An Interview with Laura Bergells: Transcript
This is a rough transcript of an interview between Mignon Fogarty and Laura Bergells in July 2021. You can listen to the interview on the main page.
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.
I hope you like the new theme music—another benefit of the 15th anniversary celebration! It was written and performed by Catherine Rannus out of the UK, and she was an absolute joy to work with. If you need music, she’s at beautifulmusic.co.uk.
For today’s episode, I have an abbreviated version of a live interview I did with Laura Bergells about storytelling for Podbean’s Storytelling Podcast Week. Laura is a good friend of mine on LinkedIn, and I’ve always been impressed with her take on storytelling, and she didn’t disappoint me here. She is a business communication coach and executive trainer, and she leads workshops on storytelling.
We started with the story of how I started Grammar Girl, and Laura explained what makes that a good story—and what’s missing. We talked about how storytelling is critically important and often overlooked in business—from executive presentations to interviewing for a job. And she tells a wild story in which nothing actually happens, but it made me both gasp and laugh, and then we talked about how that could happen. I think you’ll love it, and I’m dropping you in a little bit in the middle so you can skip some of the filler from the live presentation.
Laura: Why do we all love stories so much, and why do we light up and pay attention when someone starts telling the story? And how can we become better storytellers, not just on our work, but in our day to day lives? And today we’re going to be talking about stories and storytelling. And Mignon since we’re talking about stories today, that Grammar Girl podcast is now in its 15th year, and it’s been streamed and downloaded like a gazillion times. So you must have a story about how your wildly popular podcast all got started.
Mignon: I do. I do have a story about that that I would tell over and over. So 15 years. I can hardly believe it. I’ve put out a show every single week. I think I missed one when there was a death in the family. So t’s been relentless in a good way. I do take time off, and I when I do that, I get ahead. So we never miss the show. The show must go on.
Mignon: So when I started Grammar Girl, oh so long ago, I had had another podcast first. Actually, my background is in science and technology. I’m a Ph.D. program dropout in biology, and I was working as a science writer and editor, and frankly, I was quite bored. And so I got interested in this thing called podcasting. I love technology, I love gadgets. So I wanted to try podcasting. So I started as a science podcast called Absolute Science. And, you know, I just I fell in love with it. I had been writing magazine articles, and you never hear from readers. And the minute I launched my podcast, I started hearing from listeners—their thoughts on the stories, how much they enjoyed it, how much they disagreed with me.
Mignon: Just that instant feedback and connection with the people consuming my work was something I fell in love with. And I did that podcast for about eight months. And it won some small awards. It had a modest amount of traffic, but I was working as a freelance writer and editor. And time really is money when you’re a freelancer, and the podcast was taking so much time that I couldn’t justify doing it anymore. But I didn’t want to give up on podcasting.
Mignon: So I was thinking of simpler, easier podcasts that I could do. And I settled on the idea of Grammar Girl because I noticed that my my clients, my editing clients, were making the same mistakes in their writing over and over again. They weren’t using semicolons right, and they were mixing up “that” versus “which,” and I thought, “Well, maybe people would appreciate a little quick and dirty writing tip” and, you know, I was looking up, I have a degree in English, but I was looking up rules every day too in my Chicago Manual of Style, in my AP Stylebook, and then making up little memory tricks for myself to remember them, to try to remember all the rules. So I took those tricks I was looking at myself, the advice I was giving my clients, and I just put together a very short three- or four-minute scripted podcast that I did all by myself that took a lot less time than the science podcast.
Mignon: And much to my surprise, it took off like a rocket ship. It was, within six weeks of launching that podcast, it was number two at iTunes. And yeah, and I thought, well, this can’t last, you know, and it just did it, you know, because it did so well, so fast it got a lot of publicity, And, you know, I was on CNN and eventually The Wall Street Journal picked it as the Wall Street Journal’s Pick of the Day. And that led to more success. And it led to my book deal with Macmillan and my podcasting partnership with Macmillan. I had been looking for a partner at that point. At that point, actually, I had founded the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network as well. And I was looking for a partner to grow that network. And Macmillan was interested in that partnership as well as a book deal. So, yeah, it just kept going. It grew into a whole network in partnership with Macmillan. Now we have about 10 shows, and Grammar Girl has been going strong for 15 years.
