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August 27, 2013 Leave a Comment
July 16, 2013 Leave a Comment

Point of No Return

Last night at our company’s table read of Macbeth–our local community theatre is just starting rehearsals for a fall production of the play, for which I’ve been (great hollering haggis!) cast as the lead–I read these lines that Macbeth speaks right before our intermission (and as he contemplates further murder):

I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far as that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er…

These lines encapsulate Macbeth’s position at the point of no return, the point in a story in which it is just as much trouble, if not impossible, for the hero to go back where he started as it is for him to keep pressing on. “Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The point of no return is a place at which we initially feel stuck. We’ve started out on a journey toward some cherished goal, but things have become more complicated than we counted on. We knew it was going to be difficult, but we didn’t know it was going to be like this…

What is needed in this situation is a fresh surge of determination (though without Macbeth’s particular motivation!). Realizing that there is no sense in going back, we have to keep soldiering on.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that we simply keep doing the things that got us stuck in the first place (Macbeth might have learned from this). We need renewed determination, but to meet the challenges that lie ahead we also need a fresh injection of creativity. Maybe we’re stuck because the plan we put in place to achieve our goal isn’t well-designed for the purpose? Maybe we have to rethink our entire strategy?

Are you feeling stuck today in some project you are working on? Think about the plan that got you to this place. Then consider whether an utterly different approach might help you break free from it. If you think that it would, then start brainstorming.

And aim high. You might as well. For there’s really no going back.

 

P.S. Speaking of fresh injections of creativity, my new online course, The Art of the Storypreneur, is now open for enrollment. This course is designed to help you become, not just a storyteller, but a story creator for your business or organization. Subscribers to The Comic Muse email Newsletter receive a nifty discount. And enroll before midnight (EST) on Friday, July 19, 2013, and receive a free, half-hour mind-meld with me via phone or Skype. The syllabus and other details about the course can be found here.

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July 11, 2013 Leave a Comment

It’s Time. Come Learn the Art of the Storypreneur


From the launch of The Comic Muse it has been my intention to offer courses to entrepreneurs and executives from around the world interested in learning how to bring the principles of great storytelling to bear upon their businesses.

Now I’m ready to go from intention to execution.

Are you?

This coming Monday, July 15, enrollment opens for my first course, which I am calling The Art of the Storypreneur.

Are you someone who knows that your business’s or organization’s brand, content marketing, social networking, and events could greatly benefit from a creative, storytelling approach, but who doesn’t know where to begin?

Perhaps you think you’re not the “creative type” and so not well-suited to becoming a storyteller?

Or are you someone already putting storytelling principles into play in your business or organization, but who would like to learn how to stir the creative juices even more?

Either way, The Art of the Storypreneur is the course for you.

Over the span of eight weeks, I’m going to help you learn what it takes to tell the story of your endeavor in a way that moves both the minds and the hearts of the members of your tribe.

We’re not going to focus on borrowing other people’s stories; my aim is to help you become a story creator yourself, so that you will have the habitual ability to bring compelling stories into every aspect of your activities.

This will be an email-based course, with one email lesson–plus homework!–appearing in your Inbox each week for eight weeks.

But The Art of the Storypreneur will also be an interactive experience. We will have our own Google+ community, where students will interact with one another and with me.

Also, students will receive video content in which I expand on some of the more central concepts of the course.

And one more thing.

Everyone who signs up for The Art of the Storypreneur in the first week will receive a one-on-one, half-hour phone or Skype consultation with me, Daniel McInerny, absolutely free of charge, gratis, without exchange of monetary units.

Look for the full course description and sign-up form here at The Comic Muse on Monday!

 

The photo above, from Wikimedia Commons, is copyrighted by the National Archives and Record Administration. The boys are photographed in front of their schoolhouse in Okanogan, Washington, in 1907, aboard their daily transportation to school.

