The 2 Types of Voices to Feature to Make Your Stories More Gripping
I'll never forget my time with Anthony Bourdain.
The former chef, bestselling author, world traveler, and self-proclaimed "enthusiast" is -- as anyone following my work knows -- my favorite storyteller and one I try to model in some distant way on Unthinkable. So it was a real treat to be able to sit down and learn from the master. (Granted, he was sitting in a cab in Mexico, and I was on my couch. But still, I felt present with him, yanno?)
Anyhoots, it was nighttime, and Bourdain was shooting this episode of his show in Mexico City. I know that because, just a few minutes prior, he’d used a few short bursts of narration and B-roll footage to set the stage for the events to come.
Pretty typical of the cold open for Parts Unknown on CNN. Still, I wrote that down.
COLD OPEN: Tease the major themes. Convey intrigue. Bring the drama. Smash cut to opening theme.
Then, after the theme music subsided, we entered the cab. Bourdain was in back, asking the driver some simple questions and getting some equally simple replies, but they were profoundly revealing about life in that part of the country for this particular individual.
Then from the cab, we moved to other various locales around town, meeting chefs, small business owners, journalists, and more. Some talked about their lives in Mexico. Others talked about the general trends or analyzed the hidden forces affecting people's lives. Taken together, all these subjects created a gripping story and allowed me to understand things far better than, say, an interview with just one of these people.
Makes sense, right? Talk to more people to understand something more deeply. But these weren't just any types of people. Squint really hard, and you can spot the two types of people instrumental to any gripping, nonfiction story:
Locals and guides.
About 90 minutes later (episodes are 42 minutes long), I stopped taking notes, closed my eyes, and leaned back on the couch. I basked in that good kind of brain-hurt we experience when something shifts our perspective or helps us grasp something previously out of reach.
I’d learned so much from the master, but nothing was more powerful than seeing the two types of subjects at our disposal when want to tell more gripping, more nuanced stories. They each serve a different purpose, and both are worth considering.
What Stories Are For
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, author Kazuo Ishiguro said, “In the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?”
I could spend a lifetime contemplating this idea, and I often do contemplate it publicly — about as often as I bring up Bourdain. I think it’s just THAT important.
Stories are about bridging gaps and making connections. They illuminate commonalities we'd otherwise not see.
Imagine traveling to Mexico City and discovering that the person next to you at a restaurant is from your hometown. You instantly bond, right? Why? Because of the story.
Back home, that’s not the case. If you visited the town next to yours and discovered the person sitting to your right was from your town? No big deal. You don't bother talking to them. But abroad, when things feel foreign, finding a familiar connection feels energizing. The story of being from the same place illuminates a commonality.
We see this everywhere -- stories as attempts to create connection.
The speaker who gets up on stage to present a big idea that challenges our beliefs doesn't just launch into their framework. They start with a story.
The dinner date that goes well and leads to a longer term relationship likely involved a lot of sharing stories — which then led to a mutual understanding of one another and how you might be similar enough to bond. (My wife and my first date was 90% about our shared love of Italy.)
From job interviews to sales interactions, newsletters about marketing to stump speeches by politicians, everywhere we go, stories create a mutual understanding. Even the monologuing villain tries it with the hero of the film. ("We're not so different, you and I...")
Can you understand what I'm saying? (Am I communicating clearly? That's the first hurdle.)
Does it also feel this way to you? (Am I being relatable? Are we aligned? That's the second hurdle.)
If we communicate clearly AND in a way they find relatable, i.e. in a way that aligns with their own life experience, then we might resonate with others. Then they might feel what we want them to feel and understand what we're trying to show them. Then they might feel that sudden urge to act. That’s the role of resonance, in the end: it creates the sudden urge to act. And without action, nothing changes — in our careers, companies, or communities.
Stories create that initial alignment which precedes that sudden urge to act. They illuminate commonalities enough to create a connection. Others can more fully understand something or even understand us. And people understand something far more quickly and deeply if we hit our marks as storytellers on two fronts: we convey WHAT is happening and WHY. That's precisely the job of each type of subject we should feature in our work.
Locals and Guides, Defined
The local is the most common type of subject found in travel shows, and while you probably don’t make literal travel content, you do create a metaphorical kind. As the storyteller, you're the guide into whatever questions or themes you're exploring. You're embarking not on a physical journey but rather a journey of understanding with your audience.
The local answers the question, "What is happening?" They're someone who embodies the themes of the story being told. They live it out day to day.
