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

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  • Gun Runner wins Dragon Award

    ByJohn Brown

    I was very happy to receive news that GUN RUNNER, the novel Larry Correia and I wrote together, just won the 2021 Dragon Award for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel.

    The Dragon Awards are a set of literary and media awards presented annually by Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia for excellence in various categories of science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels, movies, television, and games.

    And the cool thing is that these awards are voted on by fandom, meaning thousands and thousands of folks voted.

    Past winners have included authors such as Terry Pratchett, Brandon Sanderson, Rick Riordan, and Stephen King.

    As stated in earlier posts, the seed came from Larry’s eleven-year-old son, Joe.

    When Larry and I sat down to develop an idea for a workshop we were holding for Life, the Universe and Everything, a large annual writer’s conference in Provo, a number of years ago, Joe was listening in on the stairs.

    We settled on a genre, and then Correia asked, “Hey Joe, what’s cool?”

    Joe immediately popped up and said, “Giant robots, bandits, and murderers.”

    “We looked at each other and said, ‘Dang, that IS cool.’”

    Forty minutes later we had the key elements we needed for the story we’d use in the workshop. A number of years after that workshop, Baen Books wanted a collaboration from Larry, and that story was one of the first he thought of.

    Larry and I are both frequently asked to present at writers conferences. And one of the tips each of us shares to new authors is to loosen up and have fun. One of the keys to writing an entertaining story is to simply ask, “What’s cool?” And go from there.

    I’m thrilled and honored that those who voted selected Gun Runner for this award.

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  • Harry Reid’s Chickens

    ByJohn Brown

    Are we all wearing Coke bottle glasses with this government shut down?

    First, it seems silly to me when reporters ask Americans who is causing the shut down. It’s like, duh, if either party just gave into the other party’s demands, we wouldn’t have the issue. Which means that BOTH parties are causing the shut down.

    Second, it seems a lot of folks have forgotten that this is precisely what should happen.

    What?

    Yes, our government is designed to allow these types of things.

    But, John, isn’t that just asinine?

    No. It’s not an oversight. I think it’s smart. Even if it causes some pain.

    Let me explain what it seems some in the media and elsewhere are forgetting.

    This is not a nation that belongs to a government. It’s not a nation owned by some lord or entity. This is a nation of individuals who decided to band together because we thought that banding together would allow us to protect our lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness better than if we stood alone individually.

    This is a nation of individuals who said, you know, we think we can figure things out better together ourselves than having someone dictating to us what we’re going to do. We’ll get together and talk. We’ll argue. We’ll persuade. We’ll try to convince each other of our individual ways of thinking. And when enough of us are convinced that we should do something, we’ll act.

    We’ll set up a process for talking and making decisions that ensures everyone can be heard. It would be great if we could get 100% agreement on everything, but we know that’s not realistic. At the same time, we don’t like the idea of forcing our will on others. So we’ll make a compromise; we’ll set up the rules for making decisions so it requires that a good majority of us are in agreement before we can take action, especially on matters that are important to a lot of us.

    Finally, we’ll make sure no individual or group can take control and deprive us of this way of living. We did the monarch thing, and we’re done with that. We will not bow to any king ever again. We’re going to be very careful about this one item because a lot of bad things begin to happen when any one person or group gets too much power.

    So we set up the rules and started working together this way. And the basic premise under all of this is that we would respect each other’s free will. We’re a land of liberty. We’re a land where we get together and agree on a course of action. Not one where we impose our will on others.

    One of the main methods we used to ensure that no individual or group could take control of the rest of us and that a good majority of us must agree before taking a course of governmental action was to distribute the power to make and enforce rules. We did this in a wide variety of ways. We did this because power’s a slippery thing and easily abused. Furthermore, because we knew no system is perfect, we also set up a system of checks and balances so that if one person or group abused their power, we could stop them and force them to remember to respect the freewill that the rest of us have.

    So what has caused this shutdown?

    It’s very simple.

