 So hi welcome everyone to your story well told with Corey Rosen and his brother Steve. My name is Karen Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mechanics, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest in fact designed to serve the general public in California. We are also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club that is the oldest in the nation. I encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. It is only $120 a year and with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. Our topic today is the new book Your Story Well Told by Corey Rosen. He is an Emmy Award winning writer, actor and storytelling teacher and he brought along for the ride today his brother Steve Rosen who is a writer as well, an actor and a composer and lyricist based out of New York City. Thank you so much Corey and Steve for joining us today. Thank you guys for having us. I gotta say I am so excited to be here. So excited in fact that I put on cologne which is, I have no idea why, I'm just talking on the computer and but I smell great so I think you smell great. And since you're my brother I probably smell similar to you, I think we have the same scent. Oh yeah, yeah like aqua velva, our father's favorite. As a matter of fact I have a question about that Steve, do you use Tresame shampoo? Yes and I also still use finesse every now and again. Which is our childhood shampoo because just the other day Noly, I don't know my daughter who is 13 years old who's being bought made for next Saturday, she changed her shampoo and she came up to me and she was like smell my hair and I'm like okay and then she's like tell me I don't smell like Uncle Stevie and 100% she smelled like Uncle Stevie and then I put it all together so there you go. Busted, well I'm thrilled that her memories of me are mostly smell related. Every Uncle's dream is I just want my niece to be able to identify me with her nose. Yeah. Well hi, hi Corey, let's talk for a second, enough about me and my fabulous hair what I have left, let's talk for a second about you. You want some hair? Because I'm going to cut this all off for the bat mitzvah, so. Are you really? Yeah. Well I'm sure this is actually this is groundbreaking news for our mother who's on this call, I'm sure she's very very excited to find out about that. But I love that you have kept the hairstyle from this entire pandemic, I love the fact that you actually have like some sun in, it looks like there that you actually, all the things our mom would never let us do, you've grown it out, you've dyed it a different color, now just get some earrings. I'll take part credit because she did it, she's like we're doing something with it dad. It looks great, it looks great and are you, I mean is it long enough to donate that much hair? I don't know I've never had that much. I've heard no, I think you need a foot, a solid foot of hair to donate it what I have heard, so unfortunately. All right, well good news for me, my shoulders and back are eligible, so I will be donating all of that. Corey, you wrote a book, you wrote a book. My brother Corey Rosen wrote a book called Your Story, Well Told, which is a, well it says here, creative strategies to develop and perform stories that wow an audience. But let me explain as someone who has read it to everyone out there who may not have read this fabulous book yet, it is not only a strategy guide that tells you the best ways to engage an audience, to engage a group of people to find a story, it also is chalk full of phenomenal and hilarious, well thought out stories of my brothers from his life, some from our childhood, some involving our families and I think it's a very cool opportunity for you and I to talk a little, Corey, because you and I both write as part of our jobs, but it's very rare that you and I ever get a chance to talk sharp about this stuff and I'd like to thank Taren and the Mechanics Institute for having us here today to give us this opportunity. I apologize, Taren and the Mechanics Institute for bringing my Volkswagen to you. I did not understand what exactly Mechanics Institute meant, but thank you for trying to fix it, you know, you had books to help me try and fix it. Yes. But so, Corey, congratulations on writing this book, it's phenomenal. Thank you so much, I can't believe that it's a thing, you know, it was a weird process for me in terms of like coming up with this idea for something, writing it down, you know, and learning from my book agent, Randy Pizer and author One Stop, who was like, you actually haven't written a book, she said you wrote a manuscript and learned that, that it's not a book until it comes out and once it, once the fine people at Mango Publishing made it into a book, then it became a book and the process looks like a book. It looks like a book. It looks like a book. Yeah. And then another weird thing happened, which is that when the book came out a couple of weeks ago, you know, I told people about it and people started to buy the book and then the really weird thing happened, which is that people read the book and I say that's a weird thing because you would think as an author that that would be like a foregone conclusion, but it's almost like somewhere in the process of making the thing, I forgot about that part. I was like, oh, yeah, people aren't just going to buy the thing, they're going to read it. And so I want to thank all those of you who are here who have already bought the book and maybe even read a few pages or for those of you hadn't yet because I think it's good, I do. I think it is too. And writing the book, interestingly enough, because I think a lot of the work that you do with storytelling, aside from being a master storyteller who hosts the moth in the Bay Area every month, you also teach storytelling as well, which is a very, you know, it's a very verbal, a very oral, a very on your feet kind of way of getting a point across. Whereas in this, you've actually had to write down all the thoughts and put them into, you know, a sequential order, speak a little less colloquially about what it is you're talking about. How did you find that experience? Having never written a book before, how did you find that experience? Well, having taught for a long time, for having taught for a number of years, especially on the topic of storytelling, I feel that taught teaching is such a teacher to us. It's almost like the secret of teaching something. A friend of mine once gave me this advice that if you want to really learn a subject, teach a class in it. Don't just take a class in it because by teaching a class, you have to become an expert in the subject and you really imbibe from the students and you learn from each other. You learn from the class. And so the book is kind of the culmination also of a lot of that. I have a lot of classes that I have taught. And it's not just my own stories. It's stories that I have heard, stories that I've heard in shows like the moth, stories that students of mine have told in classes. And a lot of our process, people's process of developing and telling better stories involves the telling and the retelling of those stories. You know, there's the version that comes out when somebody asks you something and you tell them the thing that happened. And then when you kind of craft that into a story that has those, you know, those sort of changes that happen in life, you know, something that encapsulates not just this thing that happened, but this experience of, of why am I telling you about this? Why is that thing happening? Was the thing