A love letter to storytellers

I'm thinking about my mentor tonight.

I took two classes from Irvin Kershner, and a scholarship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Foundation made it possible for me to complete an internship with him. He was generous with his time--in fact he once gave me an assignment that he had designed after pondering for a day how best to help me learn to tell a story in screenplay form.

I remember Kersh pausing during a lecture to ask passionately, "Have any of you seen someone die? Have you felt what it's like to not have enough to eat? How can you tell a story if you haven't experienced life?"

I often wish I could call him and stop by to ask his thoughts about what has happened to Star Wars (he directed "Empire Strikes Back") and about the consolidation of entertainment companies resulting in fewer original stories being told.

I read a quote recently about how, without stories, each new day would meld into the next without meaning. There is much we are losing as fewer original stories are developed and shared.

The problem of noise

I work across the street from a building site; live construction feeds of the site can be seen here.

For almost two years I'd glance out my office window and see construction workers guide immense pieces of the building hanging from cranes, into place. Some of them had worked on casinos in Las Vegas and when it was no longer needed, specialized machinery from the site was transported to a construction site at a NFL stadium that was being built.

For more than a year, construction sounds as 25,000 tons of steel became a building were part of my daily life. While sound levels every day were loud, most of the sounds I heard didn't bother me. Once in awhile, however, I'd hear a new sound -- a piece of machinery or a straining engine -- that would catch my attention, making it hard to concentrate.

The construction sounds were just as out of my control as the constant stream of content that is published on every platform and on every device.

A few weeks ago I joined the local community garden. Gardening supplies in local stores had been removed from shelves after 75 percent off sales shelves that had previously held potting soil and planters had been replaced by back-to-school supplies.

While friends said it was futile to plant seeds in a mini heat wave, in late summer in the desert, tiny makes shown climate and growing zones on the back of watermelon and cucumber, chard and basil packets said that the seeds could be sown in August and September.

Even if no seeds had germinated, having time away from cell phones, tablets and endless streams of content would have been worth it.

Green bean vines, watermelon and cucumber seeds sprouted and just as quickly aphids began munching on tender new leaves. Yesterday as I stopped by to water I wondered if the plants would survive. Garden rules do not allow the us of pesticides. I paused to examine the underside of a leaf and was surprised and thrilled to see a bright red, shiny ladybug doing her job. The small drama was an amazing gift. Delight!

While I've spent a couple of sleepless nights thinking about the entertainment industry and how difficult storytelling is, I will sleep well tonight. Storylines are also beginning to spontaneously pop into my thoughts.

The disheartening reports about the entertainment industry will continue be pushed to all available platforms. Motivated by the desire to capture the depth of humanity and create meaning, storytellers can benefit from disconnecting, and not just for a weekend or the duration of a writers' retreat.

Create. The world is waiting.

storytelling, inspiration, film, creative writing, entertainment industry

Annual reports: Analytics, bests, greatest accomplishments and the power of storytelling

Several years ago when I project managed annual and quinquennial reports for a health sciences university, I experienced the importance of publications such as newsletters and annual reports.

Work on a quinquennial report began and a committee had been formed to reconstruct the organizations's landmark "bests, and greatest accomplishments. Today I'm sure analytics would be an important part of similar conversations.

Due to the project timeline and the need to collect supporting materials (historic photographs to locate and compile, photo shoots to schedule), I gathered administrative newsletters from key entities, copies of campus newspapers, magazines and board minutes and began to document and sort the information they contained, making sure to include projects related to the strategic plan.

At that time the campus still had a printed campus newspaper and it made much of the task easy. Stories of importance to both internal and external entities appeared on the cover, and important institutional milestones were published above the fold. 

New programs, open houses, ribbon cutting events, statistics and awards were organized by month and year due to the constraints of a printed monthly publication. 

I compiled two seven-to-nine-page reports capturing the "bests," "greatest accomplishments" for the growing institution (divided into health care and academic reports), passed them to leadership for approval and was asked, "how did you accomplish this project?" From what i was told, the committee that had been tasked with recalling and collecting the bests & greatest content was in its beginning stages.

I have empathy for communication / marketing / PR departments today. Until the emergence of social media and online communication, there was a cost to capture and share information, including purchasing and developing film, extended timelines for printing newsletters and newspapers, individually faxing, calling or making visits to newspaper offices for each news release. However, the important items could easily be reviewed later because content was physically published for distribution on real paper instead of endless scrolling and / or online searches. 

Also, paths to completion were more easily traced because minor stories that appeared on page nine or 13 eventually moved to more prominent places in the newspaper, showing the history and key players.

