Storytelling Strategies, Part 4: Surprise!

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Elaine Appleton Grant

Hi, storytellers. This is part four of our new Sound Judgment quick-hit series on six storytelling strategies for hooking your audience and keeping them with you.

Our fourth S in the 6S framework is surprise. It's the left turn when we're expecting a righthand one that makes us listen. It's the twists and turns of an involved, high-stakes plot that we love, or the ending of the movie or the novel that we didn't predict. 

There’s hardly a story or a conversation or a speech that doesn't need something surprising. Katie Colaneri is the senior podcast editor at New Hampshire Public Radio. She fields a lot of pitches for documentary series. She's got her eye out for something in particular. 

Clip from Sound Judgment

Katie Colaneri: What are they doing in the story and what access do you have to them? What are the surprises or as we like to call it, the holy shit moments? Every Document story has several of them. Just the things that make you go, Oh my God, you're never going to believe—blah, blah, blah. The thing about this story is this. So we want people to start to think about, what are the things that have surprised them, that have either happened or about the people who are involved. Is the story going to peel back a layer of something that maybe people thought that they understood before, and explain it in a different kind of way?

Elaine Appleton Grant

Now, you may not be making documentaries. Probably not. What if you're producing an interview show, or doing a how-to, or writing a blog post, or co-hosting a show about the movies, or giving a speech about supply-chain management? For any content to be memorable, we have to learn something we didn't expect. The search for fresh, new information is a constant in the lives of good interviewers. Kelly Corrigan, host of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders and the PBS show Tell Me More, worries about this a lot. 

Clip from Sound Judgment

Kelly Corrigan: I mean, part of what I'm doing is trying to make your listening or viewing or reading minutes actually worth it. Like the, the thing that you and I are asking for when we put stuff out there is attention. And what could be a more exquisite currency than attention? I mean, in this world where there is so much coming at you—to ask for that, it's like asking for someone's soul. I mean, you are asking for the most precious thing that they've got.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Through that frame, it couldn't be more important to offer audiences something new. It's not easy. 

Clip from Sound Judgment

Elaine Appleton Grant: What's an example of one of your episodes that you just think of off the top of your head—just intuitive head—where somebody told you they hadn't said something before, or you found yourself saying something you hadn't said before?

Kelly Corrigan: I mean, 90 percent of the time something like that happens. It's happening right now. I have never talked about this very specific problem that I often have before on a microphone. I've told my husband about it, you know—like when I finish an interview, he's like, how'd you do? I'm like, I couldn't get them off their talking points.

And you know, the more professional they are…Samantha Power is a great example. So Samantha Power is the head of USAID. She was the UN ambassador under Obama. She's a great thinker. She won a Pulitzer for her writing. She's devoted to making the world a better place. She's one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

And she's constricted by her job. Like she has a big public job where there's people who work for her who cover her press and they want to talk to me beforehand and they want to make sure it's going to stay on the rails and we're going to cover this and cover that and I nod along and—you know, I will satisfy the requirements, but it doesn't mean I'm going to stop there. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

But as I learned from Kelly, you only need one moment—one surprise—to create something that stands apart, that's different from what everyone else is doing. She did this in an interview with Bryan Stevenson, the world-renowned criminal justice advocate and bestselling author of Just Mercy. 

Clip from Sound Judgment

Kelly Corrigan: I didn't know that Bryan Stevenson played the piano until the morning of the shoot. And him playing the piano is such an important part of every day of his life. Here's another thing I didn't know, that came up the morning of the shoot. 150 guys on death row have his cell phone number. That's who they call. He's like their family. He's their brother. He's their priest. He's their father. He's their son, if they're really old. So you think about what it would feel like to be carrying 150 people's fate. And then you think about how much you would need to play piano, to step away from all that and to make something beautiful. And to be alone inside a cloud of music. And it—it just was—to me, it was like this incredible unlock of these two disparate pieces of information that to me seemed so related. 

Elaine Appleton Grant: So what did you do? 

Kelly Corrigan: I went right there. I brought it right up with him. And then, amazingly, on the set where we were shooting, there was a baby grand piano. And between shots, he went over. And I was like, would you like to play piano? Like, would that be relaxing for you? And he's like, I would love to. So he's playing the piano. Then all the cameramen are turning towards him. And so it's actually a beautiful part of the episode is when I'm asking him about it, we cut to the B roll of him playing piano on a break.

Bryan Stevenson: When I play the piano, it's the one thing that takes me out of my head. It's just fully engaging. So I love being able to step out of my life into this world of music. And I'm curious about every piano I see. It's a bad, bad habit, but I want to know, well, what does that one sound like? And what does that one sound like?

Kelly Corrigan: You just have to touch every piano you pass.

Bryan Stevenson: I just feel like it's saying something. I want to hear what it's saying. 

Kelly Corrigan: Bryan, Bryan, come over. 

And, you know, it was the most special thing that happened, and it's not in any other Bryan Stevenson interview. And that's how you differentiate from 60 Minutes or CBS Sunday Morning or whoever else has, you know, interviewed Bryan Stevenson, which is pretty much everybody. I mean, I'm sure he's been interviewed 1,000 times.

Elaine Appleton Grant

As listeners, we are just as surprised as Kelly. And so we won’t only remember these human moments, we’ll share them with our friends. In fact, maybe I should retitle this section on surprise: How to generate word of mouth and grow your show. 

It's one thing to hear new strategies and another to try them out in community. We're solving that problem, with a handful of new, affordable, interactive workshops. We just held one on mastering the art of the interview that went over like gangbusters—we're doing it again soon. We're also holding workshops on the 6 strategies for creating unforgettable work, and on the thing that gives us all headaches—how to curate great guests and what it takes to be a phenomenal guest yourself. That one's gonna be really fun, because I'll share you with how NPR producers book guests. So check out our current and future workshops at podcast allies dot com slash workshops. That's podcast allies dot com slash workshops. You don't need to jot that down, though—the link is in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there. 

Thanks for joining me for the fourth in my six-part series on storytelling strategies for hooking new listeners and keeping them with you. Next up: How do you make audiences feel curious enough to stay with you from the beginning to the end? Suspense is the fifth storytelling strategy, and in the next episode, you’ll hear how two ingenious cohosts create suspense in every single episode. 

For shows and resources mentioned in this series, see our show notes at sound judgment podcast dot com. And if you’re enjoying this series, please share it with a friend. If you missed the first three parts on sound vision, structure, and scenes, you’ll find them all at sound judgment podcast dot com or wherever you listen.

Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies. I’m Elaine Appleton Grant. See you next time.