Event vs. Story | Best Worst Idea Podcast | Story Yoga

The Best Worst idea is a weekly podcast exploring how our worst ideas often give way to our best ideas. What's your best worst idea? Want to find out? Let's go You're so ugly you can be a modern art masterpiece. You look like a blueberry. Who's gonna take his place? See is Jesus? Yes.

This is my

people sometimes asked me to tell the difference between a story and an event. Aren't they the same thing? Can't an event contain a beginning, middle and an end? Just like stories do? The short answer is yes. But this can depend on a number of factors. If you just outline things that happened during the event, that still might not be a story. So how can you tell? For me, I look for a human face to the story. Even if it's about a stuffed teddy bear, you can be pretty sure it's going to exhibit basic, primal, relatable and human qualities. He overheats. He's prone to Rages, he's lonely because no one can stand to be around him for too long. Basically, Teddy has problems. Therefore, if you can't find any of those qualities in the so called event you're describing, very sorry to say you do not have a story. Not in the classic sense. Nothing I'm going to tell you here is going to be new. It's not a secret formula that was divinely inspired or communicated by an otherworldly entity. Now, truth is, I have nothing new in terms of knowledge. What I'm trying to do is package the information in a way that can be more easily understood. If you've ever taken a yoga class, you'll find that all of the teachers are more than capable of teaching the class the different poses and movements. But maybe only one of them can explain them to you in a way you inherently understand. When one teacher tries to tell you how to move deeper into a pose, it may sound like a foreign language. But others can say very few words, and you know exactly what they're talking about. That's what I'm striving for here. When I say that stories have a human face, the best way to explain that is to point to the news magazine 60 minutes. It's pretty much the gold standard for telling compelling concise news stories that are both impactful and emotionally powerful. So how do they do it? I imagine you turn on 60 minutes and their top story is about a coal company dumping coal ash to a local river. It's a horrible, toxic byproduct of burning coal. But as horrible as it is. That's not a story isn't news? Yes. Is it a story, though? Not so much. If you walked into the editor of 60 minutes and said the ABC D company is dumping coal ash into the river? What do you think? Well, you'd be sent out of the office. Why? To do what? To find the story. It's not enough that a big coal burning company dumps coal ash into the river. It's only a story when they traveled to a small town downstream that has a large spike in cancer cases. That's the human face. Is that the only angle for this story? Probably not. You might find out that the company is dumping toxic waste, but it only becomes a story when a whistleblower from inside the company decides to sit down and talk about the human toll the company's behavior is taking What is crucial is the human element, the reaction, the cost, the consequences of the event. It's why you often hear the question, or whose story is it? Who am I rooting for? And what's at stake? These questions are the currency storytellers traded. If we can't answer these questions, we have no story. So the events of a plot are simply the delivery system for the story. Here's a few examples of events that have no story. A great white shark attacks tourists. A terrorist group hijacks an entire building. A man runs a nightclub in a war torn country. A homicide detective discovers another brutal murder scene. An alien baby crash lands on earth. All of these examples describe an event in some of the most successful stories of all time. But in and of themselves, they are not stories. So what's missing? You guessed the human face. A great white shark attacks tourists and a newly appointed Sheriff Who's afraid of the water must shut down the beaches on the Fourth of July, the biggest weekend of the year, and get on a boat to find and kill the beast before it kills anyone else. Jaws a terrorist group hijacks an entire building on the same day a new york city cop arrives at the building to try and work things out with his estranged wife. To win her back he must save her and thwart the terrorist diehard. A man runs a nightclub in a war torn country when the long lost love of his life walks in seeking his help to get her husband out of the country before the Nazis find him. So he must look past his own heartbreak to do the right thing. Casa Blanca, a grizzled homicide detective who was burned out and ready to retire discovers a brutal murder scene that is actually connected to a string of serial slangs. So he must put off his retirement in hopes he can save his young replacement. The same burned out fazes him. Seven an alien baby crash lands on Earth in the American heartland, and is found by a childless couple who decided to raise him as their own, despite the fact that he is not like other children, and has strengthened powers well beyond that of everyday humans. Superman, each and every one of those examples and 1000 more besides our stories, because the events act upon the main character in such a way that it reveals their human failings and point to something that they must overcome. So if you're thinking about creating a story, or you wondering if you actually have a story, look for the human face. Find out who your story is about what their problem is, and what's at stake for them. These are all of the things writers do when they begin to form a story if you enjoyed this content, please do me a favor and like comment and share it or you can subscribe to this podcast by going to www dot Best Worst idea podcast.com