From Vague to Memorable: A Better Way to Tell Your Story | Ep 20

From Vague to Memorable: A Better Way to Tell Your Story with Russell Van Brocklen

What makes a story stick?

In this episode of The Story Lab, Jonathan sits down with Russell Van Brocklen to explore why many stories fall flat and how the right words can transform the way we communicate.

Russell shares his remarkable journey from struggling with dyslexia and having a first-grade reading and writing level to developing a process that helps people think more clearly, communicate more effectively, and build stories that people actually remember.

Together, they walk through a practical storytelling exercise that helps you move from vague messaging to a clear, memorable narrative. By identifying the hero, narrowing in on the right action word, uncovering the real obstacle, and asking “why” until you reach the deeper truth, you can turn a simple idea into a powerful story.

If you’ve ever struggled to explain what you do, connect your work to your audience, or make your message stand out, this episode will give you a new way to approach storytelling.

In this episode we discuss

• Russell’s journey overcoming dyslexia and how it shaped his work
• Why vague language weakens your message
• How identifying the “hero” strengthens your story
• The importance of choosing the right action word
• How to uncover the real obstacle in your story
• Why asking “why” repeatedly helps reveal the deeper meaning behind your message
• A practical framework for building clearer and more memorable stories

Connect with Russell

Learn more or reach out at:
https://dyslexiaclasses.com

Russell offers a free 30-minute session if you want to explore how this storytelling process could apply to your work.

Enjoying The Story Lab?

If this episode gave you a fresh way to think about storytelling, be sure to follow the podcast and share it with someone who could use help making their message more memorable.

Because the right story is often the difference between being heard and being remembered.

Transcript

Word Analysis And Articulation

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Identify your hero. What does the hero want to do? I'll give you a little hint. I I asked you for a sentence. If I'm dealing with more evolved people education-wise, I'll ask for paragraph, 10 paragraphs, 50 paragraphs, and I'll have the AI go and find all the action words and most in the and the most important words, and then I'll tell it to knock it down to its top 10 recommended one based on what the hero wants to do. Have it create custom definitions. And if you don't like it, ask it to give it the next 20 that are recommended. You, as the human pick, once you pick the which one, the action word and the best, most important word, you pick which way you want to go. That's word analysis. After because all those you give an answer and I say why, that's articulation. That's the front part of the brain. And if you ever deal with a dyslectic, you'll find that we're really good at this stuff. Like, really good. Because we got two and a half times the horsepower up here.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Thank you for joining me here on the Story Lab podcast. I'm excited to have you here. Why don't you start by telling everybody a little bit about who you are, what you do, how you got started.

Using AI To Extract Action Words

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Well, it all started for me uh back when I was applying for the New York State Assembly internship program. This was the last thing I was supposed to do. I was supposed to be a bureaucrat for the state government. It was the late 90s. I wanted to know how laws work. I didn't want to have some idea general idea. I wanted to know. So when I showed up there, I said, here's my neuropsychological evaluation. I have a first grade reading and writing level. And they said, this isn't going to work. So they decided to get a committee together. And from that, they said, we're pulling you from the legislative office building, and we're putting you in the Capitol in the Majority Leaders Program and Council's office. Great for me because that was a graduate level internship, not an undergrad. So I get there and I see why they put me there. There were three administrative assistants who could take my horrendous writing and fix it for my what I have to turn in each week. Then for the presentation, for the research project, I gave an hours-long presentation with a long Q ⁇ A, and that was a standard accommodation for me back then. Well, remember, these are accommodations created by the New York State legislature. All right. It goes back to the flagship campus of the State University of New York Center at Buffalo. The political science department looked at the accommodations and said they didn't like them. So they're going to ingest my grade. Guess what it went? It went from 3.67 to guess what?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

What?

SPEAKER_02 2:41

F.

unknown 2:42

An F.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Wow. They flunked me for 15 credits.

unknown 2:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Because they didn't like the accommodations that the state government came up with. Okay. So from there, I decided I wanted to solve dyslexia for everybody else. So I asked my professors where I should go to do that in grad school. And they said law school. So second day of law school, a dyslexic professor that I uh went to see called on me. He crushes everybody in a couple of questions until you adapt. Not me. He called on me. I respond within with 15 minutes, going back and forth, as his equal. He said he's never seen that before. He said at the end, Russell, you couldn't be any more correct. I have to move on to the next case. Interest of time. So what happened is from there I learned to read within a month. I learned to write within a couple of years. Then I wanted to show students what I could do. So other students like me. I went to my old high school, Aver Park High School, right outside of Albany, New York, and we took highly motivated, highly intelligent dyslectics juniors and seniors. After many years of getting this ready, the New York State Senate funded it. One class period a day for the school year. The kids were writing at the eighth grade level pretest, so they scored in the zero percentile. At the end, they scored in the they scored average or above average on the GRE analytical writing assessment. They all went out of college, all graduated with GPAs of 2.5 to 3.6, no accommodations. Cost New York State PAT taxpayers less than 900 bucks. That's how I got started.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

That's one impressive story.

