How To Talk To Humans
How To Talk To Humans
"Story Telling" The Art of Business Communication - Part 2 #104
Larry Wilson, a veteran in the film industry with four decades of experience, is renowned for his expertise in storytelling structure, particularly within the realm of movies. Through his innovative Wilson Method, he equips storytellers with the tools to communicate clearly and effectively, highlighting the importance of genuine emotions and personal narratives over superficial storytelling techniques. Larry draws inspiration from cinematic legends like Orson Welles, advocating for the power of a well-crafted conclusion to leave a lasting impact on audiences. He believes that storytelling is an intrinsic part of human nature, offering order to life's chaos through structured narratives, and encourages sharing authentic stories to forge deep connections and enhance audience engagement.
(00:00:56) "The Art of Storytelling in Business"
(00:05:16) The Power of Narrative Patterns
(00:09:21) Central Figure: Key to Engaging Storytelling
(00:13:41) Engaging Narratives: Connecting Emotions with Audiences
Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method
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Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is how to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies, extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world. And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you. During the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use. To communicate toward success. Welcome back. We got so involved in last week's episode about the art and science of storytelling that we had to break it into two parts. So now we'll dive into part two, where it gets even juicier. But let's talk for a moment about personal stories. There's some very funny. I've seen some great illustrations of the problems in storytelling. I didn't do this. I'm not a cartoonist. I saw someone had drawn a cartoon that said, you know, successful storyteller. And it had the person speaking in it and it had sort of modules showing the progression of the story, and it showed A, B, C, and under A's. He met someone and then they taught him something, and then he used it to great success. And then it shows. The next panel is the storyteller with adhd. And of course, there's a million different bubbles where he's losing track of the story and jumping all over. And like with anything I teach in Wilson Method, if you're going to tell a story to people, you have to be very clear in your mind before you try to share this with someone else. You can try to do it on the fly, but your results won't be nearly as successful as if you've thought through in advance. I'm reminded. I'm not sure if this is as apropos as I think it is, but the brilliant, brilliant filmmaker, Orson Welles, actor, writer, producer, director, genius, was once asked by someone, well, the story that you just told or you're going to tell, is it a. Does it have a happy ending or a sad ending? And Wells said, in his typical style, said, that depends on where you end the story. Well, that's why he's a genius. I'm just a regular guy. Because that's a incredibly insightful observation. And as I'm always trying to emphasize in Wilson Method, it's simple. Simple to understand, simple to implement. Complicated things should always arouse your suspicions. That depends on where the story ends. It's so brilliant. Of Wells, it's worth thinking about before you launch into some story. I'll bet many of you have had the experience of having someone tell you a story, and it, it built to a certain point where you thought, oh, this is fantastic. But then it continued and went wobbling off course and wound up in a completely different place that, that left you feeling unsatisfied and unhappy and maybe just confused. Well, that person hadn't thought of the course of this story. Stories aren't supposed to be complicated. They're in our DNA. No one can convince me otherwise. I can see cave people around a fire telling stories. Why do we like them? I think it's because they make order out of the chaos of life. They make things easier for us to understand. If we. It doesn't mean we're always right. It doesn't mean. And there's a million stories, as you've heard, there's a million different points of view, but stories that are particularly satisfying to us, that we really enjoy, they show us a structure or a pattern in life. And our brains are hardwired. Our DNA is. It's implanted in our DNA. Our brains are hardwired to seek out patterns. I can guarantee this to you as a professional conjurer, I take advantage of that fact every night I'm performing. People in the audience don't always understand that's what's going on. But from the earliest examples of magicians, someone realized right away, oh, yeah, our brains look for patterns. And so in stories that are really appealing to us, we see a pattern. And, you know, sometimes, for instance, in Hollywood, you'll hear all sorts of tropes. You'll hear shorthand versions of stories. Perhaps the most famous cliche you'll hear is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. That may be a very super simplified version of films, particularly from the 40s and 50s, and it could apply to a lot of different movies. Now you go and see the movie and you realize, well, it's much more complicated than that. Well, sure it is. Because if it's really successful and artistic endeavor, we'll learn about the personalities of the people and we'll learn, why does the boy meet this girl and why does he lose the girl and how does he win her back? But that simplified structure, a, B, C, 1, 2, 3, reflects a very powerful storytelling structure of three acts. It doesn't have to be thought of as acts. It can be thought of as phases or chapters. I want you to realize that any, you can tell any kind of story and it can be bad, it can be wandering and pointless, leaving your audience thinking, I don't know what that was. But successful storytelling, really powerful storytelling, that leaves your audience with a great feeling, oh, God, I love that. It starts with a person who has a need, whatever that may be. And the second phase or act, if we want to look at that, is where we see that person trying to pursue or achieve whatever it is their goal is. And the third act is what happens? Do they succeed? Do, do they fail? It's really as simple as that. You can tell stories that don't seem to fit that structure, but if you really examine them closely, they will break down and fill in a couple of main points. I've heard this argued by supposed experts that you can have many, many main characters. I disagree. A successful story has one main character. Someone once challenged the filmmaker Robert Altman about his film Nashville, saying, there's so many different stories going on here. You seem to violate that story principle of having one main character. And Altman said, oh, no, no, there is one main character. It's the city of Nashville. And he's right. Go watch the film. You'll love it. It's great. As with all rules, you can break it if you like, but you will have greater success if you start with one main character. A main character can have friends, there can be secondary characters, there can be supporting