Storytelling, With An Award-Winning Crime Fiction Author

Tony Martignetti
Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I'm glad you're with us. I'd be hit with methemoglobinemia if you took my breath away with the idea that you missed this week's show. Here's our associate producer Kate to tell us what's coming.

Kate Martignetti
Hey, Tony. This week it's storytelling with an award-winning crime fiction author. Carl Vonderau has made many mistakes in his professional writing. And he wants you to learn from them. His savvy advice includes: use the senses, evoke emotion, get your readers and viewers to empathize, find the conflict and success, show transformation, and a lot more. You'll find him at carlvonderau.com. On Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
Tales from the Gym, Rob Gets Flirtatious.

Kate Martignetti
Here is storytelling with an award-winning crime fiction author.

Tony Martignetti
It's a pleasure to welcome to Nonprofit Radio Carl Vonderau. Carl is an award-winning author of crime fiction. Inspired by his father's commitment to their local YMCA, Carl began working with nonprofits. As he aged and got much better at storytelling, he helps other organizations be more successful using the lessons he's learned from writing novels. You'll find Carl and a storytelling primer you can get for free at carlvonderau.com. Welcome to Nonprofit Radio, Carl.

Carl Vonderau
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's fun to be here.

Tony Martignetti
I'm glad. I'm glad you're having fun already. We're not even 2 minutes in. Outstanding. All right.

Carl Vonderau
So

Tony Martignetti
I hope it's not all downhill from here. Like, now's the fun and then it's all a steep decline for the next however many, 40 minutes.

Carl Vonderau
Well, we'll try to have a good novelistic ending, uplifting, right?

Tony Martignetti
Very good. Yes, we will. I do like to leave some with some inspiration and empowerment, but the fun will continue. That's true. The fun certainly can continue. I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. Um, so we're, you know, we're here to get some storytelling advice from a master storyteller, award-winning fiction author. Tell us about your most recent book, Saving Miles.

Carl Vonderau
Sure. I write about crime, but I don't just write about crime. I write about dysfunctional families who have to come together to survive crime. And so I'm really dealing very much with family. And in this book, I'm dealing with a family with a very rebellious son. He's having so many problems that they have to send him to a residential treatment center. And when he comes back, he seems to be totally changed. But in fact, he sneaks off to Mexico and gets kidnapped. His father, a very successful banker, and his wife, who's involved with a nonprofit, have to come together and get involved with money laundering in order to save him. So nothing like money laundering for a good family story.

Tony Martignetti
Saving Miles, M-Y-L-E-S. Miles is the son that you're talking about. All right. What brought you to the crime And family overlap genre?

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, I was always interested in crime fiction because, you know, I liked plot. And but now I've gotten more deeply into character, and I find that crime amplifies any problems in a family. And, you know, I've got a family. I've been married for 40 years. I've had a number— you know, we've gone through a number of things. And I wanted to deal with that in this book. 20 years ago, we had to send our son to a residential treatment center, and he came back, and now he's changed 20 years later. But I wanted to put some of that experience in the book. Now, like with nonprofits, you know, you have a lot of these stories, but you need to get permission from the people who the stories are about. So I got permission from him to use some of that material. Wow. In the book itself. And it helps me deal with character as well as getting deeper into what makes a family not function and what makes it thrive. That's why I do that kind of fiction.

Tony Martignetti
Are you working on something now? Or Saving Miles is recent, so maybe you're taking a break.

Carl Vonderau
No, I'm not. You're not taking a break? No, no. Here's the saying in the fiction world: you get your whole life to write your first book, and you get a year to write your second one. So, so there are a lot of pressures to keep writing. So I've got a book out that we're trying to sell to publishers now, and then I've got another book I'm trying to complete. So these— the first 3 books— I did another book before that, my first book called Murderabilia, about, about what happens to the son of a serial killer and how does he overcome that kind of stigma, especially when he's accused of the same crime. Hmm. So

Tony Martignetti
is that the book where you started learning your lessons? You're pretty open about learning storytelling lessons. Yeah, that's why we're here. We're here to learn from what you've learned. But was it that first book, Murderabilia?

Carl Vonderau
Yes, it was. You know, what I found is that I have really gotten to be a competent writer by going through a lot of failures.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Carl Vonderau
And over and over again, and each one you learn a little bit. And on that book, you know, it'd been years I'd been writing. I'd written other books, but nothing close to publishing. And then I went to a writer's conference with Jacqueline Michard there, and she wrote this book called The Deep End of the Ocean, which was the first selection of Oprah when she first started doing books. And she said, look, I will help you. Well, I had to pay her, of course, but So she helped me with a lot of the elements of a book. And, you know, what I find is, if I'll tell you the rest of the story, because it's not an easy story to become a published author. Yeah. So, you know, I worked with her for a couple of years, she introduced me to her agent in New York, founded an agency, he liked the book and wanted to represent me. And so, you know, I think, well, I'm going to be a bestseller, you know, that's what's going to happen. Well, he had his assistants read over each draft, and it would take him 3 months to respond to what the objections they had and for me to try and fix it. After a year, he said, you know, I don't really think I'm the right agent for you. So a year and didn't submit it to any. Wow. And here's what else he had— he said, he said, I want you to know, this is— I'm very serious about this. And in my 10 years as an agent. I've only done this 3 times. So

Tony Martignetti
is that supposed to cheer you up?