    A lot of Americans do not agree with Obamacare. By most polls, it’s a majority of Americans. They were not listened to when it was being developed. They were not listened to when it was made law. They feel it was passed, not with open discussion, but a lot of chicanery. They feel it’s not some minor regulation, but a very big thing that will infringe on their rights to live how they want to live.

    Now, it might be that all their fears are unfounded. It might be that Obamacare is going to usher in utopia. Many signs suggest it’s not going to do anything of the sort. But let’s just say it is the finest piece of legislation ever. Let’s say is a celestial piece of governing.

    That isn’t enough.

    It’s not nearly enough.

    Because this is not a nation that belongs to any group. We are a nation of individuals who have banded together, agreeing that we will talk things out amongst ourselves and only act when a good majority of us agree on a course of action. This is a nation that tries to tread lightly on each other’s liberty.

    But many of the folks in Washington back in 2009-2010 forgot this and forced this thing called Obamacare upon the rest of us; in doing so, they violated one of the basic agreements of our compact. If they had followed the underlying intent of our union, they would not have done what they did. They would have crafted legislation that a good majority of us could get behind.

    In 2010, those of us who protested this use of power voted in new folks into the House of Representatives to deal with the matter. In fact, when given the chance, Americans (both Republican and Democrat) in the heavily Democratic state of Massachusetts voted Republican Scott Brown into office, hoping to stop this legislation in the Senate before it became law. But Harry Reid didn’t listen. He didn’t care. He and Pelosi and Obama weren’t interested in allowing a full national discussion. He and the others were more concerned with getting their way. And so he used a parliamentary trick to force it through.

    This shut down is about one group of people forcing their will on the rest of us. It’s about using the checks and balances designed into the system to correct such errors. It’s about the chickens of some poor decisions coming home to roost.

    I know the shut down has caused issues. It’s a partial shutdown; 13% of the government. I think 87% is still funded and running. Still, I know it’s causing some pain.

    But none of that pain needs to occur. Everyone wants to fund cancer research. Everyone wants to help poor single mothers. Those things aren’t the issue. The issue is that not everyone agrees with Obamacare.

    If you’re a supporter of Obamacare, let me ask you this: if the tables were turned, what would you do?

    Would you not stare at the folks trying to force their will on you and say, hey, come on. We’re adults here. We all agreed that we wouldn’t do anything unless a good majority of us were convinced it was the right course of action. Let’s get together and come up with something a good majority of us can get behind.

    If you’re an opponent of Obamacare, you too should recognize that a good portion of your fellow citizens are clamoring to change the way things are. They’ve been clamoring for some time. Should you force your will on them? Or should you sit down and listen and try to come up with something that addresses the points we can agree on?

    I don’t know if the folks many of us voted to go to Washington will stick to their guns and correct this. I hope they do. And I hope that those on both sides who have forgotten one of the basic tenets of our social compact will wake up and remember we are banded together, not to game the system to get what we want, but to act on only what a good majority of us want.

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  • Federal Spending 1972-2011: What The?!?

    ByJohn Brown

    Last week a chart made the rounds, ranking the Presidents since Reagan on spending.  Look at Reagan.  That happy man is a freaking profligate. Obama, on the other hand, heck, he’s doing better than Bill Clinton.

    Except there are a few problems.

    First, I can’t tie this data out to the official CBO numbers.

    Second, it does a bit of apples and oranges because the numbers are based on each president’s whole time in office.  What does it mean when Obama increases the debt by 35% over three years, but it takes Bill Clinton almost EIGHT YEARS to increase the debt that much?  A better measure would be an average per year.

    Third, some have suggested this chart monkeys with the numbers, allocating the first year of each president’s first term to the previous president.

    Fourth, the president isn’t the only one in Washington. Senators and Congressmen also have responsibility.

    Finally, while a % increase in debt is a helpful measure, it’s not the only story. And it can be misleading if viewed on its own. For example, if we have $1 of debt, and I increase that to $10, I’ve increased our debt by 1000%. Holy Schnitzel!  But if we have $500 million of debt and I increase it to $600 million, I’ve only increased it by 20%. Which is worse?