Laura: That’s fantastic. And that’s a great story. It’s what Kindra Hall in her book “Stories That Stick” might call a founder’s story, because it takes you through the opening. And just about every business really needs to have a founder’s story like that.
Mignon: Yeah, well, I was hoping that you could sort of comment on what makes that a good story. And maybe, you know what? Is there anything bad about it? Like, could I tell it differently to make it even more compelling?
Laura: Yeah, it’s a great story, and it’s great for a lot of reasons. And you start because there’s that specific moment in time, right? It’s 15 years ago. It’s in the place and in a time. So that’s that’s specific “this is the normal.” And you even talked about emotions, which is another critical part of the story, like you were bored at this job. So we’re starting to relate with you and go on that journey. And then later, you talked about the surprise, the shock, the excitement, the love you had for podcasting. So a lot of us are really relating to that. I think as we hear that story, you’re the main character in that, but you are showcasing a lot of your vulnerability as you go along. Like, well, this work, I really love this. But, you know, and even if you’re not a podcaster, anybody who’s brought something to life or tried a new venture, I’m willing to bet that we all have that feeling and then that moment of shock when it actually does work out—-the surprise. I like the specific details that you put in there. That’s another great element of story. You mentioned this earlier when we were talking before how you started in your closet because the acoustics there were so good. So a lot of those little details really helped sell that story.
Mignon: Yeah, yeah. There’s one part that I always tell that I sometimes tell that I didn’t mention here, and that’s that my family thought I was insane when I quit my freelancing work to focus on the podcast because they had not heard of podcasting. So my freelance business was very successful. I was doing just great as a science writer and editor. But I was bored. And so when I when I decided … and Grammar Girl took off, I was taking up so much time that I couldn’t do both. And, obviously the established business was a lot more stable. Podcasting had a lot of promise back then, but it wasn’t a sure thing. And many people close to me said, are you sure you want to commit to this podcast thing? Like what are you thinking? And I think when you talk about emotions, and I think it reminded me that adding that part to this story is something that people often seem to connect with, too, because there’s there’s uncertainty, there’s fear. There’s something that needs to be overcome. There’s a chance of failure. So I think, you know, when I think about… I’m a big fiction junkie, fiction-writing-advice junkie, actually. And when when they’re talking about story structure fiction, people often talk about the well, there are often three arcs and there’s the try-fail cycles, right?
Mignon: So your protagonist will try something and fail, and then they’ll come back and try again and fail. And then there’s the the point where all hope is lost and then the very final try-fail cycle. And I guess I don’t I don’t have a … I don’t have a final “all hope is lost point” in my story. And that’s good. I wouldn’t want to live through that. [laughter]
[ad break]
Mignon: Is there something you find that people tend to forget to put in their stories?
Laura: Honestly, the thing that a lot of people in business tend to do is they forget to tell stories all together. It’s true. They really do like to start with the facts. They want to be all business. And they forget that, you know, backing up the whole reason we tell stories, that is how we connect with people. Storytelling is a lot like breathing. We don’t sit around and say, “Oh, you know what? I’ve got to remember how to breathe today.” It’s an automatic thing. We do the same thing with stories. If you’re sitting around in a room, like a ready room before a presentation, you’re often not talking about your presentation. You’re talking about your day. You’re talking about how you got there. You’re off and running with stories because that is how you’re connecting to the other people who are in the room.
I think a lot of businesses are set up to have a culture of presentation.
Mignon: Is there a difference …
Laura: Instead of a cultural presentation,
Mignon: Ooh, a culture of presentation instead of a culture of story. That’s good, I, I just think of … instantly PowerPoint comes to mind.