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, that's, that's the bottom 3.

Tony Martignetti
You're among the bottom 3 of his 10-year career.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so what do you do? Give up?

Tony Martignetti
Please tell me. Please. First of all, please tell me the premise is wrong. You're joking, right? This is a joke. No, don't. You're not serious about this. I'm at the bottom of your 10-year career.

Carl Vonderau
You know, I had a lot of responses like could have made. Yeah, I didn't.

Tony Martignetti
I can think of a few colorful ones. Yeah.

Carl Vonderau
So, so then I thought, well, you know, I gotta really learn how to pitch this book. And so I went to a course on how to pitch a book, and I got it down to one sentence, you know, an elevator pitch for a book. And every author needs this, just like in a nonprofit, that you've got to be able to tell somebody quickly what you're about, what your book's about, and And for an author, it's a publisher so they can sell it to distributors. And so I did that, and then I went to this writer's conference. In these writer's conferences, you know, you have all these wannabe writers like me standing around trying, hoping that the agents and the acquisitions editors will ask you a question. Please, please, please ask me a question. So this agent turns to me and she says, okay, describe your book in one sentence. I had it.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah,

Carl Vonderau
I did it. And you get this reaction which is like gold to a writer because she and this acquisitions editor said, oh, that's all it was, but it's gold. So she became my agent and she's still my agent. So then we had it, we found a publisher which was a good publisher, a mid-level publisher. 2 months after we signed the contract Their parents said, well, we're getting out of the mystery book business. So they still represented the book. What do you do then? Do you start over and try and find another publisher? We decided to stick with them for this book. Okay, so the book was, you know, was good. It was getting good reviews. There was a conference in San Diego called the Left Coast Crime Conference where they had an award for best debut, and I was nominated for it, this book, Murderabilia. So I thought, this is great. It's in my hometown. I can sell this book. You know, I have a good chance of winning this. The conference starts, and a day later it's canceled because of COVID So, you know, all these things are— you find that all the spadework you've done sometimes pays benefits for ways you don't realize. And so it was the prize was— the voting was done virtually, and the book won the award. Wow. And this agent, who I still have, was much better suited to me than the original agent was. So what I found is, you know, it's important to be a good writer, but more important than any of that— and I know all your nonprofit audience knows this— is the most important skill you have is being tenacious and just keep going and keep learning. So that, that's my story about how I became a published author.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Okay. Well, we need, we need to go deeper on, on storytelling and the arc of the story. And, but tenacity. Yeah, you're right. Tenacity. I mean, you turn down by funders, whether they're individual or institutional all the time. You know, of course, every ask is not a yes, I'd love to, or even a, ooh. Yeah. I love that. You know, so, uh, tenacity is important. Tenacity in, uh, in building our teams. People— good people leave. We wish them well. We, we grin and bear it, uh, but we, you know, we have to keep building the team.

Carl Vonderau
And the other thing is listen, because when people, people turn you down, sometimes they give you a nugget that will really help you in the next people you pitch.

Tony Martignetti
Well, it may, yes. And it may even help you with them. Because I've often said, 6 nos and you're halfway to a yes.

Carl Vonderau
Right.

Tony Martignetti
So, you know, you may be able to come back to them with something a little modified, or maybe when the timing is better. Now, that timing might be 2 years from now, which is not what you were hoping for. But, you know, so yes, you're right, it may help you with a future solicitation, or even a volunteer ask or something, but it could help you with that individual or that couple or that institution as well in the future. So yeah, absolutely listening. I guess I could have said, I didn't really— I wasn't paying attention to what you said. But that's, that's so hackneyed. You know, what'd you say? I didn't catch it. You know, but that's so old. Yeah. I try to, I try to be a little more A little more original than that. So let's, you know, I feel like I'm like, oh, Captain, my Captain. I mean, I'm at the foot of the master.

Carl Vonderau
Okay.

Tony Martignetti
Award-winning storyteller of fiction, but we need to translate that to our nonfiction nonprofit stories. Where, Captain, you know, where, where do we— what would you like to start off with? Yeah, think of first. Yeah.

Carl Vonderau
Let's start off with the basics here first. Okay, so what you've got— you've got a lot of tools to use as a storyteller, but the basic thing you have to do is emotion. You've got to— and the emotion, you as a storyteller, you can feel the emotion yourself, but that's not important. The important thing is to get your listener to feel that emotion. And so, you know, how do you do that? That's, that's the key to all of this. You know, and you have personal stories, you have stories about your organization, you have stories about people that your organization's helped, you have numbers, you have all these things that you can use. But when you go down to the basics of a story, you're starting out with a conflict of something that happened to characters who are likable. So the first thing is, you know, you can— you describe who you are or who the narrator is, and you can say they were successful in everything, all they've done is successful, but that doesn't reach a listener as much as starting from the bottom of how that you've had to fight out of something. This something that's happened that challenges that character challenges you as the narrator. So for instance, you as a nonprofit, you could say, you know, I want to help kids, or I want to help diabetes. But you could also say that, you know, I had a close friend or my father who had diabetes when they were young, and that motivated me to do well. And I was always helping him. I became, you know, I went in, I became a successful accountant. But what really touched my heart was going back to what had Killed the closest— my closest friend, my father. That kind of thing immediately connects you with the listener or the reader because it connects you with them emotionally. It also connects you with them curiosity. You've raised a question, you know, how did you do this? How did you use that experience to, to be successful? And by raising that question, you're also promising that listener that you're going to give them an answer to it.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, and likable too. You said a character— something bad has happened to a character who's likable. How can we not like you? You know, your best friend was your father.