that was fun to write down, of course, into a book of to take these, these lessons, these ideas, and then to structure them into kind of like a three-part process, which is like finding creative ideas, which I know a lot of people hear through this, um, this particular session. That's sort of a topic of interest of like, where do these ideas come from? And that's really an interest to me is, is tapping into my, my own ideas and helping people find like, what are my stories? What are the, what are maybe the stories that I tell all the time that I, I could tell better, or what are new stories that I haven't tapped into structuring those stories and ultimately telling them. So the book is the sort of the, the culmination of that is like taking these various, like learnings, wisdoms and teachings that I've done and, and encapsulating them in there. Yeah. That's so cool. And, and, and so on the subject, I mean, you cover so many interesting subjects in here. Again, I'm not, I'm, we're not here to sell the book today. We're going to have a conversation really about writing. I mean, if you want to buy the book, it is on sale. You can absolutely buy it wherever books are sold. I encourage you to find a wonderful, small bookstore to buy such a book at. But I want to talk a little bit about sort of just the creation of stories, creativity and productivity for writers and especially finding a story. And I was thinking maybe it might be fun if you and I were two on the spot, tell a story together, the way that we sort of would do on car trips when we were kids. Yes, but throughout our entire lives, I don't know how would this first started, but for people that are watching my brother and I just communicate sometimes in what word at a time stories. We will just make stories up to pass the time. And so we've been doing this. How long since. I mean, as long as I can remember. I just, I remember, I mean, it might have come after your first summer at French Woods. I'm not exactly certain. Maybe you would play some improv games there and stuff. But improvisation is a very important part of my process. So let's just get one started. Shall we? Okay. All right, I'll start. Okay. John went to a large party where all the other people named John went. It was generally a party for Johns. Unfortunately, John forgot his name tag. And everyone asked what's your name to which John replied. John, the end. All right. So that is a very silly story about being at a party for John. People named John. Yeah, I realized that you were setting me up to talk about a friend of ours named John, which I used to do back in the day, but I totally misread it. But so what we basically did there is you and I had to tell a story together, meaning we, neither of us knew where it was going to go. But we just listened and then we responded. So leaving a very sort of open canvas, the opposite of sort of a lot of the things that when people try to tell a story where they try to get every word perfectly, you know, some people try to tell a story that way. Other people like to totally improvise. Tell me about the function of improvisation in storytelling and in your technique of storytelling. I love that question. Thank you. Like the game that we just played is a is a game obviously, but it's also illustrative of a mindset that I think creative people sometimes labor to put themselves into or get themselves into, which is a creative exploratory mindset or a mind space where they could be open to creating, but also like surprising themselves with their own ideas. So like in the exercise that we just played while sort of fun and silly in some ways and juvenile and others, it's a place where I only had control of half of the words in that story. You only had control in half those. Some people would say because we're brothers, maybe we are a similar mindset. Yeah, but we, but, but being surprised and having to maybe think what the next word was going to be and then change that because the direction that you took it down changed where the story was going. And I had to, I had to follow the follower is that no one is in control when you're doing that. And I think that the overall creative process can be like that, which is the idea of, of letting ourselves be changed by our own ideas and letting an inspiration or an idea or a thread just be like, I don't know why I'm thinking this or where it's going, but I'm going to follow that thread and see where it goes. So improvisation is a very freeing way of doing that to take some of the preciousness off of creativity. Like when you sit down and you have the blank page in front of you and it's like, I have to write something good. And that pressure can be paralyzing enough to say, or I can clean my room and do anything other than write because the writing itself becomes the pain that I want to avoid. So I'm going to do something different. I'm going to go run three miles instead of doing the thing that I want to do. So I find like a creative, like a sort of improv focused mindset is more like, let's just get into the space of I'm going to make something and it can be okay. It can be fine. I'm not going to try to make something good. Just like when we started to tell the John name tag story, neither of us set out to tell a good story, right? Yeah, well, I mean, I never do. I never set out to tell a good story. That's lesson number one of this book. Don't try to tell a good story. Well, the lesson number one is actually just tell a story. I think that there is a lesson in that, which is just the creative act of starting. And that's why storytelling is a great way into that because I think if you tell someone sit down and write a story, there's that similar preciousness. But if you say, hey, tell me a story about a party, then talking it out loud, inventing it, saying it, telling a specific story about a specific time, you are writing, you are creating your storytelling. And that's at least a starting point to then go into maybe the discussion about, is this something that I want to tell more about or learn more about? And as it relates to telling stories, how do we, when you are sort of, when someone says, you know, tell me a story, you know, finding that material with which to tell a story, it feels so daunting. And yet I think it's always, it's helpful to look back on sort of our own history because you and I have a shared history of our experience with being told stories because I think that we all relate to one another through our shared history, through the stories that we tell. And I think that you and I both grew up in a household where stories were a major part of our life. Our parents, both are excellent storytellers in very different ways. They have very different techniques of telling stories. And at least I know for me, the first stories that I know about myself are stories of which I am, I have no awareness of the stories that happened when I was really little. Silly things you do when you're a kid. And that story that you did, that either is the reason you have a nickname you don't remember or something like those stories are, which would become part of your identity. Are you thinking of a specific story right now, like an origin story, like, like the Shiva story? No. No, I wasn't thinking about a specific story, but do you have a good one, do you have a good one to share? Well, I mean, this is like your, your general origin story is that, is that you were born because there was a slow day at the Shiva call. So mom and dad went upstairs and nine months later, you were born. So like you were born