Laura: Yeah, yeah. And PowerPoint is fine. I consider PowerPoint to be a prop, and if you have a prop, it helps you tell your story. If you’re doing a demonstration of something, for example, yeah, a prop is really good. PowerPoint is really good. But is it always necessary when you can connect so much better with somebody by telling them a story? And that’s the beauty of podcasting as well. It’s a completely PowerPoint-free environment and what we’re relying on the theater of the mind to really connect with our audiences.
Right, and you do that, you do that.
Mignon: Yeah, so that’s it. Why don’t we explain what the theater of the mind is for people, that is, you know, I am at … when I hear a story, I imagine something completely different from another people, another person who hears that same story. It’s one of the most powerful things about audio. Right?
Laura: Right. Theater of the mind is when we hear a story and everybody does this differently, we layer our own experiences into that story. It’s a simulation. When you’re telling a story, we start layering our emotions, our experiences on top of it. So everything is absolutely different from person to person. And if I show an image, I think I use the example of “I’m going to tell the story of Puff the Magic Dragon.” And if I show you a picture of a dragon, and it doesn’t match your mental image, somebody in Scotland might have a completely different image of a dragon than somebody in China—have I just somehow shaped that story in a way that really didn’t connect with that person. So sometimes not having that image that I think is the right image can help tell the story, especially in a narrative form like the oral tradition or podcasting.
Mignon: Mm hmm. Because when I’m imagining a dragon, I’m imagining my perfect dragon.
Laura: Right.
Mignon: So that story in my mind is going to be the ideal story for me, because it’s how I see things.
Laura: And honestly, if you just as a teacher went into a front of a class and said, “Here’s a piece of paper, I want everyone to draw a dragon,” somebody is going to draw something different. And that’s a story that I just told. It’s a really quick anecdote, more than a story. But even so, when I told that, you have got something in your head, you’re picturing a classroom, you’re picturing a piece of paper, you’re picturing yourself drawing a dragon, you’re picturing the person … So what stories do is provide that mental simulation. And it really does help you share a culture, to share its values, it helps you learn. It is the best way to learn. And there’s more cognitive science, too, about how telling stories helps develop trust, empathy. And these are all the kinds of things that you need to develop with clients and customers and audiences before you start clubbing them over the head with all of your facts about your products and your services. So stories are really essential for telling that or transmitting that trust and empathy.
Mignon: And I think I fall into that sometimes, too, because with my science background, especially in science communication, when I want to convince someone of something, I am tempted to barrage them with the facts. This is the percent of people that this has happened to. This is the percent of people that might happen to. Here’s a study that showed how this doesn’t happen, but this does. And it’s so tempting because I feel like the facts should convince people. But I hear over and over again how that doesn’t really work.
Laura: That’s true. And when I, you know, pitch storytelling workshops, I will get pushback from clients who will say, you know, I’ll tell them that telling a good story will help them to better connect with their clients, and they’ll roll their eyes and say, “No, Laura, I really don’t think you understand. My clients are different. They’re smart. They’re doctors and scientists and engineers and senior executives. They’re not going to buy something just because I told an interesting story. And in fact, they’re so smart they’ll be insulted if you tell them the story. So they’re only going to be moved by facts, and I’m not going to waste their time. They need the hard data.” And, you know, in one respect, I am not going to argue with that. I’m a former database manager. I like my hard data. But I also like to think that I make my decisions based on data. But all of that is wrong because all of the cognitive science in the past 20 years tells us that we make emotional decisions in one place in our brain, and then we justify those decisions with logic and data in another place in our brain. So that logic and data, they have their place, but so does the story. And the story touches our emotions and our brains light up when we hear that story. It triggers all sorts of chemicals like oxytocin and dopamine—feel good chemicals. So that’s exactly how you want your clients to feel or how your audience is to feel before you start telling them about the facts, because now they trust you. Now they like you, and they’re more willing to accept all of those facts.
