Hot dogs and story structure
Or: The simplest way to construct stories
Baby’s first email that’s too long for your browsers, according to Substack! You’ll want to click through to read this on the web. Here’s the docket for today:
How I think About Story Structure, Part 1: What makes a story? + Defining character wants
*New section!*Ari Saperstein loves “How One Deaf 16-Year-Old Navigates High School” from 'The California Report'
What’s up in my world: More additions to my podcast glossary
Jobs at Reveal, OPB, the Miami Heat, and more
Links: Podcast acquisitions and breakups, plus the latest industry news
Let’s do it.
In last week’s newsletter, I implored y’all to steal my syllabus, and let you know that I’ll be sharing my lesson plans. The first thing we’ll talk about is story structure.
Why do I like to start here? I’ll give you a metaphor. Think of yourself as a story architect, designing story blueprints. You need a solid foundation, or else it all crashes down, regardless of how well thought out the rest of the plans are.
How not to tell a story
Speaking of chaos, let’s start by watching this 30 second clip from an episode of Billy on the Street. The link should take you to 0:55. Watch from there.
Billy Eichner is being super cheeky here. I think we can all agree that this woman wasn’t telling a story, nor was she even trying to. She was a regular person, living her life, when all of a sudden Billy Eichner and the freaking Jonas Brothers suddenly appear before her and shoved a mic in her face. She wasn’t prompted to tell a story, and so she didn’t. She said a fairly boring fact, in a fairly boring way. So Billy and the Jonases ran away. No story, no fun.
If you want to tell a story, you have to be prepared for it.
How to tell a story
So here’s a story that someone was prepared to tell.
I’d like you to listen to “Call in Colonel Mustard For Questioning,” a 4-ish minute piece from a 2003 episode of This American Life. This is the opposite of that woman’s fact; Ira Glass and the TAL team set out to create a story. I love “Colonel Mustard.” Not because it’s the best story that TAL has ever done, though I do think it’s done well. But it’s a pure hit of TAL, in just four minutes. Which makes it the perfect candidate for story dissection.I think I’ve used it in every single class I’ve ever taught. I’m confident that I’ve listened to it more times than anyone on the planet, by a wide margin. (I’d estimate 75-100 times.) And I just listened to it again to write this.
As you listen to the piece, write down what you hear. There are no right or wrong answers. This is not a trick question. I just want you to listen and record your thoughts for your own reference later.
What did you write down? When I play this in class, people bring up things like:
The story is told chronologically.
The writing and actualities are often quite visual: “spit clean building,” “old-world hickory smoked,” “bright red,” “weave his way with the uncooked sausages through the maze of passageways,” etc.
The ambi (background noise) from the factory is woven in seamlessly, and so is the music.
Ira finishes the piece with a big, “Here’s what this all means to me.”
Like I said, no wrong answers. Just tuck those away for now, and we’ll revisit them later.
Want, try, get. (Or: The simplest way to think about story structure)
To me, the simplest way to think about story structure is these three words:
Want, try, get.These three words help me build audio stories that I’m proud of releasing, help me dissect stories as an editor for pros and my students, and even help me understand why I loved Barbie but hated Oppenheimer. (That’s a newsletter for another day, though I’m sure there are some killer essays out there already.)
Here’s what want, try, get means:
A character wants something, they try to get it, do they get it? For the purposes of this newsletter, I’m focusing on the want. (Try and Get will come in later issues.)
To explain want, let’s break it down into its parts:
A character / wants somethingA character
Every story has characters. Usually, there’s a main character, a protagonist whose journey we follow. The great site TV tropes defines characters as:
People in the world you are looking to for entertainment.
It is, the beings that do the actions being narrated by the narrative. Basically one of the most super of tropes in all of fiction. Unless you're writing some sort of abstract poem, it's pretty much impossible to tell a story without characters.
It’s key to develop character properly. Some key character traits to think about include:
What’s their name? (Duh.)
What do they do for a living? Are they white collar or blue collar? Are they good at their jobs? Do they like their jobs?
What’s their family situation? Are they in love, heartbroken, struggling, thriving?
What makes them likable? Are they funny, charming, smart, pathetic?
What makes them unique? Does anything about them stick out or make them memorable?
In The Wizard of Oz, our main character is Dorothy. We learn in the beginning of the movie that she’s a girl from Kansas. She loves her dog, Toto. She hates that mean old rich woman who wants to kill her dog. She doesn’t listen to the adults around her. She’s a great singer. She cares deeply her family. And she’s scared of tornados.
