My husband, not Peter Heller, fly fishing in Colorado.
Bestselling author Peter Heller (The Dog Stars, The Painter, and more) lives in Colorado, and many of his novels are set here, mostly in the mountains west of Denver. I read The Dog Stars when I arrived in Colorado a dozen years ago, before I’d been to the mountains. Heller’s descriptions were so vivid and so keenly observed that I’ve still not forgotten them. Since then, I’ve visited many of these places. His precision is extraordinary, as if he’d lifted the settings, in three dimensions, right onto the page — and into my consciousness.
I asked him once how he manages to describe the exact colors of a fish flying out of a stream and how he names every tree, leaf, and bird within the frame. I’m not nearly that observant.
From a young age, Peter knew he wanted to write about nature, he told me. So he studied botany in college. In other words, he realized early that to write well was to observe. He’d honed that skill on purpose.
Sound Judgment isn’t about writing novels, so why am I taking you into this territory?
Because one of the six storytelling strategies I taught in a workshop last week is, in fact, a writing skill. It’s “specifics.” The more specific we are with our language, the more memorable our audio stories are. Characters and places come to life through the fine details, not the broad brush strokes; the shimmering green and gold of a fish tail as wide as your hand, not the “18-inch trout.”
Here’s a clip that demonstrates the degree to which observation and precise language can take a mundane event — waiting tables — from ordinary to extraordinary. It’s from the live storytelling podcast The Moth. The speaker is Sam Mullins, who would later host the award-winning podcast Chameleon: Wild Boys. Prior to the moment he describes in this clip, he’d been seriously depressed.
Notice how Sam never describes this family’s appearance — we have no idea what they look like. Rather, he observes his own emotional reaction to them, and describes it in a way no one else could have: “They kind of became my number one priority,” he says. “They were my oasis in the mayhem.”
So how does he do it?
“As a comedy writer,” he says, “I’m obsessed with lists.”
Comedy writers, it turns out, make lists of unusual ways to describe stuff. They’ll make it a game to see who can write the snappiest, funniest, most spot-on turn of phrase, before they choose the one out of 100 that makes it into the joke.
That’s your homework today. Pick a person, place, feeling, or an event, and observe it (or remember it) as closely, even microscopically, as you can. List every observation. Read each one out loud, because we hear differently than we see words on a page. You’ll hear the one that hits your heart, your gut or your funny bone. Try it in your script, and see how much it can transform something that was black and white into technicolor.
Want to learn more about writing with specifics? Listen to my mini-episode, “How to Hook Your Audience and Keep Them Coming Back: Part 6, Specifics.” Or learn about all six storytelling strategies by listening to the full episode. Really want to dive in? Check out my six-part series about this storytelling framework on our blog.
Your questions and insights
I’ve been having some thought-provoking (and delightful) conversations with you lately.
Reader David Vranicar wrote for advice on incorporate stories into his interview podcast, written for a niche audience of impact investors. He wants to make the conversations more compelling but worries about losing the attention of his time-strapped, “get-right-to-the-point” audience. It’s a common problem, which I’ll try to address soon. I also plan to start some chats here on Substack, and this will be one of them. In the meantime, how do you handle the balance between imparting information and sharing enough human stories to keep things lively? Let us know in the comments. Maybe you’ll solve David’s problem.
And reader Lauren Kingsland and I had a wonderful conversation about podcasting, art, and creativity. She’s a quilter and quilting teacher of extraordinary talent (museums, galleries, and the like). l loved her for saying that as she plans a potential podcast, she’s held off on buying a microphone. “The craft is really what’s between your ears,” she said. “The microphone is as if you had a good pair of scissors, so [that means] you’re going to make a fabulous quilt.”
I’m loving hearing from you. What are you working on? What are you dreaming of creating? What are your biggest challenges right now? Tell me in the comments or, if you’d rather not be public, write to me. (Click on my byline and you’ll find the email.)
I write back to everyone I hear from. Depending on deadlines, it can take a little while. Thanks in advance for your patience.
New and continuing workshops
April 5 — Mastering the Art of the Interview
Learn ten ways to take your interviews from so-so to so-great! A repeat of this popular workshop.
April 11 — Success in Guesting: Be a Great Guest and Get Great Guests
Every prospective guest and thought leader should learn how producers select guests in the first place. And every podcast producer should learn what it takes to be a great guest. This is your insider’s guide to one of the most important pieces of the podcast puzzle.
What students are saying:
“I loved the use of curated audio clips to demonstrate each of the elements of great storytelling. It made it so much easier to start to imagine how these elements can be incorporated into our show, so that we can (eventually) level-up our own production process. I'm inspired to approach our show in a new way.”
— Dr. Melissa Tiessen, Co-Host of Thrivival 101: A Fresh Take on Self-Care for Female Mental Health Clinicians
What I’m enjoying lately
I guess it’s a night for nature. I was mesmerized by this four-minute gem of an audio essay by story editor and writer Ruxandra (Rux) Guidi, “Listen to the Earth Breathing,” in High Country News. It’s the first in a monthly series called Encounters, through which Rux will be exploring life and landscape during the climate crisis. It reawakened me to the curiosities that are all around us — and gave me an itch to go out and make my own audio essay. What do you think of this piece? What did it inspire in you?
As always, it is a joy to be with you.
Elaine