out of, out of sort of a slow, a slow moment at the Shiva. Yes. Or I mean, first of all, that is incredibly embarrassing and I can see, I can see our mom now talking to someone off camera. But it is, it is, it is that, it is true is that I have heard that it was a slow day at the Shiva house and to relieve the grief of loss. Yeah. They gained to me. But I was thinking more specifically about the story when I, you know, at the Thanksgiving that we spent in New York City, which wasn't a nickname story per se, but it's a story that was told my entire childhood that I had learned to tell over and over again, which in a very long story, it was at Thanksgiving at our aunt being uncle Seymour's house in New York City. When in the middle of the night, I had just, I had recently become potty trained and I was excited to, you know, go to the restroom in the middle of the night. I saw a glass on the kitchen counter. I was thirsty. There was another cup, but it was higher. So I grabbed the one I could reach. There was something in it. I flushed it down the toilet, whatever was inside had the water. The next morning it became clear that I had flushed my uncle Seymour's false teeth down the toilet in the middle of the night. And poor uncle Seymour was forced to eat oatmeal for Thanksgiving. Now that is a story that has been, I mean, that's the very short version of it, but that is a story that has been told over and over and over again in our lives. And where I have very few memories of it specifically, I know enough of the story to be able to retell it. Yeah. I, I mean, I, I love that story for a variety of reasons, but one in the general storytelling sense, you know, families, this is where we probably do most of our stories. Like we remember our relatives. We remember each other. We remember things that happened and we construct our own lives through the stories that happened, these things that happened. Oh, that's such a funny story. Lori, you got to tell that story. Right. And I'm not just talking to you, Lori, but I am using a Long Island accent. So that was, you know, you might think that I was talking about you. That could have just been any Lori that's in attendance here. But in general and in specific, the stories that we tell about that about uncle Seymour's teeth has become the stuff of legend and is part of like the way that, that like we remember with love, the people in our lives, you know, and kind of contextualize these moments that are all of the times that we spend together through these moments. So yes, some of them are like that. This is a story that you are a major character in that story. And even though you have no recollection of that, you have, you know, many of your own stories that you tell and the stories that I tell about my children in the book and otherwise are stories that they probably didn't even think that that was a story or something that was story worthy. But when I look at a lot of my life now, like as a parent, for example, a lot of the things that I am witnessing and experiencing as a dad are becoming stories to me because they're reminding me of a time in my own life. They're like taking me back to experiences that they're going through and they remind me of experiences that I had. And that's really powerful. I think as a storyteller too is to find connections in our lives. So it's not just like this thing that happened this one time, but this thing in the context of my experience of my life, of my work, of my job, of my relationships, whatever, whatever that may be so that every story doesn't have to be every story that a moment can in some way illustrate what a funny little child Steve Rosen was who had flushed his uncle's teeth down the toilet because he was just thirsty. And in some ways that's became a story about you, about isn't that funny Steve always does funny things? Or isn't that funny about Uncle Seymour? Things like that always happen to Uncle Seymour. Like it became a story not just about the moment, but about the people in the moment. I think. Right. Yeah. And his grace and generosity to the fact that a child did this, he obviously was very pissed off. But not at me. I never knew. I never knew. So in that regard, yeah, I want to just sort of use that to circle back to your book just for a second where you're saying, yes, you have some of the best examples of stories that you tell in the book. And that I've heard you tell do involve experiences from your childhood and raising your children with that same perspective. And I wonder when you are trying to brainstorm ideas of things to tell, like let's say at the mall, because I'm always astounded that every, you know, every couple of weeks you get yourself up on stage in front of thousands of people. And you essentially are telling a story that you may have workshop with one or two people. You may have told the story a couple of times first, but you are exposing yourself on that grand stage. And so would you just mind explaining a little bit for those of us to whom that seems insane what it's like to develop a story for the mall? Great, great question. First of all, I think that something that's very helpful for writers of all kinds is to like, like focus the lens or narrow the funnel to some degree. It's sort of like asking someone like, tell me a joke. And like, I don't know any jokes. And then you tell them a joke and they know the punchline. Like we know a lot of these things, but we just don't think of them stories are in a similar way. So having something like a prompt or a theme or what the show is about becomes a really helpful tool for any kind of a writer to say like, I'm going to write about, you know, medical stories. I'm going to write about vacation stories or, you know, sort of something specific Canadian stories, you know, like whatever it is starting to focus the lens helps us to narrow and go like, oh, I've got a story about that. One game that I like to play sometimes is this game called first last best worst where to find like, what am I going to say about that? I take the word and then I append to it one of those four words. So say it was like Canada. Like first Canada story, last Canada story, best worst, like, so it might be the first time I went to Canada. I remember, I remember, I'm just, I didn't plan this, but I remember getting lost at the World's Fair. And I think it was Montreal. Mom, are you there? Yeah. I mean, and I remember getting lost because this was the eighties and there was the Pepsi challenge was a thing. And I'd seen it on television and there at the World's Fair, they were having the Pepsi challenge. And I just veered off as a very young child to take the Pepsi challenge. And I remember so distinctly like wanting to get it right and to pick the Pepsi. And when I did, I turned around and everybody was gone. Right? Like, I might use that as the basis of a story about my life and just take a moment, take the anecdote, take the thing and be like, what can I do with that? And then develop that. So just finding a way in to a thing might then allow me sort of like to water that plant and see where it goes. I think that is brilliant. So the idea of the first, so you get a word, right? Someone gives you a word for the moth, right? Listen, let's say it's, you know, like in Canada. I mean, you think of first, it's either first, last, best, or worst. Yeah. Which I think is such a great way into a story because it is, it's like the, you know, like at Passover for the Jews out there who've been through that, you know, why is this night different than any other night? Why