Storytelling Strategies, Part 5: The Missing Ingredient

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Elaine Appleton Grant

Hi, storytellers. This is part five of our new Sound Judgment quick-hit series on six storytelling strategies for hooking your audience and keeping them with you. This one can mean the difference between ho-hum content and stories that your audiences will talk about. And I’m betting that you give it hardly any thought, if you think about it at all. What is it? Stick around to find out.

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 six 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. This 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.

Surprise goes hand in hand with the fifth S in our framework for hooking and keeping your audience: suspense. Now, most of us aren't producing true crime—we're making podcasts that support our business, or we're interviewing celebrities in our field, or we're teaching people how to do something. So why would I even use the word suspense for podcasts that aren't about serial killers or rescues from disasters? 

Here's why. No matter the medium, any good story or interview poses a question and a promise, explicitly or implicitly. A big question hooks us. I call it a driving question, because a driving question moves the story or the issue forward. It's the overarching one for your whole podcast, radio show, your Substack, even: It's a big enough question that you can answer it, again and again, in each episode, differently. For instance, the driving question in Good Life Project is obvious: What makes a good life? Or How I Built This—well, how did she? Or in a whodunit like Bone Valley, the question is almost always: Who hurt someone else, and why? In this case, it's “Who killed Leo Schofield’s wife?” The promise we're making to our listeners is: You will learn the answers. But not yet, or there's no suspense. 

I'm going back to Famous & Gravy for the clever way they found to create suspense to start every episode: the quiz show. This is Amit Kapoor.

Clip from Famous & Gravy 

Amit Kapoor: This is Famous & Gravy, a conversation about quality of life as we see it, one dead celebrity at a time. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity. 

Michael Osborne: This person died 2014, age 86. She was a Tony-nominated stage actress. After her first marriage, she embarked on a career as a calypso dancer.

Woman: Good grief. No idea. Alright, keep going. 

Michael Osborne: She was a college professor and a ubiquitous presence on the lecture circuit. She also made several appearances on Sesame Street. 

Man: Oh man, Toni Morrison? 

Michael Osborne:

Not Toni Morrison. In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Woman: Now that I should know. Although I was busy in 2011. I missed it. 

Michael Osborne: That whole year? 

Woman: I missed the entire year. 

Michael Osborne: What an excuse. Throughout her writing, she explored the concepts of personal identity and resilience through the multifaceted lens of race, sex, family, community, and the collective past. 

Woman: It's not Maya Angelou. 

Man: Maya Angelou? 

Woman: Not Maya Angelou, is it? 

Man: Maya Angelou.

Michael Osborne: Today's dead celebrity is Maya Angelou.

Woman: I didn't even say it right. Maya Angelou. 

Michael Osborne: I've been saying Angelou my whole life, and it's actually Angelou. I love you back.

Maya Angelou: She does not know her beauty. She thinks her brown body has no glory. If she could dance, naked, under palm trees, and see her image in the river, she would know. But there are no palm trees on the street.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Here's a different kind of great example from This American Life. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Quorum is a story about a classic, dreaded task for early career journalists: covering town meeting. Is there anything that is, usually, more boring? 

Well, in the hands of NHPR reporter Sarah Gibson, this one kept me on the edge of my seat, because she employs two devices really well: the function of time, and the inner feelings of our main characters, who are underdogs. In the next passage, two sisters in the small town of Croydon, New Hampshire, are fighting to keep their school budget from being sliced in half. Here, I'm discussing it with editor Katie Colaneri. 

Clip from Sound Judgment

Elaine Appleton Grant: …find a way to get 283 people to come to a revote. And if they don't reach 283 people—and remember, the whole town is only 800 people—then they're going to fail. 

Sarah Gibson: Amy and Angie are driving from house to house trying to convince people to come to the revote. They've never done a campaign like this before.

Woman 1: We're bad at this. 

Woman 2: They say, we're not registered voters. Okay, that's fine. 

Sarah Gibson: Angie and Amy grew up in Croydon. Their car has an American flag tinted on the back window. 

Elaine Appleton Grant: The reason I wanted to play this is because the entire rest of the piece is suspense. This could be practically the same setup that you use for true crime. What's going to happen? All along the way, every single reporting and editorial decision is made to make it more suspenseful. Are they going to make it? Are they going to get this person to come to the meeting? Are they not? Is someone going to run out the clock at the meeting? What are the votes going to be? Et cetera, et cetera.

Elaine Appleton Grant

What's a creative way you could add suspense? And how can you insert new questions and conflicts along the way, to keep that curiosity going? That's my challenge to you.

Thanks for joining me for the fifth in my six part series on storytelling strategies for hooking new listeners and keeping them with you. Our next and final bonus episode is on the importance of keen observation and finely crafted language. Specifics—concrete details, descriptions as sharp and clean as a scalpel—elevate our storytelling. One former comedy writer shows us how it’s done. It’s a technique no one should go without. 

If you missed the first four parts of this series—on sound vision, structure, scenes, and surprise—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’re enjoying this series, please share it with a friend. 

Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies. I’m Elaine Appleton Grant. See you for part six!