Consider starting your story as late as possible and getting out of it as soon as possible. A lot of people struggle trying to get their stories to fit. They go on too long. They’re too long- winded. They ramble. And the problem is that they’re not really clear on what in the story is important and what isn’t. the typical editor’s rule back from the film days. It was simply start as late as possible and end as soon as possible. And that’s a simple way that you can get a story to complete inside of whatever time frame you’ve got. I was at a party and I met a guy and really liked the guy and he had a job that was interesting and I was like, “Hey, how’d you get that job?” He started with when I was in high school and I could tell we were in a problem. So he talked through his high school experience. I learned about his first girlfriend. I found out about his first and second marriage and his jobs like six or 10 of his jobs and he took me through his entire life story up to a really simple starting point which is where the story should have started where he’s at one job and somebody gave him an opportunity got the other job. He could have started the story at that point. He could have started it just before, you know, at the previous job before someone invited him to give something a try. And so his story was 90 minutes when the reality is it could have been three minutes. I was doing this job. I had these skills. Somebody came and offered me uh a chance to try something. It did and it clicked and now this what I do. That’s what I wanted to know. So, in the old days of film, there was a lot more transitioning stuff. If somebody was going from the police station to the the robbery, you’d see them go into the elevator, come outside, get in the car, drive, get out of the car, go in. Now, they just cut to, you know, they’re at the precinct and they hear about this crime. Boom. They break the door down and they’re on the scene. We’re learning that transitions aren’t always helpful. So, you want to start your story as late as possible and end it as soon as possible. And that’s the way you’re going to get a concise story that fits the amount of time that you’ve got. You agree with me on that, Ben?
I’ll take that as a yes. [Music]
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