Today, so much content is posted so easily to so many platforms including online newsrooms (just keep scrolling, everything appears with the same importance) for so little cost that the real value of information may become muddled. 

The softer side of many annual reports are personal stories. But good storytellers and places and time to develop the craft are not easy to find, even in the entertainment industry. I remember asking several professors at USC why they didn't write books about what they were teaching about writing. Every week after class I would leave the USC campus feeling energized, having gained writing tools that would change how I structured the information I was sharing. I felt energized even though those were long days with some classes beginning at 7:00 p.m. and ending at 10:00 p.m., and this was after I had worked a full work day in the Inland Empire, about an hour away from campus.

To show the value of the work an organization is doing, existing data is often collected, studied and shared internally, with emphasis placed on examine the past, always looking over one's shoulder.

While by their nature annual reports record their success -- a job well done -- by highlighting the past, faith in their ability to move into the future can be woven into the content through storytelling.

After the annual report's theme was chosen a group from departments on campus including marketing, public relations and philanthropy worked together to suggest and choose seven to nine stories to highlight.

As I interviewed the individuals and families who generously offered to share their stories, I asked several questions about how they had experienced the theme of the report for that year. Each feature story included a quote that used the exact word that appeared in writing on the cover, resulting in a beautiful prism highlighting the theme on every page, made stronger because the words were authentic -- real.

The report's theme was further emphasized through storytelling techniques I learned while taking screenwriting and fiction writing courses at USC.

An example is "changing in place."

One annual report feature read as simple as a family's bedtime routine, tucking in their baby at bedtime, but the story uses changing in place to show the deep impact the institution had made on the family.

Their baby had been born with a cleft palate and her doctors needed to wait a year before corrective surgery could be scheduled. Though an alarm had been installed in the baby's bedroom to alert her family if she stopped breathing, her family took turns sitting by her bedside throughout the night, every night for the entire year to make sure she was safe.

"Changing in place" is a literary technique that brings the audience into a space and shares happenings that transpire there before later bringing the character back into the same space. Though the surroundings have not changed it is as if the person is in a completely different space. Changes that have happened internally result in the person experiencing and interacting with his or her old surroundings in a completely new way.

The story begins in the baby's bedroom. The parents read a bedtime story to her as they do every night, singing a lullaby, tucking her in and dimming the lights before settling into a chair beside the baby's crib, protecting her, watching her every breath until morning.

The story then highlights care provided to the family, as told by the family, with a quote that, in their own words, restates the annual report theme.

The story ends in the same place it started, back in the baby's bedroom. It's more than a year later and the surgery has been completed. The little one has a beautiful smile. The parents read her a bedtime story, sing a lullaby, tuck her in. They then turn down the lights and leave the room, confident that she will be safe throughout the night. Changing in place. The family's lives will never be the same.

Simply told with a simple but powerful storytelling technique -- changing in place -- providing humanity and value to the numbers reporting an organization's hard work, projects completed, bests and greatest achievements accomplished.

A lesson shared by a master storyteller

From screenwriting to finance and Instant Pot groups, the number of Facebook groups I follow has grown.

I usually do a quick check of various groups to see what has been posted recently, scrolling past any drama.

A couple of weeks ago I responded to a question from a member of a screenwriting group who had asked for help with dialogue. Writing dialogue was one of the top skills I wrestled with while taking courses at USC in the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and in the School of Cinematic Arts.

Every moment I spent on the USC campus was so amazing I think I skipped class just once or twice during the six years I attended USC while working full-time and one of those was when I was on a work trip to Africa.

After class at USC I always traveled back to the Inland Empire with at least one amazing gem learned during whatever class I was taking at the time. I took classes from several USC professors more than once, and as I look back I can think of many top things I learned from each of them that they shared only once. That's why I came to class early and often stayed in the classroom during breaks to hear questions students asked the professor during breaks.

An insight that changed how I write came from my friend and mentor, director Irving Kershner. When I shared my struggles writing dialogue with him, he said, "In every scene every character wants something. They may not say a word. What do they do to get it? Now that is interesting."

I posted this quote of Facebook in the responses to the question about how to write dialogue and the thread took off.

As I continue working on a book that I plan to adapt into a screenplay, Kersh's advice is shaping the story. What happens as storytellers follow each character is driven by what the characters want and need, and ultimately what they do; if their words are the most interesting part of the story, the story is not very interesting.

I asked Kersh once why he didn't write a book about storytelling or writing and he said he was much too active to write a book. I learned so much from him and I miss him often as I write.