Mignon: And I think stories are more memorable too. I can remember an anecdote that somebody told me, but I might have trouble remembering the details of just a fact, you know.
Laura: Yeah.
Mignon: What is there a difference between an anecdote and a story?
Laura: A story is … generally tends to have that narrative and in a narrative structure, right? And you’ll hear people all over saying, “Oh, there’s a five-point story structure. No, there’s a seven point. It’s got to have this.” There’s but basically, if you’re telling a narrative story like, “Hi, I’m Grammar Girl, and I’m going to tell you my founder’s story,” it’s basically … I love the three-part setup that Kindra Hall does in her book so well. She’s just got normal, explosion, new normal, you know? And I’m like, you know, that’s really it. That story could be one minute long. It could be seven minutes long. There could be subplots and substories going out in within that. But basically stories start somewhere. It’s that, you know, the classic story of Once upon a Time, but that’s really vague, and [in] a business story we tend to be, you know, “It’s 2006, and it’s Santa Monica, and I’m a podcast or in a science writer,” right? So now OK, now we’re there with you. We understand what’s going on. So at that point, something happens. You know, we have this explosion of you posting the Grammar Girl podcast, and your life changes. So now we’ve got a new normal. So that that’s kind of it in a nutshell. And you added a lot of nice detail and emotion that kept us riveted along that really basic three-part story.
Mignon: Hmm. I noticed how that worked yesterday, actually. In another way of celebrating the 15th anniversary, I did a fundraising campaign for teachers through DonorsChoose which — yeah, I know you love this organization, too — it’s, for people who don’t know, it’s a place where teachers can post what they need for their classrooms, and then you can fund their projects. It’s kind of like a GoFundMe for just for teacher and classroom projects. And I wanted to, for the 15th anniversary, I wanted to raise fifteen thousand dollars for teachers, and we did it. Actually, it was amazing … they told me to expect it would take about four days, and we did it in eight hours. So I was blown away. But, you know, so yesterday morning I started doing my posts on social media — and protip: don’t launch your project on a Friday in the summer. I don’t know what I was thinking, but we should have done it on Tuesday or something — but so for the first hour and a half I sat there, and I refreshed and refreshed and posted and posted and nothing happened, nobody gave anything to my teachers, and I was sweating bullets and thinking we were going to fail. And just and finally …
Mignon: … And I had picked a teacher project. I have a giving page at DonorsChoose. And I had picked, you know, about 20 projects that I thought were especially exciting and curated them there for people to find. But I had really been talking about the anniversary and the the matching money. And you get two-for-one, and it’s going to be great and, but that wasn’t motivating anyone. And then so I took one of the teacher’s stories. There was a teacher who had just a really cool project, a seventh-grade teacher who is doing an aviation theme for her class. And she said our entire year will have an aviation theme with each of the content teachers developing curriculum, field trips, guest speakers built around the flight theme. And she wanted a classroom set of novels where one of the characters had a hot air balloon — so the aviation theme — and the story was set in a town near where her school was. And I posted that, and said, “Here’s an example of a teacher you can find,” and people started giving. And it was like I turned on a light switch. It was amazing.
Laura: Stories sell. Bottom line, they totally do. And look at this wonderful story that you just told. I’m sorry, I have to go through it because you’re telling the story of another story. So a story within a story. And you started with yesterday. I did this, and it was Friday. And don’t do this. It’s summer. So we’re right there with you. It’s the time and the place. And then you have your emotions with your anxiety. And things weren’t going well and you’re like, “Oh, no!” So we’re, you know, you’re taking us on this emotional journey with you. And then the story itself, we hear this time and time again, don’t we, that there’s this, even this thing on Amazon. A T-shirt wasn’t selling. And then somebody wrote this ridiculous story about this dumb T-shirt, and the T-shirts started selling like crazy. So if you want people to buy your products, notice you, get that attention — it’s story all the way, baby.
Mignon: Yeah, yeah. I was amazed at what a difference it made. It was wonderful. And then. Yeah. And we had the elated ending because we reached our goal. It was fabulous.