In “Colonel Mustard,” I’d say that the main character is Jim Bodman, the guy who Ira interviews. Here’s how Ira develops him as a character, through Ira’s narration and Jim’s actualities:
He’s chairman of the Vienna Sausage Company
That’s it. Neither Ira nor Jim talk about how he styles his hair, whether or not he has a partner or children, or whether he believe in aliens. We can assume from the context of the story that he cares that the hot dogs aren’t as good in the new plant. But that’s pretty much it.
Jim, of course, is a full fledged human being. These things might matter to him a great deal. He might desperately apply Rogaine every morning because he has anxiety about his male pattern baldness. He might dream up new offenses for his kid’s basketball team because that’s the main way that he connects with her. He might watch Ancient Aliens each night to soothe himself before going to sleep.
But we never learn those things, or anything else. Why not? Because they don’t matter to the story. None of these character traits are essential, or even helpful in advancing the story. In fact, including them would be harmful because they would just confuse us, or even raise more questions. (I’d love to know more about Jim’s obsession with Ancient Aliens, but that’s a whole other story, literally.)
Wants something.
Knowing what your character wants is even more important than who they are. This is what motivates your character to go on their hero’s journey. This is a life or death situation — either literally, or metaphorically. In Top Gun, if Tom Crusie doesn’t shoot down the enemy fights, he will literally die. But if he doesn’t get first in his class, or win Kelly McGillis’s love, or beat. Val Kilmer in volleyball, he will metaphorically die. Think back to being a little kid. If you didn’t get that toy car you wanted in the drug store, it felt like life and death to you. Same deal here. These are the stakes of the story.
In The Wizard of Oz, after Dorothy is transported to Oz, she wants to get home. To do that, she needs to follow the Yellow Brick Road. If she doesn’t get to the Wizard of Oz, she won’t be able to get home. What happens if she doesn’t get home? Well, she’ll literally die: The Wicked Witch will murder her. So she’s pretty fucking motivated there. But then there’s her metaphorical death: If she doesn’t get back home, she’ll never experience the true love of home. (Because there’s no place like home.)
In “Colonel Mustard,” Jim wants the hot dogs to be red again. We actually never learn why. We can assume that there is no literal death here — no one will be murdered if the hot dogs stay pink. But it is safe to assume there is a metaphorical death. Is it because sales are dependent on red hot dogs, and the company will go out of business if they don’t fix the color, which will lead to everyone losing their job and Jim losing all of his money leading to ruin? Maybe it’s because Jim has some OCD thing about red.
Notice how we don’t even need to know these stakes. It’s possible that the story would be more compelling if Ira told us about these stakes. But it’s enough — in this story, at least — just to know that Jim wants it.
In closing
Listen to the story again. Focus on Want. How does that change the way you hear the story? Think about:
Who is the main character?
What essential character traits are there?
What do they want?
Why?
What happens if they don’t get it?
Over the next week, I’d like to offer a challenge. In the next podcast you listen to, movie or TV show you watch, or book you read, do this exercise. How does it impact how you consume that story?
Before we wrap up, two things to keep in mind.
First, these aren’t rules, they’re guidelines. They’re helpful markers to determining whether or not your house might cave in. But often, people release amazing stories that bend or break these guidelines. You should play and experiment with them as often as you’d like.
Second, I’m nowhere near the first person to walk through the concepts of storytelling. Humans have been telling stories for many thousands of years. Consider this my take on the same concepts of Western storytelling expounded on by Joseph Campbell, Syd Field, Save the Cat, the story circle, and podcasting resources like Out on the Wire (which I use as my textbook in my Intro to Narrative Podcasting class at AJO). People dedicate their entire lives to studying narratology and exploring concepts like fabula vs. syuzhet. But for now, fuck that noise. Just think about Want.
Ari Saperstein loves “How One Deaf 16-Year-Old Navigates High School” from 'The California Report'
New section alert! Every week, I’ll feature a recommendation from a different podcaster who I think is fantastic. They’ll recommend one great piece that penetrated their hearts in all the best ways. It can be anything from your favorite episode of a serialized show, to a news segment they heard once, to anything else that might catch their ears.
Today, we’re featuring Ari Saperstein. (This interview has been lightly copy edited.)
Who are you and what do you do?
I'm Ari Saperstein, creator and host of the award-winning documentary podcast Blind Landing, and a multimedia producer who has worked at outlets like Pineapple Street Studios, This American Life, and KPCC.
What audio piece would you like to share with us?
“How One Deaf 16-Year-Old Navigates High School” by The California Report (Website | Apple Podcasts* | Spotify*)
*Full episode. Skip to 1:36 for the beginning of the piece.
Why do you feel compelled to share this piece?