is this story, as you were saying earlier, why is this worth telling? What is it about this story? And if something is the first time you've experienced it, the last time you experienced it, the best or the worst, it already gives it importance. I've always felt like most people are always in search of that first something. But it always is worthy of a story if it's your first kiss, your first date, you know, your first, you know, traffic accident. Like there is something about that story because we all can relate to being ignorant of something and then being informed of it and how that changes us. And I think that we as audience members as well can also relate. It makes us think about, oh, when was my first time, you know, you know, kissing someone, you know, behind the White House studios in French Woods. But it invokes these memories and then those memories and thoughts lead to other ideas, which then can then get you to your story. But now you don't just get right up on stage and tell the story, right? What's the process like for you? So for me, I am not a... I don't go right to the page first. I don't sit down and write it first. For me, I think it's... I want to say it's out of some kind of laziness, but it's also maybe by doing a lot of improvisation, I would rather tell the story first. So I might call you or I might talk to Jenny, my wife. I might say, like, I want to tell you this story and see what comes out. And I'm doing it in a conscious way, though. I'm thinking about it, especially in this context. I'm thinking about I might be telling the story. So in my head, I might be thinking about some basic story structures, you know, and the most basic of story structures being that, like, life was like this, something changed, and then life was like this at the end. Like, there was just some basic, you know, at least two acts of like something changed and then there was a different ending than there was at the beginning, a basic structure. So many times when people tell an anecdote, there is no actual change. But for me, the process, I'm thinking that fundamentally, but I'm also just telling you this is what I remember happening. And just like in the John's story that we improvised a second ago, there's this concept of like, okay, well, we created a world where a guy named John goes to a party and then the thing that happens is that he doesn't have a name tag. There was a problem that emerged in that story right there. And so now there's some kind of curiosity what's going to happen. So if I was to take the Pepsi Challenge story, there's the thing that happened and then the ultimately getting discovered and finding out something. And actually in that case, I learned a lesson, which was not about Pepsi, but it was about, you know, like being aware of your surroundings and being, you know, and also the lesson that my parents taught me of, don't move. Like when you get lost, don't try to find us, we'll find you, which is a lesson that because of that getting lost story, that is the lesson I have told my children. If they're a theme park or some crowded place and they get lost to stop moving. And it's literally because of that thing that happened. But we also live, but we live in a day and age where there are cell phones, where back then like the only chance you had was to go to the, you know, to the cottage cheese booth and call collect and leave a message. But I do want to answer your question though. Can I just quickly answer the question? Which is that, you run out of time next. Go ahead, go ahead, please. So I will tell, I would tell my story to a person, usually a person that I respect their thoughts and their opinions about the story. And then I listen. I listen to what they have to say back to me. So like if they have questions, the questions are very helpful. I think their questions aren't criticism of, that I did a bad job in the story. There are things that left out. There are things that they were curious about, things that they wanted to know more about and might help me. Thank you, Ellen Evans. Thank you. Eventually I want to see all boxes just like that. That, that the questions, the response of telling your story to someone is real time feedback. Where they smiled, where they laughed, where they looked at their watch or their phone, where they got confused, helps me as a creator of the story to know in real time, not in a feeling like, like, oh, I failed. I sucked. But it's like, oh, interesting that you, you stopped listening at that point. Because that's also a very human thing. You know, as people, if I'm telling you a story very often, the person that you're telling that story to is listening to your story and they're thinking of what they're going to say next. Maybe that reminds them of something. So their brain goes to another thought. So as storytellers, we're competing against, you know, people's own, own minds and their attention. And we're trying to captivate them and draw them in and tell them a story. But they're also thinking about, did I turn the stove off? And what do I have to do tomorrow? I've got a busy night. You know, so there is those sorts of things. And I feel like pulling all of those sort of balloon strands together helps me as a storyteller to craft it into, like, what's the simplest version of the story? So I'm not overloading somebody's attention with details or, or narrative. And I'm just telling the story in, in the best way of telling this specific story. That's amazing. And so interesting too. Yeah. I think that that, you know, because you are, you know, as I write a lot of stuff as well, you're my first reader. Like you are so valuable to have an opportunity to have someone who knows your work, who can, who's input you trust, who can read or be told the story and then reflect upon it in a constructive and helpful way. Especially asking the kind of questions that you were just asking. It's like, what, what part of that story? What didn't I answer that you wanted me to or what part of the story felt unnecessary? Was there parts that was just color, you know, that wasn't helping move the story or the plot of my story along, but might be a red herring or just giving you some information, how much is too much. And I think one of the things when you've done for me too, a time is that you've caught on to things that I think that I thought the story was about this. And then you're asking me questions about something else. And it becomes like, maybe that's what the story is about. You know, I think when we're creating or crafting our own stories, sometimes we know the things that happen, but that's not necessarily what the story is about. So the story is actually about something else. You know, the story is about being lost or finding yourself or learning to survive in a, in a, in a crowd as a child or something like that, some sort of survival, you know, a story. And the questions that like you've asked me or the, or you've caught on sometimes to like a line. I really liked that line that you said. And I didn't even plan to say that line. I hadn't even thought of that, but it was like a tossed off comment that to you was the funniest or most interesting part. So those are really helpful in, in the, in the telling of a story too, is to find like where, where might a laugh or a reaction or a motion come from? Yeah. Because I think writing is a very solitary craft a lot of the time. And so we have the idea in our head of what it is that we're, what the story is about and how people are going to react to it. But until you're actually in front