Defining The Process: Front Brain Work

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Well, yeah. And uh just so you know what it is. Here's dyslexia. It's a book called Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shewitz. That's it. The back part of my brain has next to nothing going on. The back part of yours is going crazy. If you're not dyslexic, the front part of our brain, the front part of our brain is about two and a half times overactive. So what that is is word analysis followed by articulation. Now, what I want to do is to help your audience learn how to tell their story by using that overactive front part of the brain, word analysis followed by articulation.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Okay. Word analysis by articulation. Got it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

So to give you an example, just because to lead into this, just because it's so horrible, I want you to imagine a movie that you really liked. It's one of the best movies of all time. What's the name of that movie? I'm going to go with Toy Story. Toy Stories. Now I want you to imagine if you go back and look at reviews of Toy Story when it came out in 1995. Let's assume we limit it to Ivy League educated reviewers. Do you see how they always pretty much tell you this happened, then this happened, then this happened? And it's like watching a sporting event you recorded, and then somebody tells you what the score is, like, why bother?

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

How you actually do that is we use a universal theme. So what's the universal theme you would express for Toy Story?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

I would say friendship is French.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Yes. Okay. So what you would do when you're writing your review is you would look at how the actors, how the director, and how the screenwriter performed using the universal theme of friendship. That way everybody can understand what you think is going on. You're telling them what you think about the movie, but you're not spoiling it for them.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

I see. Yeah. So you're really jumping into this is a theme that's happening, and you're not giving the blow-by-blow A, B, C, and D happened, and then this was the end.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Right. You're actually reviewing the movie with a universal thing that you think really represents it. So people understand what you think, and they may or may not go based on your review, but you're not ruining it for them. Okay. Right. But here's the problem with what we just did. Do you see how friendship is so really broad?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Guest Introduction And Origin Story

SPEAKER_02 6:35

So when your audience wants to come up with their business story, if you use a universal theme like friendship, it's so broad. So we can't use that. So how do we use the overactive front part of our brain, word analysis followed by articulation, to come up with our custom story? You need to remember that this is coming from one person's perspective. This is not something you do via committee. You have to pick one person in your business. So what we do is let's take one of your listeners' businesses that you're familiar with. What's the what's the business and what does it do?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Let's go with the grief curator, and she helps people manage grief. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

So we have to identify the hero. Her client's the hero. Go ahead and tell me about one of her clients. What's their name?

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Goodness. Client one is gonna be her name because she doesn't say names. Yeah, yeah. Make up a name.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

We'll go with John. What does John want to do? Tell it to me in a sentence.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, John wants to figure out how to manage the death of his pet.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Okay. Now what we're looking at there is we're looking for the action word. Because now we're gonna throw in word analysis that's gonna take the hero towards the general direction they want to go. What's the action word of that sentence?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Making me graph sentences like I'm back in school. Uh yes, I'm making you think. So the action word is going to be what I don't remember what I said. He was trying to overcome once.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Yeah, it's not a very good what was go ahead and tell me the sentence again generally. What does John want to do?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

He's looking to overcome the loss of a pet.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

He's looking to overcome the grief of a pet. I would say the most important word there is overcome. Now, here's the problem. Do you see how general overcome is? Yep. Okay. So what I'm just going, so we have a John who wants to overcome the loss of a pet. So what we need are five synonyms of overcome that are very precise, very narrowly focused, and a short custom definition for each one. We need five. My uh voice thing went out of my chat GPT. Okay. Five synonyms for overcome that are narrowly focused, and custom definitions that are short. So I I just literally went into Chat GPT. And here's the words that they came up with. You tell me which one of these you think best matches what's in your head. Surmount, master, transcend, prevail, resolve. Resolve. Resolve. Okay. Now, do you see how resolve is much more specific than what we initially said?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

What you would keep doing, this is just a quick way of demonstrating this on ChatGPT for the podcast. What I would recommend is people actually go to thesaurus.com, don't use their dictionary because it's horrible. Use Marion Webster's online dictionary. Find the synonyms. If you don't know exactly what the word is, look it up in Marion Webster's online dictionary. What I have the kids do is I have them type out the word and the definition until they eventually master it. Right. You don't have to, we're adults, we don't have to do that. Find the one that best represents what's in your head, click on it and go down to the next level. Do the same thing there. Keep going down levels until you get what I call garbage words, where they're not as good in that last one. That's your universal thing. Okay. And it's a balancing act between a word that has the definition that best matches what's in your head and the word that just feels right. And you'll have to pick going back various ones. And then I love using artificial intelligence to help sort that out. I would actually use five, uh, I use ChatGPT a lot, so five uh 5.1 thinking. Much better than instant. You want the thought process with the AI. Right. And then narrow it down to the word that best represents what you're doing. That's your post-universal theme. That's you. Everything you're going to discuss now is going to be through that. Now we're not done yet. We we have our hero, we have our universal theme. Now we have to find the ultimate villain, which is a person or a concept that can best prevent John from resolving his his concern with his pet. What is it a person or a concept that can best prevent John from meeting his goal? I would say a concept. A concept is?

