Dialogic Processing Sometimes when we get up to give a big talk or presentation, the speech that sounded great on paper suddenly falls flat when we say it out loud. Why does this happen?
audience
What is the Shape of Your Story? – EP048
The Three Story Shapes Kurt Vonnegut had this idea that stories have shapes. Here’s how it would work: if you could map a story with the horizontal axis representing time and the vertical axis representing our characters’ fortunes, you could see how it’s structured over time.
My Best Piece of Writing Advice – EP047
Start with the Goal and Skip the Rest Here’s the best piece of writing advice that I’ve ever received: after you finish your first draft, go back and delete the first paragraph.
Building Your DIS-Confirmation Bias – EP046
Disprove Your Position to Strengthen Your Argument Most people reach a point in their life where they do things a certain way. The problem with that is that we all have confirmation bias: we tend to only seek out and remember information that confirms what we already believe to be true.
The Counterintuitive Secret to Creating Change – EP045
How the Red Thread Uses Cognitive Dissonance One of the toughest questions for any message maker is simple but big: how do you get someone to actually do something different? How do you create change?
Why Jargon Is So Dangerous – EP043
Jargon’s Many Meanings We all have jargon that’s useful in our industry or company, but we also need to make sure that our message is clear.
A Shortcut to Business Storytelling – EP042
The Three Acts of a Story One of the biggest problems that businesses run into when they try to do business storytelling is that they mistake stories for storytelling.
The Biggest Mistake You Can Make in Your Conclusion… and How to Avoid It – EP041
Leave Clues for Your Conclusion In Ancient Greek theater, an actor suspended from a crane playing a god would swoop in at the end to resolve the plot. From this, we have the concept of deus ex machina, “god from the machine.”
How to Write the Rest of Your Message – EP039
Your Message as a Journey When you’re putting together a large message, like an article, book, or talk, part of the challenge is figuring out what to put in between the pieces of your Red Thread.
How to Create Your Own Memorable Quotes – EP038
Finding the Proverb in Your Message We can all agree that some messages are more memorable than others but, for some of these messages, an even stickier phrasing has replaced the original.