Carl Vonderau
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
And now you want to help others not lose their best friends.

Carl Vonderau
Yes. So, I mean, you could say, you know, I went to Harvard, I graduated summa cum laude, I was the top of my class, I was the first, I was the youngest partner at my law firm, and every client I've helped has been successful. I've been the leading money-getter in my company. You as a listener, what do you think about that? Do you like that person?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, it sounds haughty, right? Bragging. Yeah.

Carl Vonderau
Insecure, um, and you think, do you want that person to help you? You kind of maybe admire them, but part of you wants them to fail. But if a person— if a person has gone from failure to success, then that listener thinks, okay, I can identify with that. Everybody's been afraid of failure or has failed. And they think, what lesson am I going to learn from you that might apply to me? And they also want an emotional payoff, which they may not even know, but they want to feel the emotion of that success at the end of your story. So these are kind of some of the, the basics on it. And when you, when you look at it, you have that conflict, you have a plot, you know, as to what problem motivated that character, your organization, or you as a person forward. What did you learn that helped you? And this is what your listener is going to take away and extrapolate from. And how did that transform you? And this is, you know, what a story has to tell. Here's the story. Marc Benioff of Salesforce.

Tony Martignetti
Yep.

Carl Vonderau
He, you know, he was like the youngest executive in Salesforce. He went to Harvard. He was programming at 15. You know, he could start off with all of that when he introduces himself, but the way I read he introduced himself was the thing that really punched me in the gut was when my mentor fired me from a company he had invested $2 million in and took away my shares. That was what led to my growth. So Hits you emotionally, raises a question, and he's going to give you the answer. And your listener will, will, will wait for that answer. They want that answer, you know, and you better deliver it.

Tony Martignetti
You've talked about telling first, first-person stories.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
But we're going to be writing about people or animals or a forest that was, you know, it might not even write. So it may very well may not even be human. It may not even— well, it's certainly, it's living, but not in human form. How does your advice translate to writing in second or third person?

Carl Vonderau
Well, you still have the point of view of that person, and, and that is the way that person looks at the world, the way they talk. And so you can, you can identify and you can sympathize with that point of view when you talk about that person. Like me, I, I talked about Marc Benioff. He isn't— I'm not him. When you're talking about The Forest, you know, the work that they do I like to get in on a human level. So, you know, what has your progress done for people? How has that helped people? And specifically how it's helped people. I don't know. Does that answer your question?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, it starts to get to— or even if it's a forest, even, I mean, the forest is living.

Carl Vonderau
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
And presumably the people we're writing about care about We're writing to care about the living forest. So the forest has life in it. It has insects, it has plants, it has animals, it has rodents, it has predators and prey. So yeah, okay. Animals.

Carl Vonderau
It depends on your audience. Again, you know, I mean, if your audience is very much back to nature, they love the beauty of the forest, They love, you know, all the animals, etc. Well, that's what you want to concentrate on. But if your audience is about helping people, then it's got to be about how the forest helps people.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. So let's dive in a little deeper on some of these.

Carl Vonderau
So,

Tony Martignetti
yeah, the conflict, something that's happened or is going to happen to someone who's likable. Can you say more about setting up— setting up the conflict?

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Robert McKee, who is like the guru of scriptwriting in Hollywood, he says basically a story starts out with balance, something knocks it off balance, changes everything, the hero then takes it on him or herself to solve that problem Is transformed and then rescues the castle, whatever. So conflict has to be something that changes everything. It can be internal, like that person has anger issues or can't see the forest for the trees. It can be an organizational problem where they have the wrong philosophy. It can be a leadership problem. where people aren't getting along with the leader. It can be an external conflict. And interestingly, I think you were in the Air Force. So one of the, one of the principles in Air Force is that there's nothing like a good enemy to make a good plane. And so the idea that your enemy, because of you've had to compete with them, has taught you what It is to be successful. I think that's something that a lot of people miss out on in their stories. A good enemy.

Tony Martignetti
The enemy could be the— maybe it's the illness that we're fighting.

Carl Vonderau
Yes, could be

Tony Martignetti
the disease or the illness. It could be animal abandonment.

Carl Vonderau
Could be the donors you're approaching. You're approaching it the wrong way. Could be your messaging. You're doing the wrong messaging. Could be because you're not distinguishing yourself enough from all the other nonprofits, right? That you don't have a distinct enough message. It could be because you're not being likable, you know, or you're just not reaching people. The number can be a lot of things, the enemy.