Laura: So we had a happy ending on this one, which is just amazing, especially since it’s helping teachers who really deserve all the help and credit that they can get right now.
Mignon: Right. It’s been such a bad year. They deserve good surprises.
Laura: No kidding.
Mignon: Yeah. So and I think in business, sometimes people do forget or don’t realize that stories matter. One thing you and I talked about a few weeks ago is how is interviewing … when people are interviewing for jobs? How how actually they should be using stories.
Laura: Yeah, yeah. I was really surprised myself during the pandemic lockdowns that I have a course on LinkedIn learning called Establishing Credibility as a Speaker. And it’s really intended for those first seven seconds of a speech. You know, how do you establish credibility with the audience? But I received so many emails from people saying, I am watching this because I’m going into an interview, and I want to establish credibility with the person who’s interviewing me. So it’s really about establishing rapport, right? And one thing I didn’t cover in that course is, yeah, telling stories to your interviewer makes you stand out. So start collecting some of your stories because they will ask you story-type questions in an interview all the time. You know, they’ll ask you things like “Tell me about a time …” And you know what? That’s that’s a story set-up. Tell me about a time where you had a difficulty at work and how you overcame that. Boy, that’s a story set up, if I ever.
Laura: One question that I really like, because this helps you decide which of your stories that you’re going to tell when you go into an interview, a great question you can ask your interviewer right away is “Tell me what [made you] reach out to me. What was it about my resume or my cover later or my experience that that made you call me today for this?”
Mignon: So getting to drawing them out, getting them to tell you their story.
Laura: Right there, like, “Well, I found this about your resume exciting,” and you don’t know what that’s going to be. It could be, “Well, I saw that you did a four weeks of backpacking in Peru, and I did that, too.” And now you’re developing rapport with somebody, and your backpacking adventure through Peru may have nothing to do with the job that you’re applying for. You may be applying for the job as a data scientist, but you’re developing rapport that way. Or they might be saying, “You know what, I see that you went to this university. I went there at the same time,” or “I saw this in your job background, and we really need somebody who can do that.” Well, now, you know, not to talk about all these other stories that you might have in your story-clip belt, but you can be more focused and tell the stories that your interviewer might be most interested in hearing.
Laura: Right, now, I’m not saying that, you know, put your adventures in Peru on your resume.
Mignon: Right.
Laura: It always strikes me, as somebody who looks at resumes, when somebody includes something a little offbeat like that, it makes me wonder, what’s the story there? Why did they choose to include that? And that could be just me. I am always interested in the offbeat and the unusual. And that would just trigger me to say I’ve got to figure out what what that’s all about.
Mignon: Right. I would ask about that, too, just because you’re looking at a sea of resumes and the unusual thing jumps out. So that’s what you’re probably most likely to ask about.
Laura: Right. And that’s the thing. If you’re going to include something like “I backpacked through Peru” and you’re going for a data analyst job, you better darn well have a story about how those two things relate to each other to tell your interviewer.
[ad break]
Mignon: Hmm, that reminds me that an observation I’ve had over the years is that you can tell the same story a lot of different ways. And it’s good to to think about your stories and what you’re trying to project with that story. For example, it’s funny, in retrospect, my background looks like it makes so much sense. I have an undergraduate degree in English, then I got a master’s degree in biology, and then I became a science and technology writer. And that looks like a completely planned progression toward a goal. And it one hundred percent was not. It was it was me flailing about for years trying to figure out what to do and going from this interest to that and finally falling into something that worked for me. But and I could I could tell that either way. Yeah. And then probably [there are] 10 other ways I could tell that story.
Laura: That’s the thing. You’ve got the bare bones of your story. And I’m sure you’ve told your founder’s story of Grammar Girl, what, one hundred two hundred, three
Mignon: Hundred time, probably a couple hundred times by now.