of people telling the story or writing it down, you don't actually know for sure, because what lives in here doesn't always translate out here or here in a way in the way in which we think it is. And sometimes we have, you know, we think, yeah, like you're saying we think our story is about one thing, but actually it's really a story about growing up. It's a story about maturity. It's a story about, you know, best intentions or whatever. And I think too that you, one thing that you do especially well and especially well in this book is giving people the, you know, it's sort of like a stand up comic works, right? It's giving yourself permission to not be great at something, you know, to not feel that pressure, especially in the creative process to, you know, to give yourself permission just to sort of bomb it out for lack of a better word. All of the ideas at once to sort of see, okay, I have this idea soup of all of these different thoughts and ideas so that you have more stuff there than you need. And you can start doing the real fun work, which is the stripping away to, as you're saying, get to the simplest, most efficient way of telling the story to get the result you're looking for. Yeah. And finding a way to do it where it doesn't last 45 minutes to is also a problem that a lot of people have. I think a lot of people have issues finding the story within all of that stuff. Yeah. Do you have any tips, tricks, that sort of thing? Let's say there is an event and you're not like a skilled storyteller, your instinct is to tell the whole story in sequence. What instinct do you have to help that person streamline their story in a way so that people don't fall asleep while they're telling you? Great question. The one technique that I've kind of discovered or developed over time, let me just do that, is I call it starting from the end. Like, if I am planning to tell a story and I know where I think that it's going, I know what the end, let's take this. If we're talking about true life stories, like our lives, sometimes it's really hard with a true story to find a spine of that story because it's like, it didn't end. Explain what the spine means just very quickly. So the spine of a story is the sequential plot of what happens in the story. So the spine that I use the most is the Ken Adams story spine, which is an eight line kind of summation of what every story should have. And they don't have to be, every story doesn't have to be told in this way, but every story I believe should have these components, which is a once upon a time, which is basically a setting. Where is the story taking place? When is it? Who is the story about? I'm not saying you have to say the words once upon a time, which are kind of indicative of a specific genre like fairy tale or fantasy story, but like, that is a beat in every story, which is knowing where it takes place. Just focusing on that for a second, sometimes somebody launches into a story and you're already confused. You're like, wait, how old were you? When did this happen? Was this in the 70s or was this yesterday? We don't know what, you know, like what the context is. So it helps the audience to funnel and to focus on what's happening. There's also an every day of the story. What's normal in the story until one day something changes. And then when we're being told the story and we hear about what life is like until something's different, we as listeners perk up because now we realize, oh, I'm being told a story like something happened that's different from all other days. And where this ultimately takes us to isn't ever since that day, something at the end of our story is different than the every day. And so when I am constructing or listening to people tell like these big life stories, it's like, where are we ending? Are we ending on like a decision that I made about to quit the job, to take the job, to leave the marriage, to save the marriage, whatever that is. And then I'll almost reverse engineer that. I'll be like, if it's about saving the staying in the job, then maybe the every day is being unhappy in the job. Right? Like, how can I start where I have somewhere to go with this and start with the frustrations. Every day I was frustrated and upset until one day I saw a job posting and the job posting was in my own company. Right? And I, and then because of that, so then I thought like, I don't want to work for this company. I've been miserable for six years. But then I thought, well, but this other department could have opportunities. You know, like the upshot of this might be that I ended up liking my own job better than I did because I had a different perspective. So knowing where you're going helps you plan where you've been. That's so interesting. You know, I've been, recently I've been working, one of the things I'm working on is like a murder mystery. And so I did a little research into like, well, I mean, write a murder mystery. And, and I read, so I looked it back at the Christie whose books I read when I was a kid. And I found out that she did exactly what you're talking about. She would reverse engineer her mysteries. She would start at the end with the confession and then work backwards. And I think that that is very similar to the way that you're talking about like, so how does the story end? And then like, and then work back to the good part of the story and then what setup do we need to get there? I think that's very, very creative. So when you're vomiting out the first draft, when you're telling that first pass, usually I don't know where I'm going with it. I know the thing. I know the anecdote. And then sometimes when I, then I get to the end, then already in my head, just because I do this a lot, I go, oh, hold on. I have a better version already that I start to kind of work on, which is to say, if I'm going to end here, I should start here. Or if I'm making up the story and I start somewhere that I kind of already know the vector at least that I'm going on. Like I'm starting from this place and I'm going to end up someplace else. Yeah. Yeah. And I noticed too, when I'm, when you and I are workshopping stuff, when you call me in the car with an idea and you start telling me sort of thoughts and ideas, I, I'm always fascinated by what, whether, um, purposeful or not, what, what repeats itself within your story. What thoughts or ideas repeat itself so that you then have these sort of tent poles that then relate to it. And I find that they often revolve around whatever it, the word is that you are trying to associate from, uh, for that month's thing. Um, and so, yeah, I just, I, I'm, I'm fascinated by the way that you do it. And I've, I, if anyone has, uh, never seen the moth or I hopefully soon you're going to be able to get back up on stage again and we're going to be able to be in theaters to see this. Um, there's something so electric about watching people tell stories, but specifically watching my brother Corey tell stories because, um, he also has such a, not only is he a master storyteller, but he also understands an audience. He understands, um, uh, the way that they want to, uh, participate in someone telling a story. The way we all do, we want, you know, from when we're kids going to the library class in first grade, we want to sit down and we want to get wrapped up in what this person has to tell us. We want to see what about it we relate to and what about it makes us think and reflect on our own lives and worlds. Um, and I think that that transcends that idea of like involving your audience or your listener is a part of storytelling