How Great Storytellers Build Tension Into Everything

I'm going to give you some tips on how you can write more effectively, more persuasive, especially when it comes to storytelling. In this episode, I break it down word for word, line for line, and to teach you how to shape emotion and the words that match the motion you want to communicate.

— I quit my job. The boss followed with, "You're fired. " I told him too late. I was an office manager of a part shipping company for about 3 months. In reality, — okay, we have to pause. There's no setting. — Okay, — it's 1975. isa Charlotte, North Carolina, whatever it is. Okay, I want you to think like a director. — All films work this way. All films open with an establishing shot. It's a giant spaceship. It's the wild, wild west. It's the jungles of Brazil, the rainforest, you know, and then you know where you are. And then what happens is a story is told in increasingly close-up shots. Okay? — Okay. Next time you watch any movie, I want you to pay attention to this. Wide vista, tighter, tighter, lightsaber, somebody's scratching your fingernail. That's how it's told. — Okay? So, when you write your story, it's like that. Wide — and then tighter, tighter, tighter. — It's usually like that. Okay.

— Okay. So, 1996. — Perfect. — Portland, Oregon. 21 years old. Recently out of college. — See, now I know where I'm at. So, you've oriented me now. — Okay. Perfect. And then go on. — I was an office manager of a car shipping company for about 3 months. Yes. — In reality, I was a chef and a bottle washer in a threeperson office. — Perfect. — One of the three was my boss, the company owner, who also happened to be an alcoholic. — He showed up for work one morning, wreaking of booze, hair disheveled. — Yeah, let's pause. — Huh? — I'm not going to listen to all the story. I'm going to workshop this with you. — Okay. So, I quit my job. Let's write expand that a little bit more. — Okay. — Can we do more than that? — I quit my job. I can't believe I said or I've had enough or three weeks of pondering this question led to this moment. So there's a lot of tension here. We want to expand the tension a little bit more. — Got it. — So think about that. — I needed the job and yet I quit. — Okay. So what we want to do is see we're always building tension. I quit my job — but I desperately — I desperately needed — I needed because rent was due. You know you follow or whatever it was. I didn't have a lot of options, but I knew this wasn't it. Okay, this is just basic writing stuff. Okay. — Right — now, and you'll find ways to say that you get the gist of that. You want to expand on that — cuz I'm losing my voice here. — My wife's like, "Why do you always do this yourself? " Okay. — So, just by desperately, — that's all fine. So, uh what is it? He was an alcoholic who also happened to be an alcoholic. How did you know? — Because he showed up to work basically drunk. — Have you ever been around alcoholics? — Nope. — Ever? Anywhere? — Not before that. — Like you said like bloodshot eyes, uh staggered or slur speech, nothing. — Naive family of engineers. — Okay. If you can recall, because those details take us right there. — So maybe — some sensory detail would be great. — Okay. So instead of holes, I happened to be an alcoholic. — What I didn't know, he was an alcoholic. — You didn't know at the time? — No, no clue. — Okay. Which I only figured out later on, — right? — Cuz I was naive 21-year-old D, right? Straight legs, engineers. So you see, you put the some of those details really help your story. Now I'm going to tell you how to write a longass story with great details. Then you have to go back in and edit the sucker down, right? — Okay. So you could speak this to GBT or Claude and then say format this for LinkedIn and it will strip out the what it doesn't think is necessary but give it the juicy details right something like that. So otherwise it becomes a generic story of observation versus putting me in there and making me feel the sweat and the whatever it is. Okay. Right. Read me a couple more sentences. — Okay. He showed up for work that morning. Three king of booze. Very disheveled. Red blotches all over his face. Six foot 50 plus year old dude versus me barely 5'2 96 pounds wet. — Yes. — That's great by the way. — Thanks. — Yes. — Conversation escalated and I quit even though I needed that job. — Okay. — 92 resumes and job applications later repeatedly being told in interviews for an entry- level jobs that if I came back in two years with more experience they'd hire me. I repeatedly told them back that in two years I won't need the entry- level job anymore. One ad at the paper got my attention. It did not talk about mortgages. It talked about opportunity and I went for it. February 14, 1996, I officially started my mortgage venture and that's how I became a mortgage lender. — Okay. — Uh your the energy the heat starts to dissipate here. — Okay. — We need to always build heat and anticipation, right? It's starting like there's some pain in here. — Um and then — this part needs more work. Like it should be it. It almost seems matter of fact. — Nothing is like that, right? Did you want this job? — Huh? — One ad in the paper caught my or got my attention. — Mhm. — What did it say? It did not. — It did not talk about mortgages. — What does that mean? — It talked about opportunity. — What was opportunity? It talked about — sales job on the job training. — Okay. Do those things appeal to you? — Yes. — Okay. You should probably put some of that in there. Some more detail. So, storytelling is the constant editing out and adding in. When it's thin, we add in. When it's too much, we edit out. This feels thin to me. Like, you have to tell me like why and build resistance to like you didn't want this. So, then you know what started out as a mild curiosity has become a 13 year 35 year career. And that's how I w up mortgage. So the punch line could hit harder. Okay, let's see what you wrote. February 1496, I officially started. This probably needs to be phrased differently so we don't know the outcome. — Yeah. — All right. So, — so you say an ad in the paper caught my attention. It caught my eye. — Okay. I don't understand. It did not chat about mortgages. So, I would leave that part out. It talked about opportunity, sales, on the job training, — growth. — Okay. — And I went for it. — And then you can talk about uh well, how did you get the job? Obviously, how did it happen? Was there anything interesting about you getting the job? — Why did they accept you when everyone else said need more experience? — I came to the interview not knowing first thing about mortgages. But why did you get the job? Why did they give it to you? — Because I had the drive. — Okay. So unlike the other interviews, they saw I had drive and that's what mattered to them because you set it up like you got rejected, rejected. So now you have to set up like why you didn't get rejected. This is what I mean. This part's thin. — You follow? I didn't know then. But what started out 1996 would wind up being a lifelong career. And that's why I wound up becoming a mortgage lender. Okay? — And I'll tell you something once you're done writing.