The cab driver talking to Bourdain was unknowingly playing the role of a local, as Bourdain guided us on a physical journey (through Mexico City) and an intellectual one, as he helped us understand certain ideas through his video essay.
On my show, a local might be a sound designer sharing their story, or the owner of a minor league baseball team trying to save his beloved sport at all levels. It could be the marketer trying to break through his creative or career plateau, or a podcaster and a poet both grappling with perfectionism.
In this very essay you're reading right now, Bourdain and I both served as locals in the opening. As you began reading, what was happening? I was watching Bourdain tell a story, then analyzing the story. But WHY was this stuff happening?
Enter, the guide: Kazuo Ishiguro.
If locals show you WHAT is happening, then guides explain WHY it's happening. Ishiguro's quote about stories and their purpose and my subsequent second-order analysis both help you understand the action of the preceding moments about me, a TV show host, and my notebook.
In Bourdain's show, a guide might be the local entrepreneur or politician who understands the hidden forces affecting the lives of that cab driver and other locals. It could be a journalist or an author who's written about Mexico City. They comment more directly on the themes of the story. They don't necessarily carry the action themselves. That's what locals are for.
But in my work, and I'm guessing in yours, we often don't have a second voice to play the role of guide, so perhaps we step in and fill those shoes as the storytellers. We analyze and interpret and teach. In my podcast, I provide narration. We become the guides to help our audiences make sense of WHY a story is unfolding the way it is.
Or, if we aren't the guides, maybe we ask our interview subjects or guests to pull double-duty. The sound designer sharing their story on my show also helps us interpret the forces that affect their craft and industry by analyzing them directly and theoretically. Or the baseball team owner stepped back to analyze his team's place in the sport and what is happening to all teams -- that then affects his.
They didn't just talk about the "WHAT" of their personal stories. They also helped us understand WHY those things happened.
Still, at times, I do find the energy, time, or desire to feature an actual guide as a second voice. In my show's most popular episode of the last year, Leaving Expertville, I paired the marketer grappling with his creative and career plateau with an author and speaker who helped us make sense of WHY that marketer was struggling -- and what he might do to find his stride again. The marketer is that story's local. The author is the guide.
To understand a story clearly and to relate to it more personally, audiences need to know WHAT is happening in the story and also WHY it's happening. As storytellers, we need both locals and guides.
Find the people with stories and examples. Find the people with ideas and analysis. And if you can't get two, ensure one person delivers both (in that order, too!).
See Beyond "Experts" and "Guests"
Rarely, if ever, do we consider the voices appearing in our work as "characters." But that's what they are, even if we publish nonfiction. Characters are often defined by (and developed to be embodiments of) one or more key traits. These traits then help them serve a distinct purpose in the story, which in turns ensures the story resonates with the audience.
To tell the most well-rounded, most gripping story possible, be sure you enlist your subject matter experts and your guests as just that: characters, each with a distinct role to play. Even if they pull double-duty, you can proactively move between those two necessary pieces of the story puzzle -- the WHAT and the WHY.
You and I are in the business of production. Maybe we don't produce travel shows for giant cable networks, but we create content and experiences that pull from the enormous mess of reality around us to somehow make sense of it. We have to somehow compress someone's lifetime into our runtime. That requires us to make strategic choices to accentuate certain traits or moments to tell the right story. In brief, production work is inherently manipulative.
We choose to speak to the right people, to include the right quotes and anecdotes, to add the right analysis or narration to make sense of the action, and to layer in the right music or visuals or other editing flourishes -- all to engineer an outcome.
We want others to feel something and understand something. We manipulate our work in order to manipulate others. BUT! We do so from a place of generosity. We want to be clear. We want to be relatable. We want to help and to serve others. So we make certain creative choices to engineer that outcome.
But do we select our subjects with enough intent? Do we know what these characters are for in the larger story?
To become more masterful storytellers, we can feature both locals and guides. We can more clearly convey WHAT is happening and WHY.
As I write this, I'm sitting next to the same notebook full of endless scrawling about Bourdain and other storytellers. They all make me feel deeply. They all ensure I understand completely. That's the goal of any storyteller. And when we understand the subtle techniques that help us manipulate the experience, we stop aimlessly feeling our way through the creative process and feel empowered to make what matters most, on-demand, whenever we feel like it. We can close our eyes, lean back on the couch, and bask in that rare but awesome kind of brain-hurt. We're masters of our craft.
Can you understand what I’m saying?
Does it also feel this way to you?