Wyzga On Words

Shakepeare In Iraq Reminds Us: Themes & Stories Are Universal.

Where were you when you saw "Romeo & Juliet", the 1968 movie?

I imagine one listen brings it back.

What chance that the themes of young love, fighting families and war could find an audience in Iraq?

Tim Arango writing for the NYTimes, "In Iraq, 'Romeo and Juliet' Portryas Montague and Capulet as Shiite and Sunni," reminds us that stories grounded in Truths with a capital "T" are indeed universal.  No matter where you go in this world, who you talk with, the stories you learn - one thing remains consistent: universal Truths apply to all places.  We recognize them.  Yes, this may be Shakespeare's centuries old story, but the audience in Baghdad sees their own story in the timeless one of the doomed lovers.  Excerpt.

"BAGHDAD — It is not poison or a dagger that takes the lives of the young lovers, but a suicide bomb. The Montagues and Capulets are divided not just by family, but also by religious sect. And the dialogue in the Iraqi adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” is sprinkled with references to Blackwater, Iranians and the American reconstruction effort.

After a recent performance here at the National Theater, where the dramatic arts were once degraded to serve as a dictator’s propaganda, the audience filed out buzzing over the return of serious art to the Iraqi capital. Cloaked as a Shakespearean classic was a lively rendering of their own lives over the past nine years.

“It was about our reality, the killing that happened between the Sunnis and Shias,” said Senan Saadi, a university student who was in the audience."

TIP:    No matter whether you are writing a trial story for a decision-maker, a marketing story for a buying audience, or an inspirational story to motivate listeners, fall back on what you know: the universal Truths we recognize.

 

Anne Lamott Has Words For Writers & Lawyers.

I am a card-carrying member of the Anne Lamott fan club.

No question about it.

I have been insanely intimate with her books: Traveling Mercies, Bird By Bird, Plan B, and Rosie, among others.  The margins are filled with notes, the words are underlined and re-underlined.  I, like so many others, are convinced that Lamott wrote a particular book just for the reader. 

Something Lamott said rings true for all writers, and especially for lawyers who write their opening statement or closing argument but so rarely read what they've written aloud.  There's a big difference hearing with the ear:

"Nothing can break the mood of a piece of writing like bad dialogue. My students are miserable when they are reading an otherwise terrific story to the class and then hit a patch of dialogue that is so purple and expositional that it reads like something from a childhood play by the Gabor sisters. ... I can see the surprise on my students' faces, because the dialogue looked okay on paper, yet now it sounds as if it were poorly translated from their native Hindi."

TIP:     Any time you have something to say aloud, speak out loud what you've written to hear how it sounds before you have to stand and deliver your words to the decision-maker or listener.

A Plethora Of Story Influences.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Click here for Question #5.

 

Lawyers are Suspicious of Stories That Do Not Come Packaged in Structures.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Click here for the 3rd post.

Nurses Hold the Space for Patients, Families to Tell Their Stories.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Here's the second post

Content + Context + Value = Emotionally Meaningful Story.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Here's the first post:

Content + Context + Value = Emotionally Meaningful Story.

What Decision-Makers Look For From The Lawyer.

A book review holds a good lesson for lawyers. 

Sylvia Brownrigg writing for the NYTimes Book Review, "A Wedding and a Funeral,"  leads with several observations sure to be shared by readers and speech listeners alike. Excerpt.

"A very good book is not only more satisfying, memorable and coherent than its lesser neighbors on the shelves. It’s also more relaxing to read. That wary inhalation as you take in the first lines — Will I believe in these characters? How distracted will I be by implausible dialogue, or forced plotlines? — lasts a page or two and then gives over to a long, slow breath of relief. You don’t have to worry. This writer knows exactly what she’s doing. She won’t let you down."

Lawyers, speakers, politicians, what are the take-aways here?

TIP:    Have you developed believable witnesses or characters?  Do they have fidelity to what we know?

TIP:    Will the listener or decision-maker be distracted by implausible rhetoric?  Plotlines that fail to hang together seamlessly?  Is your trial story or presentation congruent from start to finish?  Or does it unravel like a poorly knit sock?

TIP:     Do you know exactly what you want to convey and to whom so your listeners and decision-makers can relax into the story, go with you on that virtual journey, and "translate images into action"?

"Suffering Is Not The Same As Unhappiness."

You are looking at a picture of people contemplating rocks in the Zen Garden at the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon (Ryon-ji) in Kyoto, Japan.

Storytellers look for stories in all the strange and familiar places.  For example, an update on traveling to Kyoto, Japan, might yield wisdom more inspiring than the travelogue.  That happened to me.

Pico Iyer writing for the NYTimes, "Now Is the Season for Japan," tells about Kyoto one year after the two-ton punch of an earthquake and tsunami.  I am humbled by the grief:

"The 9.0 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that hit the country on March 11, 2011, claimed almost 20,000 lives, overturned an economy that had already been foundering through 20 years of recession, and demoralized a citizenry dealing with one suicide every 17 minutes, a loss of direction, and what is now seven prime ministers in fewer than six years."

