Theatre wunderkinds and storytelling specialists Kevin Newbury and Kate Douglas join the podcast to tell stories about telling stories. Kevin and Kate discuss how universal themes, conflicts, and archetypes can be used as formulas for brainstorming; suggest some practices you should borrow from writing for the stage; and reveal which pandemic-era guilty pleasure can actually make you a more engaging storyteller.
Topics
4:27 Translating events into a story
6:11 Why good storytelling is essential to your trial
8:25 Unleashing your creative beast
10:49 Summing up with loglines and taglines
12:57 Classic conflicts for framing your client’s case
14:36 Evoking an atmosphere to begin telling a story
16:50 Universal story themes
20:26 Nourishing your creativity
23:07 Importance of your elevator pitch
24:14 Dramaturgy in trial
27:59 How a trial is like a tv show
30:10 Defending the unsavory client
33:15 New Orleans Trial program
40:17 Signoff question
Quote
“When we come [to NITA programs], it’s always so much fun to sit around the table with these incredible lawyers and judges and hear all of their stories. I love to ask all of them, ‘What’s the wildest, strangest case that you’ve had this year?’ and [with] every single one of them it’s like, ‘Well, that’s a good idea for a tv show,’ ‘Well, that should be a movie,’ and I find that a lot of lawyers and judges are good storytellers when they’re recounting the adventures of something they just went through.” Kevin Newbury
Resources
Kevin Newbury (bio)
Kate Douglas (bio)
Deposition Skills & Trial Skills: New Orleans (NITA course)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (book)
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (book)
Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker (article)
The Secrets of Persuasive Legal Storytelling, with David Mann (podcast)
Give ‘em the Ol’ Razzle Dazzle, with Dominic Gianna (podcast)