What space can audio hold for people who are deaf and hard of hearing people? It’s something I think about a lot and has maybe never been explored better than in this short 5 minute essay from Olive Howdon, a high school sophomore who uses cochlear impacts. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a piece of audio that so effectively put me in a person's shoes before. The way the sound is constantly evolving—at times tinny or distant or aggressively close (“I couldn’t ignore them if I tried”)—is ingenious and transportive. I often ask people I work with to explain why their story needs to be done in audio, to justify and think about how the medium is advancing the narrative. This story is the perfect example of something that is so intentional in its existence as a piece of audio storytelling.
What's your favorite moment in the piece and why?
The way the producers worked with Olive to create such eloquent writing but still make it sound like a teen’s voice is amazing. (Ed. note: The California Report credits Asal Ehsanipour as producer for this piece.) And in a sound-design-rich piece, the standout moment is when we finally hear silence, followed by an utterly perfect line: “It's so quiet, I can hear it screaming.”
How has this piece inspired you/your work?
A few months after I heard this piece, I reported a story for KPCC's The Frame that was a profile of Shoshannah Stern and Josh Feldman, the first deaf showrunners/creators/stars of a TV show, AMC’s This Close. I think the way that Olive Howden’s story influenced me was in trying to have Josh and Shoshannah’s voice and perspective drive the piece. I remember Shoshannah saying that in having done two seasons of the series and a popular web series before that with tons of press, no one had ever asked them to do a radio or podcast interview before. I’ve thought about that a lot. I’ve done other reporting on disability and entertainment in the time since for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, always with an eye out for someone who’s story is missing from the discourse.
Shameless self-promotion time! Where can our readers follow you/find you?
You can follow me on Twitter and the 'gram, and listen to my podcast Blind Landing on all major platforms.
Anything else you’d like to say?
I'm just gonna leave my favorite GIF here (fun fact: it will sync up with any song).
What’s up in my world
I added more terms to our Podcast Glossary, including fine cut, hot tape, and kill your darlings.
Jobs and opportunities
My personal olympic podium of jobs and opportunities posted over the past week. I source from Indeed, LinkedIn, AIR, All Hear, podjobs.net, publicmediajobs.org, Sounds Profitable, Starting Out, and the NYC Radio listserv. If you have a job you’d like to feature, shoot me an email.
🥇 Temporary Audio Producer (2023), Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting
Literally one of the best podcasts of all time. Apply here.
🥈 Three interesting opportunities from Oregon Public Broadcasting
For all the outdoorsy types. 1) Land & Environment Reporter/Producer, Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2) Food & Agriculture Reporter/Producer, Oregon Public Broadcasting, and 3) Climate & Environment News Editor, Oregon Public Broadcasting.
🥉 Radio Producer, Miami Heat
I love me a good NBA job. Apply here.
➕ 11 more gigs that piqued my interest:
Content & Operations Director, WAER FM 88.3 Syracuse Public Media/Syracuse University
Temporary Public Safety and Incarceration Reporter, WNYC/Gothamist Newsroom
News Producer, Vermont Edition, Vermont Public Radio (via AIR)
Links
A collection of articles that I found interesting over the past week. I source from CJR, Digiday, Google News, HBR, Hot Pod, Inside Radio, James Cridland’s personal newsletter, Neiman Lab, Podcast Business Journal, podnews, Soundbite, Sounds Profitable, The Download, The Fiction Podcast Weekly, The Podcast Host, and WorkLife.
. If you have an article you’d like to share, shoot me an email.
Skills
Descript released its latest version.
Industry
KQED ❤️ Snap Judgment, but American Public Media 💔 Audacy ($).
Digiday has a helpful overview on why publishers are cutting podcasts.
You can FINALLY listen to Patreon podcast feeds in Spotify. I’m praying for Substack feeds soon, too.
Producers might be getting laid off, but Sirius XM and other podcast networks saw growth in Q2.
The Joe Rogan Experience, The Daily, and Crime Junkie are the top three podcasts for the second year in a row, according to an Edison survey.
We covered the fourth-ranked podcast (This American Life) in the feature earlier, so we can move down the list. Alex Cooper, the host and producer of the fifth-ranked podcast (Call Her Daddy) launched The Unwell Network. It’s a podcast network focused on Gen-Zers. In 2021, she signed a $60 million deal with Spotify to make Call Her Daddy exclusive to Spotify.
Steve Goldstein on podcast apps and Eric Nuzum on what makes a good podcast host.
Audio fiction writers want studios to form a collective bargaining agreement with the WGA.
Work
A guide for being an ethical employer of contract workers.
Sounds about right: “Toxic resiliency is the pressure of having to bounce back repeatedly as you’re trying to navigate a stressful or noxious work environment and you don’t feel empowered to ask for help.”
Thanks for pulling together so many resources in this one post. Btw, reading about your hot dog lesson unit brought back memories of sitting in on your classroom presentation. There were a lot of aha! moments that stick with me, to this day.