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July 10, 2013 Leave a Comment

The Marketer’s Shorthand

As a challenge to the thesis of my last post, Andrea Phillips via Twitter very kindly offered the following counterexample:

Does this Audi ad manifest a novelist’s or screenwriter’s sense of story, or a marketer’s sense?

Does it present, even implicitly, a protagonist’s pursuit of a goal amidst obstacles, or is the image simply meant to provoke an emotional response around a theme (“a powerful car can also be efficient”)?

It may seem an academic point. But for those trying to tell stories around a product or service, it helps to be clear on what sense of story they should be aiming for.

We human beings think of our lives in terms of story, i.e., the novelist’s or screenwriter’s sense of story, because, as I’ve argued before, human life itself takes the form of a story. Even the smallest and most mundane of our actions–the coffee I brewed before sitting down to write this morning–can be a tiny scene in a larger narrative: the story of my conversation with Andrea Phillips, the story of my Wednesday, the story of The Comic Muse, the story of my family. Not every action I take is terribly relevant to the arch-plot of my life. Not every action I take involves the kind of stakes and obstacles that make for a very interesting story. But generally, my actions are those of a protagonist struggling to overcome obstacles to my goal of happiness or fulfillment.

So when Audi brings one of their cars to my attention, they are, in effect, saying: this vehicle will help you in your quest. And I, in turn, comprehend their offer against the backdrop of my pursuit of fulfillment.

There’s a scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone where Harry goes into Ollivander’s Wand Shop to purchase a wand. Mr. Ollivander offers him a wand, a wand that has enormous significance for Harry’s quest to defeat Voldemort. I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that the Audi ad has the same narrative logic. It’s an offer of a product purported to have significance, if not enormous significance, for our desire to live a happy and fulfilled life.

Granted, the ad itself doesn’t spell all this out. But it doesn’t have to. We are so accustomed to understanding our lives as story and to fielding offers to help us achieve happiness, that all it takes is an image to suggest an entire matrix of narrative associations. The sleek image of the Q7 suggests that here is an attractive, powerful instrument that can be of great use to us in our pursuits. And the two-word logline at the top of the ad, “Never follow,” is all that is required to appeal to our desire to be pro-active, a leader, a person who does not merely follow the pack–qualities that we associate with living a successful life.

The marketer’s sense of story, therefore, the art of using imagery and copywriting to swiftly invoke certain ideas and emotions, is really only a shorthand version of the novelist’s or screenwriter’s sense of story in which a protagonist struggles for fulfillment.

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July 9, 2013 Leave a Comment

Two Senses of “Storytelling” for Business?

In her book, A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling, Andrea Phillips draws a distinction between the way novelists and screenwriters use the word story, and the way marketers and other business folks use it. When they use the word story, novelists and screenwriters mean a structure in which a protagonist trying to achieve an important goal encounters a series of increasingly challenging obstacles which, in the end, he either overcomes or doesn’t. Marketers, by contrast, as Phillips writes, “often use the word story to mean something subtly different; it refers to a message, imagery intended to evoke a specific idea or emotional response, a web of quickly understood tensions and dynamics.”

In many instances, as Phillips observes, this is a distinction without a substantial difference. The “message” of the marketer is really the theme of a real, albeit truncated, narrative. Think, for example, of the Progressive car insurance sketches starring Flo (whether on TV or radio). Most if not all of these sketches tell a short story with a comic resolution. A fictionalized customer has a dilemma which Flo resolves in an unexpectedly comic way. The ads function as mini movies.

It becomes a little more difficult to execute a narrative within the context of a magazine or billboard ad, but even here, most if not all of the time, the novelist’s or screenwriter’s understanding of narrative is in play. For example, in this toothpaste ad put together by JWT Shanghai, the owner of this ruined tooth (notice that the decay of the tooth takes the form of ancient ruins) is a “damsel in distress” whom the toothpaste (i.e. the toothpaste maker) comes as the hero to rescue. The caption isn’t even necessary to make this point; the image alone gives us a protagonist, goal, obstacle and resolution.

