building Tension in Your Stories
In preparation for Halloween last week, I started watching clips of Carrie, the Academy Award-winning horror film by Brian De Palma. In the movie, Carrie does all sorts of paranormal and frightening things. But after a few minutes, I started to wonder: What makes the scenes, and the story as a whole, so engaging?
The answer turns out to be really simple: lots of tension.
To help you keep your audience on the edge of their seats, here are "5 Tips for Building Tension in Your Stories." You may not win an Academy Award, but you'll at least never have to watch someone nod off again.
1. Foreshadow Future Events. Building tension starts shortly after your opening. Once the audience understands the basics of the story (characters, setting and problem), begin building tension by foreshadowing elements of the story that you intend to address later on. The easiest way to do this is to introduce a powerful image – in Carrie, it's a broken mirror – that offers a clue about the events to come. If your audience suspects that something is awry (i.e. a girl breaks a mirror with her mind), they'll keep watching.
2. Subvert Expectations. In order to keep your audience engaged throughout the story, you have to undermine the audience's expectations and keep them guessing about what's going to happen next. Here's a hypothetical scene: a man and a woman are flirting in the elevator of an apartment building. The man eventually asks for the woman's phone number, but the woman refuses. The man presses her for her number and then all of a sudden a snake comes slithering out of the woman's shirt. The man screams and runs from the elevator as soon as the doors open. Unexpected, right? All great scenes raise questions about the characters and the situation.
3. Add Comic Relief. As a storyteller, you can only build so much tension into the narrative before your audience needs a release. The easiest way to do this in stories is to introduce a secondary character who offers insight into the struggle. Consider the earlier example of the snake. Maybe in the next scene of the story we see the woman walking out of the apartment building when a snake slithers out of one of her pant legs. The doorman sees this happen, but instead of screaming and calling the police, he pulls out a live mouse and proceeds to feed the snake. Entertaining, right? Good comic relief can momentarily distract the audience while also reassuring them that the storyteller understands the absurdity or tragedy of the narrative.
4. Introduce Non-Visual Elements. Powerful images aren't the only way to keep your audience engaged. Sound, smell and touch can be just as evocative (think about theme song from "Jaws"). In Carrie, the sound of locking doors seals the fate of all the students inside while also making the audience curious about what's going to happen next. The challenge for storytellers is that most stories operate inside a visual medium (even oral stories "paint a picture" for the listener). One way to get around this is to use analogies or metaphors. A good analogy will do wonders.
5. End with the Unexpected. In all stories, the job of the storyteller is to leave a lasting impression with the audience at the end of the story. The way to do this is often to introduce a new image or offer a final piece of comic relief. At the end of Carrie, the audience sees a hand reaching out from beyond the grave to grab Sue, the sole teenage survivor. The image is chilling and reminds the audience that even though the central problem (Carrie's revenge) may be resolved, there are other problems that will outlive the story.
Pretty tense, right?
Second That Emotion: 3 Tips for Telling Emotional Stories
A few weeks ago, This American Life (TAL) broadcast an episode entitled "How I Got Into College", which included a story told by a man in his 30's about his early life. In the story, a 13 year-old boy escapes from war-torn Bosnia, only to face violence and isolation at an inner city high school. One day, the boy's high school English teacher brings him to an exclusive private school and introduces him to an administrator. The boy impresses the administrator, is accepted into the private high school, graduates from Harvard and later becomes a professor at the University of Chicago.
Moving story, right? The only problem: the story isn't entirely true.
To be fair, everyone is guilty of a little exaggeration for dramatic effect. That bully who beat you up in middle school probably wasn't 6'7″ tall (unless the bully was Lebron James). But This American Life's "too good to be true" story got me thinking: How do you tell a story that's both honest and heartfelt at the same time?
The answer is actually pretty simple: ground your story in emotion.
To help you tell true tales that will move an audience, here are "3 Tips for Telling Emotional Stories." You'll be amazed what happens.
1. Map Your Emotions. The first step in telling a good, true tale is to identify how your emotions changed as the events in the story played out. Did you start out feeling combative and end up feeling collaborative? Were you initially confused before you wound up feeling confident? One trick is to make an emotional flow chart to show your progression. Your emotional journey will eventually be the journey you're going to take your audience on, so be as specific as possible.
2. Show Emotion Through Action. Stories often fail because the emotional content doesn't match the physical actions, so once you know the emotions at play, ground your story in what happened. For example, instead of saying, "I was really sad," tell us, "I got a text message in midtown and cried until snot was dripping onto the floor of the D train as it pulled into the Broadway-Lafayette station." More interesting, right? The more specific you are about what happened, the more emotional the experience becomes for the audience.