Laura: And it does change from audience to audience because you read the room and you decide, “Oh, you know what, this isn’t going well in this direction. I am going to cut back this detail, that detail,” and you make that story your own. It’s your authentic story, but it changes depending on the audience. And if you’re going to change anything about the story, one thing that people … I wouldn’t suggest you change your story. But if you’re going to try something new, here’s a technique to try, because when you told that story, you made the choice to tell it as an omnipresent narrator. Right? You know everything. Right? And you told it in the past tense. What if you were a naive narrator and told it in the present tense?
Mignon: So explain to me what that means.
Laura: Yeah, so instead of saying, you know, “15 years ago I was a science writer,” instead you’d flip it and tell it in the present tense and say. You know, “Picture it, it’s 2005, I’m a science writer, I’m living in Santa Monica, and for fun, I’m doing a science podcast every week, and the science podcast is really complicated. It’s taking me a lot of time. And then on top of that, I’m doing lots of other writing, and I’m getting burned out. And that’s when I know …” So now you’re saying it all in the present tense, and that thought is it doesn’t give the audience as much space. They’re right there with you instead of leaning back and saying, “OK, she already knows how this is going to end, but now she’s telling it in the present, so I’m right there with her.” And the model that I’m mapping on, I’m really feeling this a little bit more acutely. Now, it’s cool to tell it as an omnipresent, but if you want to just have some fun with your story every once in a while, try telling it as a naive person, like you don’t know how this thing is going to end, it’s always happening in the present, and see how that might change the story, and how it might change the atmosphere in the room.
Mignon: That’s wonderful. I’m going to mix it up and try that. I do, I even when you were telling it, I felt pulled along more. And I think it’s something that … it’s a development that’s been happening in fiction in my lifetime, too. There’s been much more of a trend toward using the first-person narrator than the third-person, because it it just feels more … it’s closer and more intimate.
Laura: And if you want to get really fancy, you can switch in the same story, narrators get a chance to do that, that book authors don’t get a chance to write that way. And it’s sort of like you could say, if I’m telling a story about walking to my library, for example, you know, a few years ago, I am walking up the 0.9 miles it takes to get to my library, and I am suddenly looking up, and it’s just a footpath, and a car is coming down it. And that’s really unusual. And it comes closer. And I see it’s a police car. OK, so now I’m all in the present moment. But what if I said but there’s one thing you’ve got to know about me: I’m a big Hitchcock fan, and this field is so suddenly now I’m like, wait, you just take me out of the story. Now you’re doing something else. Yeah, I’m a big Hitchcock fan. This field, it’s right near an airport, and there are a bunch of birds, and they are just gathering and swarming. And I’m seeing this, and I’m thinking I’m in a Hitchcock movie. And then the cop car pulls up to me on this path, and he rolls down his window, and he’s looking at me and he’s saying, “Hey, Did you see the dead body on the trail?”
Laura: Now, at this point and see at that point, I can switch stories … switch narration again and become omnipresent and go back and forth a little bit. I don’t you know, you can do that in the story, and you can keep somebody on the edge of the seat by doing that. But try switching up your narration of your omnipresent versus naive and then sometimes mixing them both together and see how that, you know, it’s the same story. It’s just a different technique.
Mignon: Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to continue our conversation anymore, I just want you to keep telling me that story. I want to know what happens next.
Laura: Well, he pulls down and, you know, this is just like a Hitchcock film to me because he is just looking over the window, and he’s asking me about did I see the dead body. And I said, “No, I didn’t see a dead body.” And then he says the most amazing thing to me in the world, he says. “Are you sure?” Oh, my head’s about ready to explode at this point. Am I sure? Of course, I’m sure. I mean, I am darn sure that if I saw a dead body, I would know it. I wouldn’t see, oh, there’s a dead body. Oh, that’s interesting. Keep walking. I would be freaked out about it, right? But I’m not saying any of this to the cop. I just say, “Yeah, I’m sure,” but my heart’s just beating in his chest. And so he wanders off, and I go to the library, and I am freaked out by the time I get to the library, and it’s not much of a story because nothing happened, right, other than my heart beating in my chest. And there turning out to be nobody on the trail. It ended up being some kids playing a prank and calling the police department. But I’m in a Hitchcock film the whole time in my head.