In fact, I would be surprised if even the moodiest, single-image magazine ad didn’t convey a narrative in which hero, goal, obstacle and resolution were at least implicitly present.

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July 5, 2013 Leave a Comment

Half-Time Chalk Talk

Small_Steps

We’re at the half-way point in the year, which means that it’s a good time to review that list of resolutions, especially the professional ones, that you made back in January.

I imagine you’ll find that there’s nothing you’d want to change on that list. These are still, more or less, the goals you want to achieve. If there’s a problem, it’s probably that you haven’t had significant success in moving toward those goals, or at least the more difficult ones. Perhaps you’ve stalled out altogether. It wouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve even forgotten one or two of the goals you set all those months ago.

In any story, the hero or heroine undergoes a transformational arc. By the time we fade out or the curtain falls, he or she has grown in some virtue, intellectual or moral–meaning, usually, that he or she has become wiser or braver or both.

As you undergo your story this year, you also will have to grow in wisdom and bravery if you are going to achieve your goals. It could be the case that you need more insight into your abilities and opportunities, and thus into the kinds of goals you should be pursuing. But for most, a different kind of wisdom is called for: practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is the virtue by which we habitually discern the best means to our goals.

So if you’re finding yourself stuck, don’t waste time reworking your goals. That’s often a temptation to lapse into a kind of daydream state about how things might be different in the future. You, my friend, need to act. You need to create some momentum toward your goals, but in a smart way. If your current strategy needs to be scrapped, then think today about a different approach. And think all the way back to the first, small step you can take in order to implement the new strategy. Write that step down, as well as the next steps following that one.

Then, take those first small steps. Exercise the tiny bravery needed to break out of the dream state, overcome the inertia and the self-doubt, and move forward toward your goal. As soon as you begin to move forward, you’ll feel the surge of momentum. Keep stoking that fire with more tiny steps and you’ll be amazed at where you find yourself come December.

 

Photo courtesy of Strykr at Wikimedia Commons.

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July 4, 2013 1 Comment

Yankee Doodle Dandies

For readers outside of the United States, today, July the Fourth, is our Independence Day. Which has set me to thinking: what are my favorite Fourth of July movies?

On my shortlist would be Frank Capra’s 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, as would be the 2008 HBO mini-series John Adams, adapted from the best-selling biography by David McCullough, directed by Tom Hooper, and starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.

But my all-time favorite Fourth of July movie is Yankee Doodle Dandy starring Jimmy Cagney. Released in 1942, Yankee Doodle Dandy is the story of American actor, singer, dancer, composer, lyricist, and Broadway impresario, George M. Cohan. Cohan was the composer of such American popular standards as “She’s A Grand Old Flag,” “The Yankee Doodle Boy,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and “Over There.”

Both Cohan and Cagney are American treasures. Watch the YouTube clip above–it’s pure joy (and Cagney is joined at the end by Judy Garland).

But this has got me thinking further. Who are some of my favorite American treasures in other storytelling genres? Here’s a shortlist off the top of my head:

Flannery O’Connor

Walker Percy

Mark Twain

J.D. Salinger

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dave Brubeck

Lucille Ball

John Lasseter

Walt Disney

Ernest Hemingway

Willa Cather

Thornton Wilder

Judy Garland

Cole Porter

Charles M. Schulz

Ring Lardner

That’s hardly even a beginning. But now it’s your turn.

Who would be on your list of great American storytellers?

God bless America!

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June 27, 2013 Leave a Comment

Storytelling as Strategizing

I’m very pleased to be guest posting today over at Plotlines: Elevate Your Story. Many thanks to Plotlines principal Michael Plotnick for inviting me over to sing on his stage.

My post is entitled, Storytelling as Strategizing.