3. Offer a Moment of Transformation. Stories aren't just a series of events – they're journeys of personal transformation. To leave your audience moved, all you need is to provide a final moment that shows how far you've come. As I discussed in an earlier post on resolutions, the easiest way to do this is to return to the opening scene. Maybe you were evicted from your apartment of thirty years after a long fight, only to find an apartment directly across the street? Bring us full circle and we'll see the impact directly.
Pretty moving, right?
Good to Great : 7 Steps to Improving Your Storytelling
As a storytelling coach, I often hear the same question from students: How do I become a better storyteller?
As is the case with any pursuit, it all comes down to practice. See our INFOGRAPHIC below.
Storytelling is one of the most innate human activities – people tell stories in one form or another every day – but it takes work to hone your craft. So to help you shape your stories, here are "7 Steps to Improving Your Storytelling". The exercises won't turn you into David Sedaris or Spalding Gray overnight, but try these every day for a month and you'll notice the benefits. And it'll be way easier than learning to catch flies with chopsticks*.
1. Keep a daily log. The first step to becoming a better storyteller is to record events as they happen. Set aside at least half an hour each day, preferably in the morning or late at night, to write in a journal. When you write, it's important to stick to the facts as much as possible. Avoid passing judgements and drawing conclusions. Be specific (paint a picture), honest (don't lie!), and personal (explore your stakes), and you'll quickly find that the journal will become a source of material for stories.
2. Sharpen your listening skills. Listen to the stories that your friends and family tell. Try to identify the component parts (character, setting, problem, stakes, conflict tension, crisis, climax, consequences) of every story. As I mentioned in a previous post, the fastest way to become a better storyteller is to become a better listener.
3. Record and transcribe the story. One of the best ways to practice storytelling is to record yourself telling a story. Once you've finished, do something unrelated for an hour or so and then come back and transcribe the tape verbatim. The transcription process will help you identify verbal tics ('um', 'uh', 'like', etc) in your speech pattern and will offer insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the narrative.
After you've read over the transcription, ask yourself: Does the story interest me? If I were a complete stranger, would I listen to the whole story? If the answer to either question is 'No', don't despair. That's where Step 3 can help.
3. Outline the story. Once you've recorded and transcribed your story, outline the story. Break the story into scenes, draw pictures, or use a story map (see here and here). Experiment with different outline techniques and you'll find one that works best for you.
4. Turn the story into a pitch. You should be able to summarize your story in a one sentence pitch, so practice doing this with every story you tell. Pitches should be simple and should suggest big moments or events (i.e., "the time I almost failed out of college" or 'the time I peed in my pants in front of my high school rowing team"). The simpler the pitch (ten words or fewer) the better.
5. Try a story out in a social setting. Pitch your story to friends in a social setting and see if anyone wants to hear the story. You'll quickly figure out what your audience finds interesting. Once you're feeling comfortable with the story, try performing it at an open mic.
6. Identify a theme. As I've mentioned before, a theme (i.e. redemption, love, betrayal, etc) will often appear in a story after you've told it a few times. Once you become aware of the theme, edit the story so the scenes work in service of the theme or themes. You'll be amazed at what happens when you take the time to edit properly.
7. Add a new twist. After you've performed a story several times, add a new twist. Start in a different place or add in a new detail and see how your audience reacts. The change may or may not work for the story, but you'll learn something in the process. And that's the point, after all.
*I've never caught a fly with chopsticks
Set Up for Success: 3 Ways to Create Rich Beginnings
When I was a senior in high school, I gathered a bunch of my friends at my house to watch the noir thriller American Psycho, which had just been released on VHS. We were a rowdy bunch who generally preferred making jokes and yelling over each other to watching a screen for two uninterrupted hours. But as soon as the movie started, we were drawn into the story.
Here's the opening scene, as directed by Mary Harron:
Fascinating, right? But how does Harron draw you into Patrick Bateman's twisted world so quickly?
As with all stories, it all starts with a great setup.
To help you eliminate confusion and cliche in your stories, here are "3 Ways to Create Rich Beginnings". Follow these steps and you'll be able to draw in even the most distracted crowd.
1. Ground the story in a specific place. The first job of a storyteller is to paint a picture of the environment so the audience will understand the choices that the central character makes as the narrative unfolds. Does the story take place in a single engine plane flying over the California desert or in a brightly lit, modern apartment on the eleventh floor of the American Gardens Building? What sorts of hair products does the character use? The more detailed you are about location (sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and feel) the less work you'll have to do later on. Be bold!