    So I went out to the CBO and took their numbers from 1972 – 2011.  You may get the XLS file yourself: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42911. Then I made sure to identify who was in charge when and marked it with spiffy colors (Red is Republican, Blue is Democrat). Here are the results. Click on it to see it in its full size glory.

     

     What does this tell us?

    First, there was only ONE four-year stretch in the LAST FREAKING FORTY YEARS where the folks in Washington did not spend MORE than they took in. That was the four year period from 1998 – 2001.

    What the?!?

    Look at that chart again. There is a serious and systemic spending problem in Washington.

    What happened in 1998 to change what had been going on for almost three decades? That was when the citizens got fed up with Washington, threw out a great number of the Senators and Congressmen, and bought into the Contract with America.  This was when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. This was when Clinton was getting pounded for all sorts of stuff and worked with those particular Republicans in Congress to balance the budget.

    Second, the deficit, the purple line at the bottom, tripled when Obama took office.  And stayed!  Who put that first chart together? Oh, yeah. It was Nancy Pelosi.

    You might say, well, raw dollars is good.  But what’s really important is how big a percentage that spending is of our nation’s GDP. If you’re spending 100 billion when the nation is producing 1 trillion, that sounds big, but it’s actually not as big a deal as when you’re spending 100 billion and the nation is only producing 200 billion. Okay, let’s look at these numbers as a % of GDP.

    Again, 1998-2001 were good years. On a % basis, the folks in Washington during that time did better than anyone else in not spending the nation’s wealth.  There’s no doubt that Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton during his fist 3 years and the Congress during those times were all happy to be big spenders.  Look at the debt burden during their years. But Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress since 2007–drunken sailors compared to those guys. And then the Republicans come in and it doesn’t change. Gridlock?

    Let’s look at our presidents since 1972 and see how well they do on an annual basis. Those numbers in the first list, BTW, are stated in billions.

    Seems to me the most fiscally responsible groups were those in charge during the latter part of the Clinton years, the Nixon years, and the year when Nixon resigned.  It appears that during that year the folks in Washinton were so busy with the Watergate scandal they forgot to feed their spending appetites.

    Bottom line: as I said before, Washington has a serious and systemic problem with over spending.

    And when I say “systemic” I mean it appears the whole thing is rigged to produce over spending. We don’t just need new people out there. We need a system that prevents the overspending. We need an ammendment that requires a balanced budget and caps the size of the government in relation to GDP.

    We also need to find a way to incentivize Congress to pass a budget each year.  No budget, no pay is a good idea. The current House has indeed passed a budget. But the Democratic Senate has not, preventing us from having a budget at all. Obama submits budgets, but not a soul in the Senate, Democrat or Republican, will vote for them. It’s only the Republican House who seems to want to actually do their job. How can that be? Read It’s Deja Vu All Over Again with National Fiscal Policy for more info.

    This November we need to get a bunch of folks like those in 1998 back in Washington. A President AND a Congress who will actually finally tame the nation’s out of control spending.  Let me suggest you look at your Congressman’s and Senators’ records.  How have they voted? As for President Obama, well, I’m looking at the numbers above.

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  • Presenting at the League’s Summer Symposium

    ByJohn Brown

    I’ll be presenting this Saturday, June 8, at the league’s summer writer symposium at USU. Here’s the description of my presentation.

    Make ‘Em Beg For More!
    How do you keep your readers begging for one more page? The answer is probably not what you think. Come to this session to learn the surprising secret—along with plenty of examples and how-tos. When you’re done, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to write stories that are devilishly hard for readers to put down.

    Check out the schedule below. Looks like there will be some great presentations. If you attend, please come and say hello.

    https://www.leagueofutahwriters.com/summersymposium

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    30 books you should read before you die

    ByJohn Brown

    An avid reader friend of mine began reading through the books in a list called “100 books you must read before you die.”

    She got to Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and went to Facebook and posted the following: “I don’t get the appeal. It’s about a group of boys/men who are irresponsible, drunks, whoring around taking advantage of others and being enabled by their women. Why is this a classic and why should I have wasted my time on it? Can some of my literary friends explain? I hated a brave new world and the handmaid’s tale too.”