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah, that I gotta think about. See, I'm making you think. Making me think. I mean the concept is grief is uh such a No, grief can work.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Grief can that's really good. Now again, you can go through the thesaurus and find something that's uh more reflective. But in this example, do you see how each step along the way I'm making you really think? Right. Yep. Okay. So now we have John resolve and grief. We need to put that into a we need to add a few words between those to make this a basic sentence. So go ahead and create a basic sentence for that.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

So we have John resolving grief. So John is hoping to resolve the grief he's feeling over the lost pet. Because why? Because he wants to celebrate the pet, not be sad that it's lost. Why? Now we're two-year-old. I love that. Um why? Because that will make it easier for him to move on in life.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Why will that make it easier for him to move on in life?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Because he would like to leave bed for and not be crying all day.

Law School Breakthrough And Learning To Read

SPEAKER_02 12:38

What okay, do you see how we kind of your answer quality just kind of fell off the cliff? Right. So what we do is you give me an answer and I ask why. We keep doing that until it falls off the cliff, and you want this recorded, and I just have the AI transcribe it. Right. Okay. Why is that important? Because now look what you've done. I asked, I asked you a question, you answered why. I made you think the whole way through. That's your content. Now, what I would do next is I would flip it over. I would look through the villain's eyes, I'd look through grief, okay? And have it come up with their with its unit. What does grief want to accomplish? And come up with that universal thing. You already have the hero. And then I'd do the same thing, QA, QA, QA, until you start falling off the clip. And then you take all that content, that's what you make your story out of.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

I love that. Because it gets you real, real thought, real a real process, and you actually can land on something that's valuable.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Right. But here's the thing: don't use ChatGPT to do this. You want to go to Apogee Sonic 4.5. Even the 20 bucks a month one is fine. You get 45 prompts every five hours. Okay. And I would then take this and I would work, I would then take all of that mess that we have and use that to create your story. And that and that it's so much better at writing than ChatGPT is like night and day. And once you have that down, I'm going to do what a lot of people are going to be shocked by. I would actually go to Fiverr and I would find a ghost writer. I use Fiverr choice. I'm looking that's their best ones. I don't pay the ridiculous professional fees. I tend to get uh some lower price, you know, people that are at least stage two with lots and lots of top reviews. Right. Look at their writing a sample, find a really good one, and work with them to ref to revise what you're doing. And it'll because all the AI is good for is to get you a really good draft. But I can tell you, each time I work with it with a ghostwriter, and I I thought I nailed it on AI, I I send it to them, they send it back, and it looks nothing like what I sent them. And it's so much, and if it's really in something this critical, sometimes I'll even use two or three ghostwriters. People like, go broke. I said something like this, two or three of them will cost you$500,$750 total. Because it's not much work. And they get back to you really fast, and then you find the one with the voice that you like the best, and you go back and forth a little bit, and then you can then tell your story. And that's we explained that entire process in under 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

We did. We did. So for the people at home, a quick takeaway.

High School Program Results And Method

SPEAKER_02 15:36

What where should they start? You want to do is simply go um find out what if identify your hero. What does the hero want to do? I'll give you a little hint. I I asked you for a sentence. If I'm dealing with more evolved people education-wise, I'll ask for paragraph, 10 paragraphs, 50 paragraphs, and I'll have the AI go and find all the action words in the and the most important words, and then I'll tell it to knock it down to his top 10 recommended one based on what the hero wants to do. Have it create custom definitions, but you as the human then have to pick. Right. And if you don't like it, ask it to give it the next 20 that are recommended. You as the human pick. Once you pick the which one, the actual word or the best, most important word, you pick which way you want to go. That's word analysis. After because all those you give an answer and I say why, that's articulation. That's the front part of the brain. And if you ever deal with a dyslectic, you'll find that we're really good at this stuff. Like, really good. Because we got two and a half times the horsepower up here.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Yeah. All right. Okay. Very cool. Yeah, absolutely. So if people want to find you, people want to get in touch with you, where can they find you? What should they do?

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Best thing to do is just go to dyslexiaclasses.com. That's plural, dyslexiaclasses.com. And there's a contact me form there. Just fill it out, and you get a half an hour free session with me to discuss whatever. Okay, awesome.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Well, we'll make sure that all of that information is in the show notes so they can contact you and and get the all that. And um, I want to thank you for being here. We did it in 20 minutes, all that in 20 minutes. So thank you very much for that. And um, yeah, and just for all of uh those listening, this is one of the ways that we can make your story the one that they remember. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you for everybody. Have a great one.