Tony Martignetti
When we're writing, it's okay to write informally, right? And also, I just want to make sure we're— I want to make sure that listeners know that we're conscious that they're not writing novels. They're writing like 250 to 300 words, maybe a newsletter article could even be just 50 words for a sidebar or something. So, they've got to condense your advice into somewhere between 50 and 300 words. 300 words is even long these days. But let's say at an outer limit of an insider newsletter where people are actually reading your 300 words, whether it's print or digital. So we've got to condense this down. We don't have the— well, I would say the luxury, you might say the challenge of writing 55,000 or 60,000 words. So where was my point? What was the point of that? Oh, okay.

Carl Vonderau
What do you do when you're limited by the length?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, yeah.

Carl Vonderau
You know, there's something called flash fiction where people do this and people write short stories where everything—

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, but we're even shorter than— we're even shorter than your— the short story.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
We're writing a blog post or a newsletter article or sidebar.

Carl Vonderau
Right, but it's still got a— it's like a scene in a way in a book because a scene has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There's got to be a change in the scene. There's got to be a point of view in the scene. There's got to be a voice in the scene. Who's telling this story? What's distinct about that voice? So, you know, when you're telling a story in 300 words about one of your clients or someone that your nonprofit has helped, what was the issue? What was the key aspect that changed this person? How did they show how they were changed? And how does it apply to you as well as others? And you can do it in 300 words. You just have to be very— you have to pick out only the right details and the right things to describe. Does that make sense?

Tony Martignetti
That becomes the challenge. Yeah, because we want to stuff so much in because our work is so important. We want readers to know the detail. You got to know the details of what we did. And then it becomes focused on us and our nonprofit and our work instead of focused on the The person or the animal or the forest that we helped. That's where the focus should be, right? Not on how good we are and how successful we were. We're obviously part of the story because we're the change agent, but don't focus it on yourself and your work.

Carl Vonderau
Right, right. And you can—

Tony Martignetti
And we want to stuff it with detail because we want everybody to know how much we do for every single Tree.

Carl Vonderau
But the reader or the listener, they, they can't absorb all that detail, right? What they want is one detail that sticks with them. All right, and so, you know, one tree— you just— what tree can you describe in one sentence that illustrates the problem? And this is the problem we want to solve. And how did that tree change? If you can do that, it's great. Um, oh, it kind of gets into what objects are, you know. Um, uh, one thing that isn't used a lot in stories is objects, and objects really can communicate a lot about change in character.

Tony Martignetti
Like what? What do you mean? Well, like, like, so tree— well, just, you know, for tree, we could substitute it was an animal, or it was, it was a person, or you said that was a diabetic. Sure, it was a person with Um, with a, with a carcinoma, you know, so we're substituting. But, but flesh out what you were saying about— Okay, here's a, here's a— Objects.

Carl Vonderau
Here's a, here's a real story, okay, from 9/11. And a woman whose husband worked in one of the towers, and it was her birthday on September 11th, um, he went to the tower and she never saw him again. Several weeks later, The people had uncovered the rubble and they uncovered his car, but they didn't want to open his car without her there because she was his wife and it was a matter of, you know, of respect. So they opened the trunk, and inside the trunk they found a wrapped birthday gift, a birthday card, and one rose. Do you need to say any more?

Tony Martignetti
Mm-hmm.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, so those are the kinds of details you're looking for. I mean, Joan Didion had a detail where, um—

Tony Martignetti
The objects convey love.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, yeah, very much, very much. You know, you can find it in Little Women. Mr. Laurence has a piano that he loans to Beth, but it's— and he's cold and Beth is sensitive, and it gives you something about Mr. Laurence. And then he gives the piano to her, and then you find out his dead daughter played that piano. I mean, look how that illustrates love. Or Joan Didion talked about, in one of her fiction pieces in Latin America, to describe the hotel, she said she went year after year, and the postcards never changed.

Tony Martignetti
You don't have to say anything about the furnishings or the places. It's— yeah. You just know it conveys, all right, all right. So be savvy about the use of objects. My earlier— go ahead, I want you to continue.

Carl Vonderau
And people like contradiction. You know, the tree was beautiful, but its roots were rotting. You know, so why? That raises a question. And what did you do to solve that question? And what one thing was the key to solving that question. What one change?

Tony Martignetti
That's very good. Did you just think of that? Or do you use that example all the time, the tree and the rotting roots?

Carl Vonderau
No, I just making stuff up.

Tony Martignetti
That's why you're an award-winning fiction writer. All right.

Carl Vonderau
You get enough practice, things happen.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Yeah, the animal looked You know, the kitten looked— the kitten was purring, but her paws were bloody.

Carl Vonderau
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
Well, from abandonment, because she hadn't been cared for. And right. But what? Yeah.

Carl Vonderau
Here's another example from Jean Le Carré. Okay. So you can inform people or you can connect with people, right? And I think Lynn Bohart, I listened to his, he talked about this too. So here's informational. The cat sat on the mat. And here's connecting. The cats— here's a story. The cat sat on the dog's mat.

Tony Martignetti
There's a conflict.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah. Yeah.