that I think also transcends like the, not everybody wants to get on a stage and tell their stories, but many of us are telling stories like at work or in presentations or, um, at a wedding or somewhere where we sort of find ourselves in a situation where we have to tell that kind of a story. And that's also something that I feel like is a good thing to practice as a storyteller too, which is being just present and being aware of the listener and the person who's hearing your story because rather than falling into the way I always tell it all the time to the same, you know, to people, whoever the audience is and being able to sort of like surf the interest or their attention or their reactions is very helpful. So even like at the moth I'll go on stage with a story in mind and I'll tell the story and I'll find within the telling of the story I'll be getting like a laugh or something. So for me that gives me the confidence to slow down and like maybe I can tell more about that thing that I'm talking about here because I don't have to rush through that part because this part has awakened something. People are connected or listening or interested in what I'm talking about. That's a really powerful place to be as a storyteller is the place where your audience likes what you're saying. And so rather than rushing to the next thing because you plan to get there, letting it breathe a little bit helps you as a storyteller tell it better. And as you tell some of the same stories over and over again you find that the rehearsing of them allows you to find the parts of the story that are important based on those experiences. And it's so funny because I actually think back to our childhood and I remember in our kitchen that that phone that was on somehow they got the world's longest cord that you could take it all the way from the kitchen into the family room somehow like it went like 40 feet. I don't know where they found it. But I just remember mom sitting in the dining room as I'm sure she still does now and she would tell us a story at dinner one night and then she would get on the phone and you would hear her telling the story again but you would notice she would hit certain parts of the story. It would get more streamlined. She would hit the important parts and you could tell how much she wanted to talk to the person on the phone based on how long it was. So if she wanted to get off the phone it's basically like beginning, middle and that happened. But if you want to talk to you luxury it and you feel comfortable as you say you feel comfortable taking the pause taking the time to tell the story because the more patience you have in the commitment to where you're going if the audience feels secure that the storyteller knows the destination of this journey it becomes more of a pleasure to ride on that journey. Unlike riding a taxi in New York City where a lot of the times he's like so which way do I go again? You're like actually take a left sometimes the audience knows the story better than the tell. But I really think it's so cool and I think that as you said it isn't just about getting up on stage to perform for thousands of people it is some people get really really stressed out by having to take the floor to have to be at the center of attention and then have the spotlight on them they feel the pressure to not only tell a good story but also to perform and I think that a lot of the strategies that you use in your story well told are the kind of things that can Ellen's got it again that you can use in a toast at a wedding or a roast even at a wedding something that you can use to write a speech well using elements of these stories I just I think it's such a cool venture and I feel very lucky that you wrote all of this stuff down because not only do you use all of your great ideas but you also use ideas keep John Stone and the story spine stuff and all these different techniques you are so well read in it that it really is a very accessible how to tell a story book and I feel so I'm so proud of you that you wrote a book my brother but I'm also as a storyteller I'm secretly very pleased that if I'm ever like really stuck I can just go that camera I hope you do I hope you will I have I mean one of the here was a decision like I'm right in writing the book I wanted it to also be like an active you know not just the book about it but like to have it be like exercises and activities and a workbook and people have sent me like pictures that they've like filled in the lines like written in the written in the lines you know of the workbook you've created the workbook like well they've like filled it in and that's so funny because I'm not that guy like I don't write in the book right I would be like the photocopy it and or write it down on paper but like there's never right in their book so like it's both ways you can write in my book that's alright yeah or you can use a pencil you can also make photocopies of it anywhere copies are made I would write in the book I write in the Mad Libs book that is a book right because yeah you want to do it once yeah and if you really want to do it again you can just flip and do it on the top that's a good that's a good tip so those of you who are here just for learning how to story tell you're also getting some extra Mad Libs tips should we take some Q&A that's a great that's a great question yeah yeah yes so there was a looks like the first question is from Russell Russell do you want to turn your mic on and ask your question directly sure hang on can you hear me yeah I know it's literally the worst question and all of the pandemic is can you hear me is this thing on so as you can see I'm at I'm in Burbank and I'm at prime pizza I'm just waiting for lunch but I've been on this whole call from I was in the studio when we started and my question I know both of you guys and it is so wonderful to see you in all your glory and delivering this awesome talk I was curious because I do a lot of script writing now you have TV film kind of stuff out here and so in storytelling do you feel like this is maybe just a general question for everybody do you feel like the same tools and games that you would play to develop a story for the moth or for improv would also apply to scenes in a TV show or a film if you're workshopping it say with another character you're writing with or another writer you're writing with yes thank you that is a great question I see you're taking it offline no you can stay on if you want it's great to see you great to see you Russell Russell and I were summer camp bunk buddies for I want to say six years I don't even know but I'm so happy for your life and your success in music and film and television and to answer the real question we'll each take a pepperoni thank you I'll see what I can do I'll talk to them pepperoni is really expensive right now but I'll see what I can do sponsored by prime pizza I believe a story is a story I believe that whether you're writing a long form story for a television film episodic I believe that storytelling is storytelling and I feel like the principles all still apply in terms of like creative approaches to that I merge the two ideas like I feel like there is like developing a spine of the story is important and something that I've really worked into my kind of creative process that's sort of taken from the improv world is the idea of using sort of the yes and concept in two powerful ways one is to silence the critic that sits on my own shoulder that tells me that that's a stupid idea and like we all have that that