2. Show us external forces at play. To buy into a story, the audience needs to understand the external influences, or circumstances, affecting the central character. If the story takes place in the South Bronx in the 1980s, for example, it's reasonable for an audience to expect high crime, abandonment and racial tension to work their way into the story. On the other hand, if the story takes place in Wall Street investment banks in the 1980's, we expect to see expensive suits and fancy cars. As is the case with backstory (see this earlier post), when you show external forces at play, you can demonstrate character and even foreshadow what will happen in the story.
3. Establish timing. When telling a story, it's important to understand the amount of time the story covers. Does the story begin when you're 5 years old and end when you're 40, or does it begin and end in a single day? Stories may jump around in time, but the audience needs to understand how you (the narrator) uses time. Timing affects the narrative, so be patient with your setup.
Feeling a little more settled?
Keys to Success: 5 Ways to Create Great Characters
The first time I saw the sketch comedy show Key and Peele on Comedy Central, I had to pause the show because I was crying with laughter. See the clip below:
Funny, right? But how do Key and Peele keep the jokes flowing?
The answer is pretty straightforward: great characters.
All stories work in service of great characters, so to help you bring dimension to the characters in your stories, here are "5 Ways to Create Great Characters". These tips will help you capture the people in your stories quickly and effectively and will likely help you get a laugh in the process.
1. Discover the character's point of view. The first step in creating a great character is to unpack the character's beliefs about the world. What is this person's personal philosophy? Is this person an optimist or a pessimist? Maybe you had a basketball coach who was secretly suspicious of everyone on the team. Or maybe you had a boss who told you that "everything happens for a reason". Once you understand the character's point of view, it will be much easier to identify the character's game (see "5 Ways to Add Humor to Your Stories") and add a few laughs to the story.
2. Know the backstory. As I mentioned in an earlier post, backstory is critical to capturing character. Before starting your story, take the time to identify the events that shaped the characters in the story. Maybe the same boss who told you that "everything happens for a reason" grew up in a town of 20 people and was the prom king of his high school. Changes your perception of him, right? The more information you offer about a person's past, the more nuanced and interesting the character becomes.
3. Identify the character's status. To understand the character's status, it's important to pin down two things: (1) the character's actual position in the societal hierarchy; and (2) how the character perceives him/herself in the pecking order. Once you know these two things, the character will instantly become more relatable.
4. Show off the character's speech patterns and mannerisms. There's no easy way to do this, so be patient. That said, one storytelling trick I use is to record a spoken version of the story and then transcribe the story verbatim. The process of transcribing dialogue will help you discover your speaking style and better understand the characters in the story.
5. Have fun! Once you've created a great character (steps 1-4), place your character situations that confirm the things the audience already knows. For example, if we know that your basketball coach is suspicious of everyone on the team, show us a moment when the coach discovers two players whispering in the locker room. It'll be fun for the audience to watch and will deepen your connection with the character.
Creating great characters takes time (Key and Peele winnowed 330 sketches down to 82 for this upcoming season), so make sure to be patient with yourself. With enough work and time, however, you'll have audiences laughing and crying along with your stories.
Good Story, Anyone? 3 Rules to Make Your Presentations More Relatable
When I was a senior in college, I gave a presentation on a term paper I'd written. The professor called me up and I started gushing about my findings, moving from slide to slide and furiously writing notes on the blackboard. After ten minutes, I was out of breath. I put down the chalk, smiled, and looked out at the class.
"Any questions?" I said.
One student in the back was doodling in his notebook. A student in the middle was tracing his hand. Another student was completely asleep.
The professor smiled and told me that I did a good job, but as soon as I sat down I felt like Ben Stein in the clip below.
Has this ever happened to you? If so, it's time to make your presentation more relatable.
Here are three rules to follow to make your stories and presentations more enjoyable and personal. I can't guarantee that people won't fall asleep, but at least they won't do it because of you.
1. Edit. Cut out useless adjectives, complicated nouns and superfluous explanations. Your audience is smart, so treat them with the respect and intelligence they deserve. They'll do the same for you in return.
2. Have a Destination. All good stories and presentations need a destination. If it seems like you don't know where you're going, people will lose interest.
3. Know Your Audience. If your audience is expecting a talk about politics and you tell them about how you hate golf, people will be confused and upset. Unless, of course your story is about playing golf with a politician. Be a savvy presenter.
Follow these simple rules and you'll never have to ask, "Anyone, Anyone?" again.*
*Unless you're doing a Ben Stein impression. In that case, go crazy with it.
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Mission Accomplished: 3 Storytelling Tips for Great Mission Statements