13 lessons for storytellers from Resonate
13 lessons for storytellers from Resonate
I spent the weekend at the Resonate Podcast Festival and came away with 13 pieces of wisdom on storytelling, sound design, performance and community.
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Helena de Groot makes her pitch to Resonate Pitchfest judges Ben Riskin (l), Juleyka Lantigua and James Kim.
Hi Storytellers —
Helena de Groot sits in the spotlight, mic in hand. Like fellow contestants Julie Censulo and the team of Anna Rubanova and Adam Bozarth before her, de Groot has just pitched a new podcast to a panel of three judges. Lanky and clad in black, de Groot awaits questions from Ben Riskin, Juleyka Lantigua and James Kim. The judges will soon choose the winner of the Resonate Podcast Pitchfest, which comes with a $10,000 prize intended to fund a pilot episode.
By turns, Riskin, Lantigua and Kim thread the needle between compliments and criticism.
De Groot’s Creation Myth stems from her struggle over whether to have children — a far more universal dilemma than is generally acknowledged, and a timely one, given the childless cat lady memes. The quandary ended de Groot’s marriage. She now questions her own previously unshakeable belief that her life would be better without motherhood. She plans to share this struggle with the world.
Like her competitors, de Groot is confident and eloquent on stage (we podcasters love a mic and an audience).
But Juleyka Lantigua asks one pointed question: “Where is the creative tension in your story?”
De Groot’s answer is speculative, rooted in episodes that will spin out fictional alternative lives to be lived depending on the existence of children or not. To me, this answer feels fragile, as if she will have to search for it and pin it down again and again as she writes each new episode.
At the outset, our story ideas often want to fly away. We must find ways to satisfy a “both/and” — the confidence to firmly pin down our ideas and the contradictory flexibility to allow them to deepen and evolve in revision.
Answers to the question, “Where is the creative tension in your story?” are often elusive. We set out with an idea about a character, a news event, a trend or an existential question, but we often have only the most tenuous grasp of the tension.
This is especially true for those who began their careers as news reporters. “Who, what, when, where, and why” is designed for efficiency, not engagement. Transitioning from reporter to storyteller (whether nonfiction or fiction) is a far more profound and treacherous leap than most of us imagine.
But there is no successful story without tension.
What will we wonder about?
What will keep us listening from one episode to another?
What keeps us turning the page?
Resonate founder Chioke I’Anson on stage at the end of the festival.
I just encountered Zadie Smith’s ten rules for writers in Maria Popova’s provocative newsletter, The Marginalian. In that same column, Popova links to other great lists of writing rules from Kurt Vonnegut, David Ogilvy and Susan Sontag.
In this spirit, I offer you 13 pieces of wisdom that I’m taking home from Resonate.
Write “Where is the creative tension in your story?” on a Post-It and stick it on the wall next to your computer screen.
As storytellers, we are in the business of creating and maintaining desire — desire to know what happens next, desire for the lovers to meet, desire for a mystery to be solved. But once that mystery is solved, desire disappears and the forward momentum of our story is gone. So said Articles of Interest host Avery Trufelman, quoting essayist Anne Carson, “Space must be maintained or desire ends.”
Sound is physical. NYU radio professor Ellen Horne asks, “Do you feel like everything you hear is lifeless?” She does. Remote interviews are disconnecting us, as listeners, from the stories we hear, she argues. “I have resistance to the things I am hearing,” she says. “I am not moved. I am not touched.”
She urges us to resurrect that which differentiates audio storytelling from all other formats: its ability to connect us emotionally. “Sound is touch at a distance,” she says.
Horne implores us to ditch Zoom and return to the field, to converse with our sources up close. She also implores us to mix up how we conduct interviews: “Lie on a blanket on the ground together,” she says. Take a walk, try something new, something physical.“Performance is mission critical,” Horne says. At Radiolab, where she worked for 12 years, “We thought of [our work] as radio drama.”
Warm up your body before you turn on the mic. This matters whether you’re conducting an interview or laying down voice tracks.
But remote interviews can sound alive; gathering interviews in person is not the only antidote, Anna Sale tells me. Without remote interviews, she counters, our universe of sources diminishes to those people we can easily reach. Constrained by budget, time and the vagaries of travel, the diversity of our sources shrinks.
Whether audio stories and conversations are lifeless or magnetic is in how you conduct interviews, Sale believes. (For a deep dive into how she does it, listen to my interview with her on Sound Judgment, “How Anna Sale invites listeners in.”Build the world you want your audience to enter. Study the tools of sound design. Play with music and sound effects collaboratively — as Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdel Fatah did as they sound designed a scene from the history podcast Throughline.
Sound effects are editorial choices and need to be fact-checked the way we fact check our words. Don’t use sounds that didn’t exist in the time or place in which your scene occurs. Arablouei once searched for days to find the exact sound of an owl that would have been alive in a particular place in the 19th century. “Birders call us out!” he said.
Characters must have three things: a catalyst (what they want); a moral compass; and transformation, which typically includes a bad misstep and their response to it. This framing of character was just one nugget from producer Nicole Hill, who told us how she approached transforming her early “boring” version of her Black history podcast, Our Ancestors Were Messy, into a comedic, cinematic gem in her talk, “Fabulously Real.”
When it comes to raising money, we are our first obstacle. “We are very conditioned to ask for permission to do things,” Juleyka Lantigua tells us in her discussion with Chioke I’Anson, “Get That Schmonneeeyyyy!! Fundraising for Creatives.”
“As your podmother,” Lantigua laughs, “I give you permission to go and get your money.” Furthermore, she says, “There is SO much money out there. But no one is looking for you to give it to you.”You can unfuck an institutional “no” by believing in your work — Nicole Hill.
For audio storytellers, community is paramount. That’s the conclusion drawn by veteran podcast executive Mia Lobel in her talk, “Building Resiliency Through Community in Turbulent Times.” Community grounds us in times of trouble — whether by creating one-room neighborhood schoolhouses during the pandemic or bonding with other audio professionals to keep our art alive as we navigate the rocky audio ecosystem.
In this turbulent period for the podcast industry, Lobel offers the four following balms:
✏️ Be gentle with yourself✏️ Find your flock
✏️ Demand fair rates✏️ Lead with kindness.
What lessons did you learn at Resonate? What will you remember months from now? Share in the comments!
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As always, it is a joy to be with you.
Elaine
P.S. You may be wondering who won the pitchfest. Indeed, it was Helena de Groot. Congratulations, Helena! Kudos to Julie Censullo for her imaginative, beautifully executed climate change ghost story, “The Haunting of Nokomis” and to comedy duo Anna Rubanova and Adam Bozarth on their entry, “Beyond the Radio.”
" 'Who, what, when, where, and why' is designed for efficiency, not engagement." << I really appreciate this point about finding the creative tension and keeping it in focus.