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. There was something today This very day in the gym. And it was kind of cute. It was sweet and cute. Our friend Rob, you'll remember, he's the former Marine, Semper Fi, works out in the gym. I see him all the time, many times a week. And just as I was getting set up on the elliptical, I was just getting started. I was in my first minute or so. It was early. And that's the first thing I do in the gym is the elliptical. So I had just gotten there. Yeah. And he's chatting with a woman whose name I don't know yet. We'll uncover it eventually. They all get identified or identify themselves eventually. So he says, there's a problem with my phone. It doesn't have your number in it. I thought, that's kind of hokey. I don't know. I mean, we're adults here. I don't know. It was kind of sweet in the same way. It was a little bit like he was embarrassed, almost like a teenager, an adolescent. There's a problem with my phone. It doesn't have your number. And then he jumps right on it, and then he starts to backpedal a little bit. Is it inappropriate if I ask you for your number? Yeah, it reminded me of being in 8th grade, and I asked Michelle DiBernardi to go to a movie, and then I said, no, but you're probably very busy. And we never ended up going to the movie. So she said, no, it's only inappropriate if you ask inappropriately. So I thought that was just kind of a sweet adolescent-type exchange. I don't know. The guy's a former Marine. Semper Fi. Semper Fi. So she gave him Her number. And then later on this morning, Rob Semper Fi was also— then he, then he was talking, uh, chatting up, uh, another woman, um, and she was talking about her cooking, and she had, she had some fresh homemade sourdough bread in her car for, for some reason. I didn't catch why. She's driving around with sourdough bread in her car. Maybe she's got to make a delivery to the food pantry or something. I don't know. But, and, you know, he's going on and, you know, flirting like, oh, I bet your cooking is really good. And, you know, so she ends up going to the car to get him a loaf of this, the homemade sourdough bread. So he walks out with this loaf of sourdough bread. So now then he's asking, well, what, you know, what kind of wine do you like? I have a lot of wine at my house. And she said reds and Pinot Noir. This woman drinks Pinot Noir. By the way, her birthday is October 26th, I learned. We'll get her name later. As I said, it eventually will come. Rob's birthday is October 24th. So they have a birthday within 2 days of each other, both Scorpios. They made that point. And then at the end, so he's got his bread now, and then they continue working out. Yeah. And then as he's on his way out, he says to the bread lady, I'm going for a coffee if you're not busy. But he doesn't really say, do you want to come with me? He said, if you're not busy. So again, soft, very soft ask, very soft teenage ask. And she said, no, I— and then she hesitated a little bit. I wasn't sure if she was telling the truth. No, no, I have to get my haircut. At eleven, I don't know. It sounded, it sounded weak. I don't know. Maybe, maybe she was being truthful. I'm not sure. But and then you know that and then that was it. So but Rob getting a little flirtatious, coming on to the ladies a little bit at the gym. When I when I find their two names, they both are frequent attendees at the gym. I'll certainly report their names. Let you know. But you know, it was kind of cute. But A little tragic also. Poor Rob. Semper Fi. That's Tony's Take Two. Kate?

Kate Martignetti
Aw, he sounds so charming. I think the younger generation would say, like, he's got a lot of rizz. Like charisma.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, really?

Kate Martignetti
Rizz, yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Really?

Kate Martignetti
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
I didn't know. Okay. That's interesting. Rizz. He's got rizz. I never heard that, of course, because You know, he's got a lot of rizz. I don't know, it didn't come across to me as rizz. It kind of came across as a little sad and tragic, but cute also. But still, you know, the guy's 45 or 50. I mean, you know,

Kate Martignetti
it's never too late.

Tony Martignetti
I know, but there's a problem with my phone? You know, come on. That's a little sad, I think. Well, that's That's Rob. That's Robin.

Kate Martignetti
I've lost my phone number. Is that— oh, he said, I've lost my phone number. Can I—

Tony Martignetti
no, no, he said there's a problem with my phone.

Kate Martignetti
Problem with my phone.

Tony Martignetti
It doesn't have your number.

Kate Martignetti
Okay, he's trying. I think that's cute.

Tony Martignetti
It's cute is the way I see it. Yeah, I'm not sure about charisma, but rizz. Rizz. I have to try to use rizz in a sentence now, but nobody I talk to will know what it means. They'll say, what? What do you mean? Because nobody I talk to is going to know rizz. I better not.

Kate Martignetti
I'm a college student, so I can give you a couple of

Tony Martignetti
years. Baby boomers trying to talk like Gen Z. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. I think I've never done— I think about it sometimes when I'm writing a LinkedIn post. I'll try to use something colloquial. I can't think of an example right now, but if I type it, I delete it. I'm a baby boomer. I'm stuck with that. I'm not going to try to be a Gen Z or even millennial. Just use my language. It's embarrassing. It's like an old guy who can't get out of his sports car. It's humiliating.

Kate Martignetti
I love this.

Tony Martignetti
No, don't try to be something you're not. You're a baby boomer. Just stick there. That's it. Stay in your lane. I would say, we would say, stay in your lane. Stay in your

Kate Martignetti
lane. Well, we've got beaucoup buttloads more time. Here's the rest of Storytelling with an Award-Winning Crime Fiction Author with Carl Vonderau.