Okay. Art is you have an emotion and you create something that when somebody else sees or experiences it has a shared emotion with you having not spoken to you. When you watch a movie and you're crying, it's because that person wanted you to feel this emotion. So, in every paragraph, you could ask yourself, what is the emotion? No emotion, there's no story. — And again, going back to our original conversation last two days, you know, growing up in my culture, you don't really show a lot of emotion. — Well, screw that. — So, we're writing. I'm relearning. That's what I'm saying. — Well, even if you did, let's just say you're in an Italian family, you still wouldn't write like this. So, every paragraph, ask yourself, what's the emotion? What's the emotion? If there's no emotion, — rewrite it. Rewrite it until you hit the emotion. So this is almost like excitement, relief and jubilation, you know. So you have to write so that it drives those emotions. — You follow? Yes. — This one is dread, doom, fear, whatever, anxiety, — relief. Relief has to come very late cuz if you get the relief, I don't read the rest. — Right. — Okay. — Make sense? myself like I'm very wordy and sometimes I I'm like wait what am I doing? Okay, — I don't even have that very myself sometimes. — Okay. Have you spoken a story or an idea into text uh like a chat TV or something? — Yeah. — And did you tell it like rewrite this? — Yes. — Does it do a good job? — It kind of helps but then it throws in some — some weird stuff. Yeah. — Okay. It's — so what you're doing is you're using words that are not effective and that are not clear. Um when people get on stage they have that same problem. You notice they're like blabber on like what's the point? You get We all have to practice speaking and articulating ideas in the shortest most uh condensed and precise way possible. So when we write long it's just a series of a lot of short really impactful ideas. — Okay. The way that you can do this is you start at the end. If you know how the story ends, the writing of the story becomes really easy. So, what it's like is like we're going to make a meal, but we don't know what we're making. So, we use lots of ingredients. It's really messy. It's not very efficient. And then it's like soup. But if you're like, I'm going to make uh beef Wellington. Well, what's the first step? Well, the pastry part is kind of important and you have a much clearer idea. So, start at the end. Where do you want this plane to land? What is the point you want to make? — So, if I'm on stage and somebody asks a question, I know how the story ends. Now, I'm looking for a story beginning because I know what the point is. The point is let go of hate. So, I'm searching my mind really quickly. When was the time when I held on to hate that really hurt me? — You follow? — Yeah. — That's what I'm doing. So, if you start at the end, what's the point? the story becomes a lot easier to write and then you can write crazy things and you edit out every part of that story that doesn't drive home this point better — because you know where it lands. Make sense? — Yeah. — Okay. It's kind of like that.

— Okay. — Right. — Cuz part of it was like, hey, I don't know if that's what the content lab is. It's like I want to become a better storyteller, be more clear, and be more impactful. — Okay. Content lab. The primary idea is there's two components. Live feedback on your specific work. So if you haven't posted anything, you've written anything, if you don't have any presentations, it's not right for you. Second part to it is a series of uh self-study modules that will help teach discrete principles about storytelling, about writing, about finding your brand voice. So there's two separate parts to it. Modules that you do to learn, but the I believe the thing that makes it different is the feedback that you're going to get from me. like what I did and Alisia that's what I do in content lab in 10 minutes so that even take 10 minutes to do so. So that's if you have something I can work with I can give you feedback because what non-creative people don't understand is they put stuff out into the universe and you get weird engagement feedback because you're not getting like from someone who's been there before telling you tweak this, change that, alter this. That's what I do. — That's what content lab is. So, I have like Instagram videos, but they're all like from scripts. — Who wrote the script? — Oh, from Neil's thing. — Yeah. — Feel like it's coming from me sometimes. — Okay, I can work with that. I know can say this sounds — I can look at it and say this sounds generic. — Yeah. Like I'll ask you where are you in this? And we'll work on it. — That's why I stopped making it because I was like this is not me. — Yeah. The problem is we want quick wins. We want templates and then that's the problem. We get exactly what we ask for is quick wins and templates but we don't learn how to speak. We don't know what our voice is and what our ideas are. That's what I try and help people with. — Awesome. — Does that make sense? — Yes. — If you are a person who creates content, you are a coach, an author, a thought leader, and you're tired of just making content for content sake and you you're invested in this. You want to see it work because you know the value of content. I'm not here to convince you. But if you've enjoyed any part of this and you think I'm the kind of guy who you would get along with and who could possibly help you, this was a little sample. This is an amuse bouch. This is what we're going to do inside Content Lab, a new program that we're launching. It'll be a link in the description. Look, if you enjoy the kind of content that I produce, if you engage with it on social media, if you like the style in which I deliver things, that's all I'm going to do is I'm going to teach you how to do what I do. Period. Uh, so no engagement groups, no weird black hat stuff. It's all above board white hat. And I don't really care about schedules or posting times and optimizing for any of that. I'm sure some of you want to do that. And that's okay if you do. But my style is when I feel inspired, I write. Luckily, I'm inspired a lot, so I write a lot. I want to help you do that. —