    Is the book a classic?

    Should she read it before she dies?

    Is it really that important?

    Let me share an edited version of my response and then provide my list of 30 books you should read before you die.

    *

    Annette, the unfortunate truth is that these lists of “classics” are a sham because there is no objective criteria for determining literary excellence.

    Or maybe I should say that measuring quality in the arts isn’t like measuring the unambiguous, objective score of a baseball game. After books exhibit a certain level of proficiency, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the quality of one book from another, especially because much of this depends on a reader’s interests and subjective experience of the story.

    When it becomes hard to rank performances, people rely on other measures. One of the most powerful is social networks.

    So if two readers find two different books that blow them away, one of the books might get all the attention because the one book gets picked up by a news service (The New York Times) or a platform (the Oprah Book Club effect) or some other social network of influence. A lot of the so-called literary classics only appear on various lists because they tapped into the academic network, which kept them alive far longer than they would have lasted otherwise.

    On The Road is simply a book that made a stir among some circles in the 1950s. That’s it.

    Was it more important or of higher quality than Exodus? The Chronicles of Narnia? Lord of the Rings? A Town Like Alice? All published in the 1950s as well.

    It depends.

    If you’re wanting to understand the 1950s beat culture, it would be an important book.

    But if you’re wanting to understand fantasy writing of the time, it wouldn’t.

    If you’re wanting to read a book that’s had a huge impact on popular culture, well, LOTR beats On The Road like a dog.

    Some people have the feeling that the so-called classics have some inherent medicinal value because someone put them on a list and called them classics.

    Nope. They’re just stories. Some of which can shed light on the issues and interests of a part of the culture in a given period. But if you’re not interested in that specific sub-culture, who cares?

    And if you’re reading to be entertained, moved, uplifted, or educated—which ones do that best for Annette is for you to decide.

    So all that to say I wouldn’t devalue your reaction to the book ?

    *

    I’m now going to give you my list.

    But it’s not going to be a list of titles. Nor will it focus on a book’s impact on some sub-culture of a given period.

    It’s going to be a real list. One that focuses on what so many of us go to stories for.

    1. The one that makes you weep.
    2. The one that makes you giggle and snort.
    3. The one that reminds you of what it’s like to fall in love.
    4. The one that gives you hope.
    5. The one that you begin to read more and more slowly because you don’t want it to end.
    6. The one that scares the soup out of you.
    7. The one that you can’t put down, even though you need to wake up early in the morning.
    8. The one that makes you wish you lived there.
    9. The one that’s so good that when you close it, you immediately start to read it a second time.
    10. The one that gives you and your child hours of pleasure together.
    11. The one that gives you a sacred, spiritual experience.
    12. The one that makes you reread some of the lines because the turns of phrase are just so delicious.
    13. The one that gives you courage.
    14. The one that takes you on an awesome adventure.
    15. The one that makes you want to be a better person.
    16. The one that bores you to tears (just so know you how good the others are).
    17. The one that introduces you to a different culture that delights you.
    18. The one that makes you think.
    19. The one that lingers with you for days.
    20. The one that gives you lovely insights.
    21. The one that inspires you to love your spouse more.
    22. The one that introduces you to the sorts of people you normally don’t like and makes you actually like them.
    23. The one that delights you with its characters.
    24. The one that whisks you away to a different historical period.
    25. The one that inspires you to give your children a hug.
    26. The one that gets your adrenaline pumping.
    27. The one that sparks all sorts of ideas in your head.
    28. The one that makes you wonder and start imagining what it would be like to be there.
    29. The one that blows your freaking mind.
    30. The one that makes you stand up in your living room and cheer.

    We could do more than 30, couldn’t we?

    Like the one that makes you think people from a different time period are just like us. And the one that makes you think people from that same period are completely alien.

    But I think we’ll stop. That there above is a list.

    Those are 30 books I think everyone will want to read before they die.

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  • The secret of Mormonism

    ByJohn Brown

    If you want to understand the secret to Mormonism, something 99.9% of the world does not know, even though many think they do, read on.