Mignon: Well, you know, when you’re saying it’s nothing happens. But I think I think that the thing that made it delightful for me in the end is that it was also funny. So you made me laugh with your comment about, “You know, I think I would have noticed.” So can you talk a little bit about the importance of the element of humor, too?
Laura: Yeah, I think why do we laugh in the first place? It’s because we’re surprised. And that’s another thing that stories do. We’re curious how is this going to work out? The thing about humor is, and why we laugh, and why we we feel it is, you don’t even try to be funny. You just try to be true. And people will find that truth so relatable and so much relief in that truth, that they just burst out laughing. And even when I’ve told that story to my friends, just chatting about my day, they, you know, related to it right away and said, “Boy, you know, I would have felt the same way. I would have been, you know …” they’re laughing. But like, how could you think that you wouldn’t notice a dead body? I’m like, well, I guess people are strange. Maybe they walk across their bodies all the time and forget to call the police. But that’s not something that I’m like.
Mignon: Yeah, no. I think, you know, when people people ask me for podcasting advice and that’s what their topics and things, and what I always tell them is to be successful, you should be educational or entertaining. And it’s best if you’re both.
Laura: Yes.
Mignon: You know, people tune in to get information or to be entertained generally. And, you know, I feel like that can be a challenge with grammar. How do I make that entertaining? It’s definitely educational, but how can I make it entertaining? And one way I’ve done that is to come up with characters that appear over and over. Squiggly and Aardvark, my two best buddies, who I use an example sentences in the podcast, because … at the time, this is just something I did in the beginning, really, I don’t know, just on instinct to make it more fun for me, probably in the beginning. But, you know, again, when I was talking with you a few weeks ago, I realized that I created characters, and I tell stories, little tiny stories, about them in the podcast. You know, Squiggly is a yellow snail, and he’s lazy and he loves chocolate. He will sneak and steal chocolate if he can get it. And Aardvark is a big, cranky blue aardvark who loves to fish and is often annoyed with Squiggly. So they have little tiny adventures in their example sentences. And there is a mysterious confetti incident that once happened that comes up over and over again.
Laura: You have to tell us about the mysterious confetti incident.
Mignon: I have to decide what the mysterious confetti incident is! It’s is something I made up that they talk around. But to be honest, I don’t know what the confetti incident was. I have to, yeah, I have to figure that story out myself unfortunately.
Laura: I love Squiggly and Aardvark, and I hope someday they will tell you what the confetti incident was that came between them.
Mignon: Yeah, I will. I will. Yeah. It’ll be a big reveal… Maybe for the 20th anniversary of the podcast, we will reveal the confetti incident.
Laura: Thump, thump, thump. Could be a contest. What happened? Ask your listeners for that story. What happened. That way you don’t have to write the story, and I’m sure your listeners would be happy to contribute.
Mignon: That is brilliant. I’ll have a short story contest and write about the confetti incident. I’m writing this down, actually.
I’m going to stop here because that’s the end of our storytelling discussion, but we did talk for about 20 minutes more about the difference between writing for text and writing for audio, bulleted lists, and how to use PowerPoint without reading from your slides. If you want to hear the rest of the interview, you can find it at storytellingpodcastweek podbean and search for “Grammar Girl’s 15th Anniversary Live Episode“
Thanks again to Laura Bergells. You can find her on Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn where she goes by maniactive. And like me, Laura is a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and teaches communication courses, including public speaking, crisis communication, and establishing credibility. And all those courses have a thread of storytelling running through them, and they’re available for free for LinkedIn premium members.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Make sure you are following or subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen so you always get the latest episode. And if you like the show, please, tell a friend.
Thanks to Podbean for hosting the discussion, and thanks to my producer, Nathan Semes. That’s all. Thanks for listening.