I’m going to start with a story I’ve used before, but this time it comes in a different context.
(Your intent matters…)
Destined to Obscurity
Posted on November 16, 2010 Written by 9 Comments
Vanity… all is vanity.
I think Solomon had it right.
Yet in an age of Information Flood, part of our task is to help relevant and useful information be found.
In the process, we’re just going to have to sacrifice quality.
Destined for Obscurity [Read more...]
Spark Naked
Posted on October 28, 2010 Written by 11 Comments
You can’t start a fire, you can’t start a fire without a spark…
At times we grope and we strain against hope in “finding something to write about.”
That link leads to a Google search, which turns up more than a quarter of a billion entries.
You could read 100 of those links a day, every day, for the next 6,931 years, and still have 18,500 links left unread.
That’s a lot of reading to do, in order to find an inspiration.
Why not go outside and go for a walk?
Spark Naked [Read more...]
What Makes the Good Stuff Good
Posted on September 22, 2010 Written by 8 Comments
What Makes the Good Stuff "Good"?
Quality is a hard thing to wrangle. (Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was an attempt to figure it out.)
We know it when we see it, but getting from A to G either takes a leap of faith, or relies on assumptions we never truly examine.
So I am challenging them. [Read more...]
The Sweet (and Sticky) Science of Editing
Posted on August 6, 2010 Written by 11 Comments
In television news, you have little time to waste. There’s a set limit budgeted for your story, and anything more than five seconds over your allotment calls for penance, or at least a quest to seek special dispensations. When every second counts, you try not to waste any of the time you have – yet you don’t want to leave anything out.
Listen to The Sweet (and Sticky) Science of EditingScarcity breeds process. [Read more...]
Blogs, Books, and Immortality
Posted on July 29, 2010 Written by 16 Comments
(The audio is still here, I have moved it to the bottom.)
Several people are prodding me to write a book. I probably have several in me that I don’t yet know are there – along with the ones I know are there but I’ve been too lazy to extrude.
- The business book, based on a presentation I created
- The murder mystery based on events that might have happened
- The book about communications
Fortunately, I’ve had enough going on in my life to keep me busy, or at least give me the excuse not to crack down and just do it. But is that the only reason? Or is there something more fundamental going on with regards to what we consider a book? And will it matter? [Read more...]
Own Your Mistakes to be Re-Markable
Posted on July 7, 2010 Written by 10 Comments
I was doing a storytelling presentation recently at a local elementary school, for its “Communication Celebration.” Instead of bringing in a PowerPoint, or showing them a bunch of web work, I decided to do a 30-minute workshop on what makes stories “work.”
The workshop is based on the idea that you start with a core – the essence of the story – and flesh it out from there.
- Tell a story in one sentence.
- Tell the same story in 30 seconds.
- Tell the same story in 90 seconds.
When I have done this workshop with other audiences where there’s been more time, a peculiar thing happens. People get the one-sentence and 30-second versions right, but they’re so fearful of not filling 90-seconds that they fail to come in under three minutes!
On this day, there wouldn’t be time to go with the full 90-seconds, but the principle was the same. [Read more...]