critic that sits there and tells us no not that don't do that and to silence them by just saying yes and just going with where it is and seeing where it goes and writing it out and then looking and seeing what did I make here and what is working and then find the good and then build on what's good so it's using sort of that training of getting past like Steve said earlier getting past the idea of having to be good the first time because the sooner we can get into that mind space of it has to be okay before it can be good before it can be great everything doesn't come out great you know and making more things or making more drafts and being okay with it being okay allows us to get to a better place and I think the last part of your question to me was about collaboration working with partners which I want to throw to Steve because Steve you do a lot of collaborative writing and so how does that play into your mindset as a writer that's collaborate do you use any of this these ideas or I use it I use a ton of it and I I'm sure that you've had this experience to Russell in that you know in any like I work a lot in the theater and you know television and film stuff as well but you know in the theater you sometimes people tell a story through dance sometimes people tell a story through a song and there's two different ways to tell a story so the real difference I think is just the manner in which the idea is communicate so you know if you are doing if it's someone telling a story versus if Jerry Seinfeld is doing a stand-up act and then it translates itself into an episode of Seinfeld is instead of someone you know playing both sides of a scene on stage you can actually dramatize it with two people there sometimes the most telling part of a story is what someone doesn't say you know and that is also an interesting way to play you can play with storytelling devices in whatever medium in which you're working but I feel as though when you're working with collaborators there is a generosity of spirit that is always appreciated by letting the idea go all the way out let's just see it out because my instinct when I first started rolling stuff is to edit every sentence along the way to write a sentence, edit it to death and then move on to the next sentence is I would get tired and frustrated and quit so this way if you and someone else are just getting all the ideas out you then can sit, digest, look at what you have talk about it and find what did we both sort of key into and really what felt to us to be the most important part of this story that will help you both find the story and also find how compatible you are as writing partners because if you're both looking at the same thing and you're seeing very different stories it might just be your perspectives are different so either you find a way to find a happy medium as it were or you find another way to tell this story or tell another story great question Russell thank you thank you there also was a question from Kate Farrell Hi Kate congratulations again during the pandemic and Steve when you're talking about collaborative work thank you so sweet of you thank you so are you working live with real people face to face because this last year has been very very difficult in terms of developing content for storytelling and honestly I wanted to ask Corey do you find that workshopping the script is limiting how do you suggest doing it I know it's very difficult for me to work with pairing my stories with African-American and we were so emotional to match our stories through email does that make sense yeah that is difficult this week was the first week so far that I've actually gotten to sit in a room with both of my writing partners and with the person with whom I co-compose the first time we got to sing together in harmony because as you know if you've tried to sing happy birthday on this thing which we all have done at one point or another it's a disaster so we are now finally back in the same room and I have to tell you it makes a world of difference a world of difference but usually when we're writing we've been writing on Zoom sharing a screen and one of us is just in captain's chair and the other person is essentially just sort of feeding in that's my answer Corey I mean I guess I mean I agree with that I don't do I'm just trying to think which piece of it that I want to answer because there were several um writing over email I was going to say writing over email that part of it seemed to me to be it's difficult because like a text message when you're reading something we inform it with our own point of view so whereas you can someone can text you no problem you know if you're like I'm going to be five minutes late and they're like no problem and you're like how many times have I waited for you for ten minutes you know whereas it's like they're just saying like yeah no problem like we because we put our own voice onto it so I think nothing really does compare to having a conversation and hearing it in the voice of the writer if that is a possibility I would also in terms of the you know I feel like as a storyteller to your you know it's at least a verbal storyteller your audience is a part of that equation and sort of pandemic storytelling over this format or trying to do a show a showcase where you've got ten storytellers and then you've got you know just like here you've got 20 40 60 people who are watching silently muted and all you have is a bunch of names and boxes or maybe heads that are nodding and one or two laugh like it's just it's not the same and there's a part of me that I had to just sort of suspend that part of myself as a performer and just be like I'm imagining that I am hearing you respond and I am sort of almost challenged in the telling of a story in this unusual format that we've like had to for the past year but it's also been creatively challenging in that way of like can I do it can I still generate ideas thinking things even when I can't get in the format that I was used to doing and at least for myself the thing that has actually been good about it or inspiring about it is that I've connected with audiences that I haven't been able to they don't have to be local to wherever I am I could be meeting people and doing shows with with storytellers in Chicago Germany and you know any anywhere on earth you know there are people here from from Florida and other parts and Burbank California and my brother is in New York and I'm in San Francisco I mean I you know it's been a really hard year in so many ways and I also try to look at some of the creative things that have been made possible because of it including that thank you Kate all right then there's a question from Alyssa Hello so fun to see you two together since I've been taking Cory's class and now get to see you interact with your brothers and fun just wondering so you said using the yes and to silence the critic which is that voice is strong with me do you have any other tips to silence the critic and maybe tips to enhance the collaborator in our brain in addition to the yes and yeah well I mean one one for me is is resisting the urge to write it down right away and even if you're not in a class or a workshop or something like that I will sometimes just record it I'll use like a voice record memo app or something and even if I don't listen to it back it feels like someone's listening to it and I just know for myself that I'm more likely to get through it and to say the whole thing versus what she was saying which is like stopping and editing every line the other trick that