Tony Martignetti
Formality. I think a lot of people think— I don't think this is unique to nonprofits, but that's where all our listeners are— that you have to be formal, you know. There's a— maybe we learned it in elementary school English composition class or something, you know, that there's a formality. We have to write a certain way and not write the way people talk. But maybe that was right 50 years ago or so when I was in high school. Yeah. But I don't think it's true anymore. Do you agree that writing has— we can write the way people talk and that's okay?

Carl Vonderau
Absolutely. Absolutely. And Mark Twain did it, right? You write the way people talk. And that's what— because people believe you. They think, you know, you're not doing something staged. You're not talking from a PowerPoint presentation. It's your voice. Are you humorous? Are you not humorous? Do you like to describe things a lot? Do you like to use numbers? Do you not like to use numbers? You know, this is your voice, and this is who you are. And that's— and if you don't use who you are, then the people won't think you're credible, because they can tell. They can tell when you've memorized a pitch.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, yeah.

Carl Vonderau
And here's something else Oscar Wilde said, be yourself, everyone else is taken.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, I've heard that.

Carl Vonderau
Right. Yeah. So that's— you've— and that's what appeals to people. And part of being yourself is being vulnerable enough to tell, you know, what problems you've had and how you've overcome them. It's not all a good story.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, say more about the vulnerability. I admire that. You know, some— there's a strain of thought that to be vulnerable is a sign of weakness. I think it's exactly the opposite. I think if you're vulnerable, it's a sign that you're strong and confident and able to open up and explain, share your vulnerability, explain what went wrong, what you did wrong. How you failed, how you let someone down, etc., whatever it might be, how you let yourself down. But say more about the empathy that comes with vulnerability.

Carl Vonderau
Right, right. Well, when you tell someone how you failed, they know you're being true. You wouldn't lie about that, you know, so they immediately trust you. And they felt the same way probably at one time or another. Plus you've raised a question because they know you're going to tell about how you, how you became successful afterwards. So you've raised a question. How did you do that? What lesson am I going to learn from that, from become this guy who's just like me? And how can I apply that my own, in my own life, you know, or in my own nonprofit? So when you say, you know, you, uh, you had— okay, so here's another story from A Reason to Survive. Yeah. Which was arts, and they're here in San Diego, and they would do art therapy for kids in high school so they could discover who they were and have the confidence, you know, to be successful people. So they had all these programs that were in buildings that they owned with art and theater and performance, and then COVID hit. So you can talk about that, you know. I mean, we were going to go— you could say we were going to go bankrupt because of all of this. You know, what do we do? It all depends on kids coming in to see us and personally in front of us. So what did they do? They changed it into a virtual program, and they sent out arts kits to all these kids that they could do at home and take virtual classes, and they actually expanded their business. So you start from vulnerable, you know, we had the totally wrong Wrong strategy and how we made it into the right strategy. You could talk about— you can be personal too. I worked 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. I didn't— I couldn't talk with my wife. I was going to have a heart attack. I was, you know, I was hyperventilating. I was yelling at my kids. And then I realized I had the wrong personal strategy about how to make a business successful.

Tony Martignetti
Hmm.

Carl Vonderau
You know, you— and that personal side of it connects right away. You can do it about how, um, how you started out. And, and this is, this is something else. When, when, um, to reach somebody emotionally, you can start out about how bad things were, but you can also use some writer elements in it in terms of, uh, when you describe— when you label an emotion It loses its power. So when you describe it, what happens then? It gains power. And how do you do— you can do that through the senses, for one thing. And most people use sight entirely too much. There are the other senses you can use as well in making the listener feel your story. When— so somebody described in my primer, they said when Let's see, when we first started out, the only clients we had were insects. We were in the basement of a building. The floors were slanted. It flooded. The only clients we had were insects and rats. We, we maxed out our credit cards. You know, you're getting a feel for this. You could even do it farther by saying, well, it smelled musty. It was so cold in the winter, we all We, we grasped our cups of coffee to get warmer. You know, you could, um, say, um, the, the loneliest sound in the world was there was no telephone ringing. So you're using all these senses to describe how bad the situation was without ever labeling it. And that's something you can do as well. I've probably got a little bit off the track of what you asked me. I can't remember.

Tony Martignetti
That's all right. We'll go back to some— no, it's valuable. I mean, this is all— it all translates, you know, it's just where it translates to our work. The— it's interesting that you pronounce the word primer. I learned it as primer. It's a primer. You didn't learn it as primer? No.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, I don't know, maybe I've got it wrong. I've just always, you know, in prime, prime numbers. So you think primer, maybe number

Tony Martignetti
one. Yeah, prime number one.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah,

Tony Martignetti
I don't know. All right, we'll have to check. Uh, maybe it's both. Maybe it's both. Um, I may be wrong. I don't think I am. See, you're more, you're more willing to be vulnerable than I am. It's always been primer in my life. How can I say I might be wrong? I can't keep myself up that way. It's gonna— I can't do it.

Carl Vonderau
Well, here I am, a writer, and I don't even know how to pronounce something.