characters, all kinds of people. It's a very simple way of connecting with people. Your story might serve one or multiple purposes. It might be demonstrating to people your humanity. Possible. It might be demonstrating your modesty, might be demonstrating your luck, might be demonstrating your inventiveness. Could be all these things, as I've pointed out in many different places, including this podcast, but I'm thinking now, particularly in my five day online challenge, I've made it very clear that when you reveal yourself, it has a tendency to make people feel a connection to you. If it's authentic, if it's real, if it's fake, if it's a gimmick or a trick, I don't think it will have that effect. But in the course of telling a story, and I want to make this very clear, I'm not saying that it has to be a happy Story could be a sad story. It could be about a loved one passing away. But in the process of telling this story, if you genuinely reveal things about yourself, how you felt, how you acted, how you thought, people will resonate with this. I hasten to point out to certain people who are unfortunately, perhaps beleaguered with narcissism. They may think that everything that's happened to them. I remember I had a girlfriend many years ago who was always talking about she was going to write a book about her life because it was so incredible. Cut to the chase. Of course, she never did write the book, but I remember at the time thinking, why would you think anyone would care about these stories? Because she would tell some story about she went to get a cup of coffee or she went to sign up for something. Her stories never went anywhere. They were just. She was fascinated with herself and thought everyone should be and thought that everything about her was irresistible. Well, turns out she had sort of overestimated her own charm. She wasn't quite as irresistible as she thought she was. So it's important for you to apply artistry, or let's say at least editorial skill with a story. I'm reminded there's a very funny Woody Allen movie called Take the Money and Run, and the structure of the story is interviews with people who knew this famous bank robber and the bank robbers, Woody Allen. And of course, he's a schnook, he can't do anything right, and he completely hopeless. And it's funny, there's some funny stuff. But at one point, Woody Allen is being interviewed on camera and he's telling some story about either the person who caught him or something, and he's doing an impression of someone who's a really bad storyteller. And it's hilarious because of how bad he is. And he's saying, you know, I got up that morning, I had a glass of juice, and I don't remember what kind of juice it was. I mean, might have been orange juice. Might have been. I'm not sure. Maybe pineapple juice. I'm not sure. But I went out to get the guns for the rubber. Oh, oh, oh, I remember. It was pineapple juice. Right. So he's focused on things that are not important to the story, and he is interrupting the rhythm of the story. When we tell a story, we should have that in mind. That 1, 2, 3, structure, it should be heading somewhere. Now, if you're a gifted genius. I'm not, but perhaps you are. You can shift out of that straightforward structure. I think of a Film like Pulp Fiction, which is a towering work of art. I mean, extraordinary film. And part of what makes it incredible is the timeline is all disjointed. We see things out of order, and it's part of what makes it great in some ways, because we're filling in information. When we see somebody who we realize is already dead, something's coming. They don't know about it. I mean, that's for the audience. That's amazing. I can't do that. Somebody can, but not me. I guess Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery, who wrote that script. So I've never met Quentin Tarantino, but I worked with Roger Avery, who was a lovely guy. And I could easily see he was so inventive and so creative in his writing. I could easily see him coming up with something like that. But to begin with, as an experiment, you might start thinking about a simple story that illustrates a lesson or principle that you want to share with someone. It could be as simple as that. So you tell this story and then you're able to say, you see, I didn't know, blah, blah, blah. Whatever it was that you learned in that story, person listening to your story might very well think, that's just like me. That's just like me. That's the exact same kind of thing I would do. Now, hopefully they're learning from your experience you shared with them. If they do, those people are feeling a connection to you that is liable to last for life because it's authentic, because they feel something real that's going on with you. You might tell them a story where you did learn something. You might tell them a story where you failed to learn something. Doesn't matter. You might think, oh, it's only a good story if it's funny. You might be surprised at what strikes people as funny. Frequently it is simply the truth, that's all. You don't have to hire high paid Hollywood scriptwriters or comedy writers to write big jokes for you. One of the most successful comics right now is Nate Bargazi. I think you'd be very hard pressed to find any jokes in his act. He doesn't tell jokes. He's talking about his life, his experiences with his wife, with his parents, with his daughter. And the things he tells are so genuine. We can tell they're so genuine. He talks about his daughter, had this cat, and they thought the cat was sick and might not live, and he didn't know how to deal with it. And hearing him describe his fear and anxiety and his wish to make his daughter's life perfect. And now he has to tell her the cat's gonna die. And so he comes up with this terrible idea, which is to start trying to get her used to the idea that the cat will die. And so he's telling her every day, well, yeah, it's pretty old cat. It's not likely to last much longer. And hearing him describe this, he's not using any tricks, he's just telling his real feelings. It is hilarious. And then he said, then, of course, the problem is the cat doesn't die. And this goes on for six months with him telling his daughter, trying to get her used to the idea the cat's going to die. Then when the cat does die, it's like she doesn't remember anything that's happened in the previous six months. Like she has no idea that the cat was old or the cat was sick or they all of these things you can hear, they're not jokes, they're not gimmicks. They're very simple things. That's where I would begin with your story. I'd love to hear what your story is. If you're so inclined, record yourself telling me, send it to me larryilsonmethod.com and if you'd like, we can talk about it on the air. We don't have to. If you want to keep it private, you can keep it private. But I'd love to see what you come up with because storytelling is the future of business. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me and I hope. You found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it@thewilsonmethod.com There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email@infowilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey and you'll be with me for the next episode of how to Talk to Humans.