I have is by not writing it first by saying it before I write it for me as soon as I write it it starts to feel like I work so hard on that it becomes more precious and I don't want to change it but if I've just spoken it if I've just told it to you and you give me feedback and I tell it to you again it's still in that juicy malleable creative place where like it can change and it hasn't cost me anything other than the minute or five that it took me to tell it so that for me has been really helpful as I see people that write something down and then I give them notes on it and they're like I like it I wrote it I like the way it looks you know it's like not everybody is like that but Steve is sometimes totally that's how I am you know me yes and I feel very similarly I mean I the idea that the only way really to do it is through it so sometimes if you need to be bad as Corey says the best place to do it is where you are your only audience so speaking it into a voice memo and then taking a walk two hours later listen to it back again you can find you get a little perspective on it because you're not just sort of in love with your own voice and story you can have a little bit of perspective and that's always the hardest thing because in my brain it's so clear and when I'm saying it it sounds clear but then when I'm listening back I can hear this is not necessarily a satisfying story I should put that part at the beginning or I should tease a little bit of that later so that'll pay off you know it was also weird for me was like transcribing for the book like the story about my cousin Norman our cousin Norman and actually what I the challenge for him was I actually transcribed it the way that I said it and fix it the way that then transcribing like did I really say that that many times like the filler words and things that I say as a storyteller as a person, as a human came out in that and it becomes kind of helpful also to look at your own stories written out the way you say them so transcribing your own story from a verbal story versus writing it down you may find at least in my case what I find is that it comes out feeling more like you telling it even in writing than your writing voice you know written words often writers it sounds very prosaic and poetic and beautiful and if that is your style great but sometimes my style is is spoken you know it's like should sound like me and I think too Corey just basing up what I know about your writing you do write from a very yes and place it's a very you have a very positive spin on the way that you tell a story and I think that that is very good at keeping the energy ball in the air as you're telling something that affirmative energy and so it allows you to feed off of your own ideas in a positive forward moving way yeah so I really think that your use of improv is a great way into finding your own story yeah yeah and to be also I think I said this earlier but you know I the book is not an improv handbook and I my advice for people isn't like you must be an improviser to be a good writer or a storyteller I just think that the the mindset is an interesting thing to study and something that we can all learn from which is the idea of embracing to some degree the willingness to let our ideas go or to find new ideas and to say yes to them and to embrace them and to be creative and generative whether alone or with another collaborator co-creating things together and I hope that the book is helpful for people that read it and I plan to do some more like tools and things on my website which is just quarryrozen.com that has like videos and things that you could also watch and hopefully learn from as well all right one last question from Andrea mm-hmm hey hello hello um so first one one thing to say I'm now watching from the Netherlands so if you are international at this moment hey yes I love it I love it that's one good thing about corona right so we can meet across the world so that's that's totally thank you for being here thank you for having me um so my question was um do you have any tips for like a storyteller who doesn't really write because I do identify as a storyteller but because of the language barrier and dyslexia I don't write very well so it's uh issue and I do want to I take courses I ordered the book it takes 40 days to come here so give me some minutes but um I'm I'm wondering if you have any tips or if it's discussed in the book then I'll wait yeah um I mean I'm with you I I was a storyteller before I was really a story writer in this capacity um so I totally agree with you I realized this is like putting people on the spot to leave their spotlight up so I'm taking you off so you don't have to be but um but I I here's something that I find helpful when I'm crafting a story for like a storytelling show and I don't want to write it down because of the things I said before what I often though will write is I will write the beats of the story so that I can at least remember sort of the sequence of how I told it so that when I recall it it may come out slightly differently every time but at least I remember where it's going like kind of what the spine of my own story is it might just be bullet points it might be a line or two it might be some some container that reminds me that kind of carries me from the beginning to the end that is that is kind of a helpful thing for me Steve you anything you want to add to that yeah I think that's a great answer I think the other thing too is um I'm using those voice memos you know like and transcription software um if if writing is an issue for you then we live in the day and age where you can speak it out and someone else can write it down for you you know um so I I encourage you to keep don't stop telling stories just because the some of the ways in which other people write them down or or track them don't work for you you have to find your own voice and however you can get it out um and so yeah don't feel constricted by the only way to write is typing like you can write with your voice you know um and the more you listen to it back the more you can figure out that structure in your head make make notes in whatever way makes sense for you awesome thank you so much I keep working on it thank you um and I I'm I'm so grateful to you Taryn thank you so much and if you heard her say at the very beginning you can become a friend of the mechanics institute and it's not that expensive and all this you get all this cool stuff and opportunities so if you can she I'm so sorry I'm probably stepping on your toes Taryn tell them all the fabulous things that mechanics institute can do we can do all sorts of things but we can fix your car they cannot yes that is important to know no but uh yes we have we host all kinds of wonderful events about a third of them are devoted to the craft of writing because you know about a third of our members are writers if you're a writer check it out we have all kinds of free activities and when our libraries open full-time again we have a wall of books on the craft of writing because believe me the last thing a library wants is a bunch of bad writing in its collection so I want to thank you both for your wonderful synergy and the book is I just checked it it's on order and it will be added to our collection so yeah cheers to you both and thank you so much for coming out today thank you thank you everyone who came out today it was great to see so many familiar faces and people who I don't know welcome and thank you all right have a nice afternoon thank you you too bye everybody bye bye