Blather

  • The First Step to Being an Entertaining Storyteller

    ByJohn Brown

    What’s the first step to becoming an entertaining storyteller?

    In a recent ZOE Nutrition podcast, James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, suggests the key to starting a new behavior, like telling entertaining stories, is doing four things:

    • Make the cue to the behavior OBVIOUS.
    • Make the behavior more ATTRACTIVE.
    • Make the behavior EASY.
    • Make the behavior SATISFYING.

    But what’s the FIRST step?

    It’s mastering the art of showing up.

    That’s it.

    What does that look like?

    He shared an interesting story in the section where they were talking about making the behavior easy.

    START

    Let me give you two examples that’ll probably help clarify. So the first one this is just a really simple tactic, a very actionable thing, that you can use for building better habits. I call it the two-minute rule, and it just says take whatever habit you’re trying to build and you scale it down to something that takes 2 minutes or less to do.

    So read 30 books a year becomes read one page. Do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat.

    Now sometimes people resist that a little bit because they’re like, okay buddy, you know I know the real goal is not to just take my yoga mat out. I know I’m actually trying to do the workout, so this is some kind of trick, and if I know it’s a trick, then why would I fall for it?

    I have this reader his name is Mitch. I mentioned him in Atomic Habits. He lost over 100 pounds. So what is that? 40 or 50 kilos? And he kept it off for more than a decade. And he had this strange little rule for himself where he first started going to the gym, and for the first like 6 weeks he wasn’t allowed to stay for longer than 5 minutes.

    So he would get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, and drive home, and it sounds ridiculous. You know? It sounds silly. It’s obviously not going to get the guy the results that he wants, but what you realize is that he was mastering the art of showing up.

    He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week even if it was only for 5 minutes, and this is a pretty deep truth about habits. Which is that a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can scale it up and turn it into something more. You need to standardize before you optimize.

    And so the two-minute rule kind of helps push back against that perfectionist tendency that we have sometimes, or against that tendency to try to do too much, and encourages you to master the art of just showing up.

    END

    That’s the answer!

    If we want to be entertaining storytellers, the first, most powerful identity we can adopt is being the creative who shows up every day to work on his or her entertainment. Or maybe it’s five days a week. Or six days, four days, whatever your number is.

    The first identity is that I’m the kind of creative that shows up to work. This awesome work of entertainment.

    So what’s a two-minute behavior that might go along with that?

    Here’s mine. After I come back from weighing myself in the morning, I set my writing session timer, open my writing document, read a bit of what I wrote in the previous session, and identify the task for this session.

    That’s it. Nothing more.

    That’s showing up.

    If I show up and do that, I’ve shown up.

    If, for some reason, I miss showing up. I identify the next slot in that day to get it done.

    I can master all the other parts of writing entertainment later. But I must master the art of SHOWING UP first.

    So tell yourself you’re the kind of creative who shows up to write entertainment every day.

    Make that your identity. You can expand that identity later. But let’s start here.

    Write your two-minute behavior. Get specific on the time and action.

    Then be like Mitch. Show up and celebrate showing up.

    And if, like Mitch, it takes you six weeks to master the art of showing up, then it takes six weeks. Big whoop.

    Writing fiction is a long-haul game. That means the name of this game is playing the game until you win the game. And to do that you first have to master the art of showing up.

    This is the key. When you master this, everything else is possible.

    “I am the kind of creative who shows up every day to create.”

    Tell yourself that. Repeat it when brushing your teeth. Make that your identity. Be that guy.

    If you have a two-minute action for showing up, share it.

    If you don’t have one yet, identify one and share it. And if your action doesn’t work? No biggie. Act like a scientist and tweak it until it does.

    NOTES

    ZOE Nutrition podcast with James Clear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcdzK8BOfBY or https://zoe.com/learn/podcast-how-to-master-healthy-eating

  • |

    Your single biggest challenge writing novels

    ByJohn Brown

    I’m about to put together a brand-new novel writing boot camp, but before I do that I want to know what would be most helpful to YOU.

    So if you want to write novels, my question to you is this…

    When it comes to writing novels, what’s YOUR single biggest challenge, frustration, or concern?

    Please CLICK THE LINK to tell me.

    Click here.

    As a thank you, those that answer the question will get a seat at a virtual, 1-hour training session I’m putting on where you discover 3 key principles of keeping your readers hooked.

    I look forward to the insights.

    You’re awesome ?

  • |

    The Little Secret that Propels So Many Blockbuster Plots

    ByJohn Brown

    I was invited to present a master class at the 2022 StoryMakers conference in Provo, Utah.

    We all want to develop plots that delight readers. Maybe we have ideas for the characters. Maybe we have ideas for the setting. Maybe we even have a couple of scenes.

    But a novel needs 40, 50, 60 or more scenes.

    How do you figure out what happens next, and do it in a way readers love?

    There’s one tool that can help.

    Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and The Da Vinci Code all had it. So did Star Wars, Raider of the Lost Ark (1, 2, and 3), Taken, James Bond, The Wheel of Time, and thousands of other stories, TV episodes, and films.

    It’s what I call the wanted object, sometimes known as the MacGuffin.

    A good MacGuffin will not only make your plotting easier, it can also inject a wow factor into your story that readers love.

    In this session, the writers learned what a MacGuffin really is and how you can use it to propel the plot and keep readers turning the page.

    Here’s a PDF of the presentation.

    2022 john brown – the secret that propels so many blockbuster plots2

    And here’s the PDF of the handout.

    2022 john brown – the secret that propels so many blockbuster plots handout

    Enjoy!

  • |

    All you need is a little beating and robbery

    ByJohn Brown

    Mrs. Brown, my wife, teaches language arts for the 7th and 8th grades as well as reading comprehension. She’s big on reading. She wants to provide every opportunity for kids to not only get good at it, but also learn to love it.

    And so her walls are lined with bookshelves full of awesome books teens love. She reads the first chapters of books to her classes to let them sample various stories. She features their book reports. She has them paste the covers of the books they’ve read on pages displayed around the classroom. And the school’s awesome librarian supports with her own programs.

    The 7th and 8th grade students at Rich Middle School are marinated in a big celebration of reading.

    In Mrs. Brown’s class, it’s fairly straight forward to get an A on reading, which is a huge part of your grade—all you’ve got to do is read.

    But how much reading do they need to do? How do you track it? And what books should they read?

    Check this out.

    First, she tests each student to see what his or her reading speed is.

    Next, she takes the number of hours they’re supposed to be reading each week for homework (I think it’s 2 or 2.5), then does the math to get a feasible reading word count for the trimester for each student. She may adjust it a bit, depending on the student’s ability.

    Third, she presents that number to the student, and the two of them set a word count goal for the trimester. Talk about an individualized goal.

    If you want to get an A in reading, all you have to do is reach that word count goal.

    How do you know how many words a book has?

    The Accelerated Reader program provides that information.

    But how does she know that they’ve read the books?

    She uses the Accelerated Reader tests. And if there isn’t one, the student can write a report.

    And what books do the students read?

    Any dang book they like.

    I love this. The kids get to select their own books and just read, read, read.

    Another part of this is that she pings each student once a week to ask them what book they’re reading, what page they’re on, and what they think of the book. This weekly check-in provides the more frequent accountability students of that age need.

    Yesterday, she received this report from one of her 8th grade boys who is reading Prey, the first book in The Drovers series.

    Oh, yeah.

    I’ll take that any day (grin).

    Rock on, budding reader.