Storytelling Secrets, Part 6: Specifics

This transcript was auto-generated from an audio recording. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Hi, storytellers. This is the sixth and final part of our new Sound Judgment quick-hit series on storytelling strategies for hooking your audience and keeping them with you. Today, specifics.

It's one thing to hear new strategies and another to try them out in community. We're solving that problem, with a handful of new, affordable, interactive workshops. We just held one on mastering the art of the interview that went over like gangbusters. We're doing it again soon. We're also holding workshops on the 6 strategies for creating unforgettable work, and on the thing that gives us all headaches: how to curate great guests and what it takes to be a phenomenal guest yourself. That one’s gonna be really fun, because I'll share you with how NPR producers book guests. So check out our current and future workshops at podcast allies dot com slash workshops. That's podcast allies dot com slash workshops. You don't need to jot that down, though; the link is in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there.

Finally, the more specific we can make our language, the more sparkling and memorable it is. In the last 18 months of speaking with incredible storytellers for this podcast, no one has been better at this than Sam Mullins. In 2023, Sam won the the Best Podcast of the Year award at the Ambies—the Podcast Academy's attempt to rival the Oscars. Sam won it for his documentary series Wild Boys, from Campside Media. It’s about two strange teenagers who mysteriously appear in Sam’s hometown of Vernon, in British Columbia. Here’s how he introduces us to Vernon.

Clip from Wild Boys

Sam Mullins: The boys couldn't have known it, but they showed up in the right place at the right time. In a sense, this only could have happened in Vernon. You need to know about my hometown. Vernon's located in the Okanagan, a region in the interior of British Columbia, sort of halfway between Vancouver and Calgary. Historically, it's been a middle class place, but the whole region has sort of been transformed into an outdoor playground for the wealthy. The Okanagan is known for its vineyards, golf courses, ski resorts, its lakes, and the mythological beast, the Ogopogo, who lives in one of said lakes, allegedly.

Vernon's a white town. It's a hockey town. There's lots of churches, there's lots of retired folks, there's a winter carnival parade every year, and the city has never once held a gay pride parade. The crown jewel of Vernon, and in my opinion the whole Okanagan, is Kalamalka Lake. It deserves a Google image search. Seriously, do that now.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Sam never uses the word “conservative” to describe the townspeople. Instead, he notes that Vernon has never held a gay pride parade. If he’d called the residents conservative, listeners might have glossed over the story entirely. Worse, they may have begun to silently argue with the narrator over this stereotype. “How do you know? What do you mean by that? Who are you, and can I trust you?” By recounting a tiny fact, though, Sam has offered us an indisputable piece of history. He allows us to make of it what we will. 

How does he do this? Sam doesn’t have some secret inborn trait that makes him excel at specifics. He’s a comedy writer, he says. “I’m obsessed with lists.” In this case, he and his wife played a list-making game. The object was to write “one-sentence morsels” to describe Vernon. He gave the resulting long list to his story editor, Karen Duffin. Karen helped him choose the best morsels to include in the script. We all need a good editor. 

Even more interesting is the specific way he describes a family in a story he told for The Moth, a live storytelling event series, and also a radio show and podcast. 

Clip from The Moth

Sam Mullins: …a table of four, so I go up to the table with water glasses to greet them, and something about these people immediately put me at ease. They just seem really calm and present and just like good people. And right away—it was two parents and two grown-up kids about my age—and right away the father shook my hand. He's like, What's your name? I'm like, Sam. He's like, You look like a Sam. We started talking and having banter, and they were really into the fact that I was a struggling slash failed actor and writer. And they kind of became my number one priority, and they were my oasis in the mayhem. And they really knew how to dine. They had a lot of nice appetizers and fine wines. I cleared all that away and I got them set up for entrees.

Elaine Appleton Grant

What elevates this writing to be so noteworthy—to be so unforgettable—are the words he uses to tell us not what these people looked like—we never learn that—but how they made Sam feel. “They were my oasis in the mayhem," he says.

And that’s the six Ses. All of the stories I referenced are linked in the show notes. Go listen to them, with an ear out for what I have showed you here. 

That's a wrap on my 6S Storytelling Framework. As a quick reminder, the 6 Ses are sound vision, structure, scenes, surprise, suspense, and specifics. And one other thing: In narrative, they all wrap around characters who take the audience on some kind of journey. In conversations and interviews, characters still matter, a lot—but ideas might be the star. 

Thanks for joining me for the last episode in my six-part series on storytelling strategies for hooking new listeners and keeping them with you. If you missed the other five episodes in this series—on sound vision, structure, scenes, and surprise, and suspense—you’ll find them all at sound judgment podcast dot com, or on your favorite listening app.

For shows and resources mentioned in this series, see our show notes at sound judgment podcast dot com. And if you’ve enjoyed these bite-sized episodes, please share the series with a friend.

And if you’d like to hear it, or read the transcript of the series all in one piece, tune in tomorrow and catch the complete episode when it drops, including all six strategies. Don’t forget, you can work on them yourself on Thursday, March 14, at my very affordable workshop, How to Hook Your Audience and Keep Them Coming Back. 

Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies LLC. I’m Elaine Appleton Grant. Huge thanks to audio engineer Kevin Kline for mixing and mastering this series, and to podcast manager Tina Bassir for the idea and the hard work behind the scenes. See you soon.