    This last Tuesday I was at dinner with a number of wonderful coworkers. We were talking about religion and listening to the guy who helps set up our training environments talk about the interesting hunting ministry he’s involved with (it’s very cool—12,000 acres of woodland in Alabama all dedicated to hunting, outdoor survival, and God).

    At one point in the conversation, a delightful fellow trainer, who shared with us the night before the definition of diplomacy as being able to tell someone to go to hell and have them look forward to the trip, asked me, “Does your church believe in Christ. Or, no, is it some other fellow?”

    It’s a great question, and I realized that many people are confused. And so I wanted to take time to clear it up.

    So what the heck is a Mormon?

    It’s not what you think.

    And for those of you who think you know, nope, it’s not about that book.

    Let me explain. You’ll come away knowing more about us than anyone in any of your circles, and you can lord your superior knowledge over them at dinner parties, when playing games that require vast stores of smarts, or at random moments, just because you can.

    Here’s the deal. The first part of the name of the church is “The Church of Jesus Christ.” So, yes, we believe in Christ, that he died for us, was resurrected, is our Lord and god, etc.

    The last part of the name is “of latter-day saints.” We don’t use “saint” to mean super-holy people like the Catholic church does, but more as followers or disciples. So you could translate the last part of the name of our church as “of latter-day followers.”

    So the whole name would be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day People who Follow Him.

    Okay, then what’s the deal with the name “Mormon”?

    Well, here’s where we get to the nub of it and the thing that 99.9% of the world doesn’t know. The key difference between the Mormon church and other Christian churches is that we believe that Jesus has called apostles again in our day, just like he did back in the good old days. And when I say apostles, I mean guys like Peter, James, John, Paul, etc.

    You might be wondering what an apostle is. What made those guys special?

    It wasn’t that they had great faith in Jesus. Lots of people had great faith. It was that they were called to bear special witness of him. And that special witness was not merely that they believed, but that they knew Jesus was the Messiah because they had seen and heard him after his resurrection.

    Peter himself said it best when he wrote in his letter, “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

    When the apostles had to choose someone to replace Judas, Peter said, “Wherefore of these men which have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that he was taken up from us, one must be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.”

    These guys didn’t simply believe. They knew. They were eyewitnesses to the fact that Jesus wasn’t just some preacher—he was the son of God and was resurrected.

    So Mormons believe that Jesus has called apostles again today who bear witness of an absolute certain knowledge of the reality of Jesus the Christ. We believe their purpose is also to be the Lord’s spokesmen when He wants to make general announcements or give general instructions. Finally, we also believe they’ve received the authority to offer the covenants the Lord wants to make with all of us.

    We believe the first apostle called in these latter days was a fellow by the name of Joseph Smith. We don’t worship Smith. He was just an apostle. Just like Matthew or John of old were. But we do believe the Lord called him to be an apostle and restore some truths that had gotten lost or confused over the years.

    We also believe the Lord asked him to bring forth other scriptures in addition to those in the Bible. One of these new scriptures was a translation of an ancient record called The Book of Mormon. It’s called that because Mormon is the name of the guy who wrote it. And Mormon was another apostle—one called by Jesus in ancient America.

    And guess what the purpose of The Book of Mormon is? It’s to testify of Jesus Christ and explain his gospel.

    So the name of the Mormon church is really The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons believe that Jesus has called and commissioned apostles in our times, right up to today, to bear special witness of him. And in addition to that, those apostles have brought forth additional scriptures that witness of the divinity and mission of Jesus Christ.

    For Mormons, it’s all about Jesus Christ.

    So when someone asks, what’s a Mormon? You can say, let me tell you the real answer. It’s not about an additional book of scripture. Yes, folks gave them the nickname of Mormons because of that book, but the key difference is that Mormons believe that Jesus has called apostles like Peter and Paul again in our day to be his spokesmen, and bear a certain witness of him and his good news, and help folks receive all the blessings the Lord wants to pour out on them.

    And, O, what a wonderful message we Mormons believe that is.

    If you liked those videos, you can see more here.

    Please feel free now to randomly lord your superior knowledge over your family and friends.

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