The story is already inside you

Storytelling stuff worth sharing

Hello friends—

Another Friday, another batch of cool storytelling stuff. Let’s jump right in!

The Blog

This week it’s all about Dirty Words.

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CLOWNS LIKE ME on New York TV

Hey! Scottie and me got on the tee-vee in the Big Apple! Check it out below, and if you are in New York between now and July 28, check out the show.

Watch the NBC New York Live video with Scottie, me, and Ashley Bellman!

Watch the CBS News video with Scottie and Cindy Hsu!

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If you’re looking for a spooky, slow burn, character-driven show…

My beloved Rebecca’s sister Emily recommended we check out THE OUTSIDER on HBO. Or HBO Max. Or is it just Max now? Who can keep up?

Anyhow, it’s based on a Stephen King novel, and we’re hooked. It’s not slasher-y or a jump-out-at-you thing, but yeah. It’s effectively mysterious, unsettling, and suspenseful. Ten episodes, we’re through episode four, and if creepy King is your thing, this is a seriously solid adaptation of his work!

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Writing is rewriting

Had my Bite-Sized Fiction class yesterday, and one of my brave students asked if she could share both the initial, in-class, seven-minute timed-writing first draft of her story (which she cranked out last week) and the heavily edited second draft (which she labored over the last few days). We had the time, so I said “absolutely.”

And wow. They were entirely different renderings. The story itself was intense, about a little boy’s dog attacking and killing a neighbor’s cat and the awful fallout that came down on everyone involved. Draft 1 was “just the facts,” a distant and uninvolved narrator, almost like a police report. Clipped. Dispassionate. And there’s something to that version, something in the tension between such a highly charged chain of events and the narrator so impartially imparting them.

But then Draft 2 was told from an EMOTIONAL point of view. Still an omniscient narrator, but this narrator, rather than avoiding all the heightened emotions, embraced them. Dove in. There was no final judgment or “who was right or wrong” involved, but loads of compassion. And there’s something to THAT version, something in exploring the internal impact on the characters.

It’s always astonishing to me how the exact same story—same characters, same events, same setting—can be told in completely different ways. I mean, that’s why we keep producing Shakespeare and Sondheim, right? This is also why I often talk to my students about storytelling as EXCAVATION rather than CREATION. The story is already inside you. The artistry is in determining HOW to tell it.

Thanks as always for reading. And let me know if you check out the blog, television interviews, or THE OUTSIDER. I always love to hear what you think!

Jason “Tee-Vee Star” Cannon