Tony Martignetti
I'll never be a successful writer. No, I may be wrong, but maybe it's both. The language evolves. That's one thing that I've learned at 63. I've learned language evolves. Words that used to mean one thing now mean the complete opposite sometimes. Like something was hot or cool. And, you know, now it's— things have— language has evolved. So it could very well be primer is just as bona fide as Primer.

Carl Vonderau
Primer.

Tony Martignetti
Okay.

Carl Vonderau
And one could be English and one could be American. I don't know. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
What's in— I'll even, uh, I'll even be generous. Uh, tell us what's in your primer at, uh, carlvonderau.com.

Carl Vonderau
Oh, okay. Well, it's, it's about 40 pages long, and it's all about the elements of how to tell a story. And it's, you know, written in one-page summaries of each element of how to tell a story. And there examples from other people throughout, so you can see how someone has actually used this. You know, one of them is like, do you lose credibility by admitting weakness? So how do we set up a story? What should we know about the hero's journey? What about sidekicks? You know, these are all the elements in a story, the nitty-gritty inside story description. which we've been talking about. It's not everything you describe, but the one thing that illuminates everything.

Tony Martignetti
Let's amplify one of those. Tell us more about sidekicks.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, yeah. Sidekicks is something we all could use a little bit more of, you know. Here's an example. In Cheetos, they had this Cheetos Hot Hot Cheetos from Frito-Lay. Okay, so how did that originate? And here's an— that's another technique of storytelling. You're telling where you're going to end up, and then how did we get there? So the CEO of Frito-Lay said, look, we're all going to be CEOs of the company, and all of you were open to all your suggestions. So there was a janitor there who was Hispanic And he went in to buy some Fritos and he took it home and he put on his, his own seasoning into these Fritos. And he said, you know, it's much better this way. And the company never has thought of this. So here's something else you have to have as a nonprofit or anyone. You— what we call it, the protagonist in a story, is they seize the sword. They take the sword to do battle, right? And he called up the CEO and said, I want to make a presentation to your board. So he went, they, they were open-minded, and they went in and he showed them the sample of what he had done and became one of the most successful brands in the company's history. And the CEO said, it's time for you to put down your mop. So, you know, stories like, stories like that. So he was a sidekick, and the CEO was not afraid to Emphasize how the sidekicks save the company.

Tony Martignetti
You

Carl Vonderau
know, in stories, sidekicks are often doing all the wrong things, but they almost always come up with one key, one key inspiration that saves everybody. So when you tell about how a sidekick in your organization really helped you solve something, you're validating them You're elevating them, you're establishing your own bona fides as a leader, and you're inspiring people to, you know, want to be told the next story, want to be the character in the next story. So I think it's underused.

Tony Martignetti
That example that you just cited is, I think, is very instructive that occasional stories about your own work.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah,

Tony Martignetti
you know, they can't dominate your feed or, you know, but occasional, like, insider stories.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
I think that lets the donors, potential donors, the volunteers, the potential volunteers, other, whatever other stakeholders you might have, maybe even some of the people who work for, work Who you work for, the beneficiaries that you're working for, lets people inside a little. That goes back to the vulnerability.

Carl Vonderau
Yes. Right?

Tony Martignetti
Vulnerability sets some emotion. But, you know, occasional, you know, we don't want to dismiss it as navel-gazing or, you know, nobody's gonna be interested in the way the sausage is made. That's another way of writing off the insider story. But I think an occasional insider story Again, makes you vulnerable and lets people into your work.

Carl Vonderau
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And we're all sidekicks, and we all maybe go from sidekick to leader, you know, and then we, then we mentor our own sidekicks, other people's sidekicks who are going to continue the mission of the organization, and, and they're going to take it in ways that you never dreamed of. That's what you want. Um, here's another story of, of like a sidekick. Um, There was a kid here in San Diego who, he was poor, he wanted to go to college, he didn't have a lot of money. He went, he worked at Burger King, and after graduation he was in his gown, he went to the Burger King where they all, all his friends were working, and he saw it was really crowded. So he got behind the counter in his gown and he started serving people. And one person came there, and she was so impressed with how courteous he was and how willing he was to help that she started a GoFundMe account for him. It got $180,000, and this kid's college education is taken care of. Now, who was the sidekick there? I'm not really sure, but she was kind of, and they were both— but he was kind of, and they both were leaders at the same time. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, he was a sidekick to his friends. That's what brought him in. And then he jumped on the other side of the counter and she became his sidekick.

Carl Vonderau
And he hopefully will become a leader, you know. Well, he was a leader because he— how many kids would go in their gown and help at Burger King? I mean, that's real leadership.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Yeah.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
All right, leave us with something else, something we haven't talked about or something you want to go deeper in. You know, again, our listeners are all in small and mid-sized nonprofits writing 50 to 300 words. What else would you like to share that we haven't covered or covered sufficiently?