Likewise, I am humbled by a country's resilience that arises like a flower growing from a crack in a boulder.  As storyteller and community activist Loren Niemi never tired of telling me: you know you have gained some sense of the world's story when you can hold two opposing notions in your mind at one time and not go crazy.  This story shows us the way we might do so:

"In Mitsuyo Kakuta’s “Pieces,” perhaps the subtlest and most beautiful story in “March Was Made of Yarn,” an anthology of short fiction just published in memory of last year’s disasters, a woman in middle age looks back on her life after she learns that her husband had been with a young mistress at the time of the Great Tokyo Blackout.

“To acquire was not to be happy,” she had learned during Japan’s boom years, and now she sees that “loss was not the root of unhappiness.” As lights come back to her city, she reflects that the happy moments in her life cannot erase the losses she’s known; nor can those losses ever keep her from knowing happiness.

To hold those two ideas in your head as many in Japan do — to see that life means a joyful participation in a world of sorrows, and that suffering is not the same as unhappiness — is one of the singular blessings this seasoned country still has to offer."  [Emphasis added.]

Indeed, "What you have is all you need."

"Emotional Meaning Leads To Listener Action."

My dear friend, colleague, author, writer, mediator, blogger and story-tracker, Stephanie West Allen, emailed me the link to The Inside Story, an article on the power of narrative by Peter Gruber published in Psychology Today.

Gruber's article is a tidy review of what we storytellers live and breathe.  Excerpt.

"Telling stories is not just the oldest form of entertainment, it's the highest form of consciousness. The need for narrative is embedded deep in our brains. Increasingly, success in the information age demands that we harness the hidden power of stories. Here's what you need to know to tell a killer tale."

I was encouraged to revisit many of the themes I have been writing and speaking about since 1994 when a book of stories fell off a shelf into my hand and said, "Come follow us."  Themes like "virtual journey" which Gruber calls "virtual transportation."  Either way you look at it the notion is a well told story invites the listener inside the story to share the experience. Remember to release them at the end.   

Stories are not fluff - they have become the "cornerstones of our conscience" as lawyers have learned. Pull accurately on the collective community conscience and you are likely to get them on your side of an argument.

This is another oft-told notion:

"The first rule of telling stories is to give the audience—whether it's one business person or a theater full of moviegoers—an emotional experience. The heart is always the first target in telling purposeful stories. Stories must give listeners an emotional experience if they are to ignite a call to action."

As I wrote on bookmark give-aways in 2003:

"Storytelling thrives on imagination.  Images touch the heart and become sensations, sensations trigger memories, memories create meaning and meaning leads to listener action."

Any story must be emotionally meaningful for the listener to care about it. That does not mean the story has to be emotional and fraught with drama.  No.  It must evoke a value or values that the listener identifies with as personal to them and their life experience, their view of how the world turns.  This is especially true of decision-makers, those people you want to give you some action in exchange for the story.

Not all of us are called to be storytellers.  There are three distinct and interwoven parts to any story: the story itself, the teller and the listener.  Listening attends to the images and helps translate the metaphors into "this is like that."  Without the listener there is no story.

If it's true that we read to know we are not alone, I believe we listen to stories for the same reason. 

How Memorable Are Your Words? Or Is It All Charisma And Passion?

On March 23rd I read the following post from The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor:

"It was on this day in 1775 the lawyer Patrick Henry spoke at the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond, a meeting of American colonial leaders that included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The four-day assembly turned into a fierce debate about whether or not to raise a militia and arm Virginia in the fight against the British. On the topic, Patrick Henry delivered a famous speech that probably included the line "Give me liberty or give me death!" At least, some people thought he did.

There was a problem with Henry's speeches. They were charismatic and passionate, but afterward, no one could remember what he had said. Thomas Jefferson said of Henry: "When he had spoken in opposition to my opinion, had produced a great effect, and I myself had been highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself when he ceased: 'What the devil has he said?' I could never answer the inquiry."

The speech wasn't written down until 1816, by Henry's biographer, William Wirt. Wirt talked to people who had been present at the speech and had them reconstruct it from their memories."

What struck me were the words of Thomas Jefferson asking, "What the devil has he said?"

Who here has asked the same question after hearing a lawyer, speaker or presenter?  Who here has had the courage to ask it of her own work?

TIP:    To ensure that your listeners and decision-makers are not asking the same question Jefferson posed, make certain that your speech, oral argument, presentation and the like blends content (facts) with context (the set of circumstances that surround a particular event or situation and give meaning to the content):  Content + Context.

TIP:    Support or undergird the "Content + Context" storyline with a value or set of values to create emotional meaning for your listeners.  For example: Rail Train Crash (content) + Engineer Sending Text Messages (Context) + Inattention, Safety, Disregard (Values).  The emotional meaning you deliberately created grounds the story in the listeners' own world view so they remember what you said and, if necessary will act on your words. 

TIP:     Create memorable arguments and presentations (oral and written) by incorporating The Mighty Three Elements I call "Power, Passion and Precision" - weighting each element equally.

What other tips have worked for you to create meaning and action for your listeners and decision-makers?