Don’t tell me you don’t know how to create a story for your business. Creating a story is very much like creating a strategy. It’s a way of moving a ball down the field. And that’s exactly what you do best! Read more here.

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June 21, 2013 Leave a Comment

Lead with Beauty

It seems so counterintuitive.

We’re much more comfortable giving people statistics, data, information, “The 10 Most Effective Ways to Do This or That.”

All of this has its place and is important. But I would like to suggest that this is not what we should lead with when we’re introducing our project, making our pitch, or telling the world what our enterprise is all about.

Rather, we should lead with beauty.

That’s right–beauty. And no, I’m not just talking to the artists out there.

This afternoon my kids and their cousins are going to go see Disney/Pixar’s latest release, Monster’s University (without me–drat them!). I’ve made something of a study of Pixar’s projects over the years, and it’s clear that this company puts superior craftsmanship in regard to both story and digital animation above all else. Pixar’s first aim is to create something beautiful. And this naturally attracts a significant audience, because human nature will move toward the beautiful like metal filings toward a magnet.

Plenty of tickets to Monster’s University will be sold today. But the key transaction that will take place between Disney/Pixar and its audience will not occur at the ticket counter. It will occur in the theater itself, in the emotional exchange between the characters on the screen and the audience in the seats. The box office take is simply a residue of the beautiful, delightful comedy that, ironically through the madcap antics of digitized monsters, confirms something true about who we are as humans.

But that’s an artistic project, you say. How can a non-artistic enterprise lead with beauty?

Consider the TV ads for the Wounded Warrior Project. These ads tell us stories of military veterans struggling to overcome serious battle injuries. Sometimes they show us a level of disfigurement that we have no inclination to call beautiful.

But it is beautiful.

These wounded warriors are beautiful because through their scars we are able to see their human dignity shining through. They are beautiful because their courageous struggle to cope with their injuries, along with their humble dependence upon the family members and health care personnel who assist them, testifies to what is best in the human spirit.

The beautiful is not the pretty. It is the illumination of all that is good and true.

What other examples can you give of business enterprises leading with the beautiful? 

Where is the beauty in your project?

 

* For further reflections on beauty, please sign up for The Comic Muse email Newsletter. It’s absolutely free and delivers pearls of wisdom about the connections between storytelling and business to your Inbox every Sunday. And when you sign up you will receive my free e-ssay, “Freshening the World: A Brief Introduction to the Concept of Beauty.”

 

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June 19, 2013 Leave a Comment

Man of Steel and the Snares of Spectacle

Having just seen Man of Steel, I can only think of Aristotle at Poetics 6:

“The spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry….Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.”

In other words, after you’ve seen one hundred and sixty-seven explosions, the one hundred and sixty-eighth no longer has any meaning.

Writing in the 4th century B.C., Aristotle was already well aware of stories that attempted to substitute spectacle for plot and characterization. Digital technology allows for more sophisticated effects, but like the mechanisms that generated the deus ex machina on the ancient stage, it can fall into the same temptation: “Constantly titillate their senses and you will become like gods–you won’t have to sweat out the trouble of crafting a story.” 

But for the storyteller, that’s a snare and a delusion.

Just the other night in Melbourne, Australia’s Regent Theatre, there premiered the musical adaptation King Kong, featuring a 20-foot-tall animatronic silverback gorilla weighing more than 2,400 pounds. According to Wired, 11 onstage aerialists/puppeteers are needed to direct the gorilla’s movements.

Let’s hope the makers of this King Kong learned a thing or two from Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark. But one doubts it.

The soul of a story, Aristotle says, is plot: the logical sequence of actions by which a character overcomes obstacles to his goal. Everything else is gravy. So if that sequence of actions and the character undertaking them are not emotionally compelling, no amount of eye candy is going to make up the difference. It’s only going to make us sick to our stomachs.

There’s a key lesson here for business storytellers, too. Are you telling a story meant to touch the mind and heart, or are you simply trying to titillate our senses?

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