Carl Vonderau
Yeah. Okay, so I think knowing your audience, we haven't talked about. So as a novelist, what's your genre? Who's your audience? Who are your readers? It's not what do you write about, who are your readers? And when you tell a story and you go to a donor, who's that audience and what are they interested in? Abraham Lincoln had a famous quote, if I had an hour to cut down a tree, I'd spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe. You know, so All that preparation is really important. What does that person stand for? What are they involved in? What of your stories are going to reach that person? What— figure out the 5 questions you want to ask that person before you even get in there. And then you have some stories, you maybe have 5 stories that you're not You think they might apply, but you're not sure until you get that acknowledgement from that person as to what they're really interested in and what they're passionate about, because that's where you're going to connect emotionally. And then tell that story and how it connects to their passion. Then it gets you into something else we haven't talked about, which is the ask. Um, I think a lot of nonprofits are really good at storytelling. They're not so good at the ask. They're not so good at using numbers, but How do you then transition from the story into the ask, you know? And it's all about we and us making that transition. So, you know, for the kid in Burger King, we want to help teenagers like him become a hero like he was. And we think we're looking for people that can invest with us. Right. in doing that. And we, I, we think you might, you might really be a good investor in that. So you go from we to invest. We're not asking for money, we're asking for investment. And you are now part of the story because— and then you get to the bigger message that we're going to change San Diego that way, you know, some kind of bigger message to the story. If you want, in part in my book, if you want to see somebody that really knows how to tell a story well, there is a TED Talk by David Miliband who is in— was in charge of the refugee organization, and there's an 18-minute TED Talk, and you will see how he uses personal How he uses other people's stories, how he uses facts, statistics, how he uses messaging, how he uses bigger message, how he transforms it into I'm telling you to it's us together, and how it's important to you as a person. It's all in 18 minutes. It's really good.

Tony Martignetti
David Miliband.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. You know the name of his TED Talk?

Carl Vonderau
It's refugee status. Let's see. Well, here, I got it right here. I'm sorry to— International Rescue Committee is in charge of, and it's the refugee crisis is a test of our character.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Well, and IRC is a charity itself. International Rescue Committee.

Carl Vonderau
Yes. All right. Yes. Yes.

Tony Martignetti
All right. Well, we will— we can check out David. And we can check out your primer. See how generous I am saying— I said primer. I said primer twice when I know it's dead wrong. No, that's—

Carl Vonderau
Well, maybe it's a premier foci.

Tony Martignetti
We're going to look it up and they'll know who's right. It might be both, but I'll be so generous as to say it a third time. We can check out your primer at carlvonderau.com. You can check out your latest novel, Saving Miles, Miles, M-Y-L-E-S, by Carl Vonderau.

Carl Vonderau
Yes. And on the website, go to the newsletter and it would— you have to subscribe to the newsletter supposedly to get the primer, but it's right at the bottom there. You can download it.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. You just gave us the pro tip. Yeah,

Carl Vonderau
I did.

Tony Martignetti
But if we should join your— join Carl's newsletter, join his email list, join the list, because then you'll know about the new— the next book that's coming out.

Carl Vonderau
Um,

Tony Martignetti
and I

Carl Vonderau
do every, every, every one, I do, um, a description of a, um, a financial scam that's happened somewhere. And I haven't done one on a nonprofit. I think that would be really interesting.

Tony Martignetti
All right, let's not— all right, sometimes the financial scams get too much public press, too much mass media, and then people think— I don't think that's a good idea, Carl, because nonprofits are under such pressure now How about doing an uplifting— do an uplifting nonprofit story? Because Congress— I'll do that. Led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, is— they're so—

Carl Vonderau
I'll do that.

Tony Martignetti
Nonprofits and scams, and, and Elon Musk called us, uh, a Ponzi scheme. Don't, don't do a negative story.

Carl Vonderau
Okay.

Tony Martignetti
Do, do financial crimes on Wall Street. Do an uplifting nonprofit story, please.

Carl Vonderau
All right.

Tony Martignetti
How about that? Please. I'm, I'm I'm asking, I'm asking, I'm asking my captain, please do the uplifting. If you're going to do a nonprofit story, make it a positive one.

Carl Vonderau
All right. All right.

Tony Martignetti
Carl Vonderau, carlvonderau.com. Carl, thank you very much. I knew this was gonna be fun because a couple of several weeks ago we had storytelling, but it was from a PR consultant perspective, which was valuable. She was very, very good. Talked about local media and things. But when I saw your pitch about Uh, you know, storytelling from the award-winning novelist perspective, I knew it would be equally valuable and, and very different than anything we've ever done. So thank you. Thank you for bringing that to us.

Carl Vonderau
Okay, well, thank you. It was fun. Like I said, it was going to be fun.

Tony Martignetti
The fun did continue. It's still fun now at the end? It's still fun? Yeah,

Carl Vonderau
yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, good. And it was fun in the middle too? It didn't wane and then become fun again?

Carl Vonderau
It was fun in the middle is what every novelist dreads.

Tony Martignetti
No, we didn't have that. No, we had a consistent— no, it was linear. Linear. It was probably logarithmic growth in fun, I would say.

Carl Vonderau
Oh, the hockey stick. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Not even just exponential. Yes, it was logarithmic fun growth. I'm sure of it. All right, so we'll leave it there. All right. Thank you very much, Carl. It was a real pleasure. Thank you.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah, same here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Tony Martignetti
My pleasure.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, the value of nonprofit journalism for your work. With Mother Jones CEO Monica Bauerlein. If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at tonymartignetti.com.

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah! Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. You're with us next week for Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.