Carl Vonderau: 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.
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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 hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with methemoglobbumia 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. Hey Tony, this week it’s. Storytelling with an award-winning crime fiction author. Karl von derro 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 Karl von derro.com. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym. Rob gets flirtatious. Here is storytelling with an award winning crime fiction author. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio, Karl von derro. Karl 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 Karl von derro.com. Welcome to nonprofit Radio, Carl. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It’s, it’s gonna, it’s fun to be here. I’m glad, I’m glad you’re having fun already. We’re not even 2 minutes in. Outstanding. All right, so it’s all, I hope it’s not all downhill from here. Like now’s the fun, and then, and then it’s all a steep decline, uh, for the next 2 remaining 40 minutes. Try to have a, have a good novelistic ending, uplifting, right? Very good, yes. I do like to leave with some inspiration and empowerment, but the fun that’s the fund certainly can. 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, uh, a master storyteller, uh, award winning fiction author. Tell us about your most recent book, Saving Miles. 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 uh 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, uh, but in fact he sneaks off to Mexico and gets kidnapped. His father, a very successful banker, uh, 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. Saving, saving miles, M Y L E S. Miles is the son that uh that you’re talking about. All right. um, what, what brought you to the crime and family overlap, uh, genre? Yeah, I was always interested in crime fiction because, you know, I, 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 of, you know, we’ve gone through a number of things and um I, I wanted to deal with that in this book. Uh 20 years ago we had to send our son to a residential treatment center. And um he came back and, 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 in the book itself. It and it helps me deal with character as well as getting deeper into what makes a family. Uh, not function and what makes it thrive. That’s why I do that kind of fiction. Are you working on something now, or saving miles is recent, so maybe you’re taking a break. No, I’m not. He’s not. No, no, here’s a saying in the, 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, um, these, the, the first three books, I, I did another book before that, uh, my first book called Murderabilia about, um, about what happens to the son of a serial killer and how does he overcome that kind of stigma, uh, especially when he’s accused of the same crime, so. Is that the book that uh where you started learning your lessons? You, you, you’re, you’re pretty open about learning storytelling lessons. Yeah, that’s why we’re here, we’re here to learn from your, from your what you’ve learned, but what was it that first book Bderabilia? Yes, it was, you know, um, what I found is that I have, uh, really gotten to be a competent writer by being by going through a lot of failures and over and over again, and each one you learn a little bit and on that book, you know, I’ve been years I’ve been writing, I’ve written other books but nothing close to publishing and then I went to a writer’s conference. With Jacqueline Machard 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 but I had to pay her, of course, but uh, so she helped me with a lot of the elements of a book, um, and you know what I find is if I, I’ll tell you the rest of the story because it’s not an easy story to, to become a published author. 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 so you know, I think, well, I’m gonna be a bestseller, you know, that’s what’s gonna 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 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, so is that supposed to cheer you up? Yeah, you’re at the bottom, you’re among the bottom of his 10 year career. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, so, so what do you do? Give up? Please tell me, first of all, please tell me the premise is, is, 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. You know, I, I, I had a lot of responses I could have made, but I didn’t. I can think of a few colorful ones. 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, you 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 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 and these writers 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, OK, describe your book in one sentence. I had it. I did it and you get this reaction which is like gold to a writer because she and this acquisition center 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, um, a mid-level publisher. Two months after we signed the contract, uh, 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. OK, so the book was, you know, was good, it was getting good reviews. Uh, 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 the spade work you’ve done sometimes pays benefits for you don’t for ways you don’t realize and so it was the the prize was the voting was done virtually and the book won the award 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 a published author. OK. OK. Well, we need, we need to go deeper on uh on storytelling and the arc of the story, and, but, uh, tenacity, yeah, you’re right, tenacity, I mean you, you turned 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 oh. I love that, you know, so, uh, tenacity is important, tenacity in, uh, in building our teams, 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. The other thing is, listen. Because when people people turn you turn you down, sometimes they give you a nugget that will really help you in the next people you pitch. Well, it may, yes, and it may even help you with them because I’ve often said 6 no’s and you’re halfway to a yes. Right. 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, the timing might be 2 years from now, which is not what you were hoping for, but, uh, 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, in the future. So, yeah, uh, absolutely listening, um, 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 did you say? I, I didn’t, I didn’t catch it, you know, that, but that’s so old, you know, that, that I try to, I try to be a little more, uh, little more original than than that. So let’s, let’s, um. You know, I’m like, I feel like I’m, uh, like, uh, oh, captain, my captain. Uh, I’m in, I’m, I’m at the foot of the master. Award-winning storyteller of, of fiction, but we need to, we need to translate that to our nonfiction, nonprofit stories. Where captain, you know, where, where do we, what would you like, let’s start off like the first, yeah, think of first. Let’s start off with the basics here first, OK? 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, um, 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, um. The first thing is, you know, you can you can you describe who you are or who the narrator is, um, 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 has happened that challenges that character challenges you as the as the narrator. So for instance, you as a nonprofit, you could say, you know, I wanna help kids or or I wanna 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, to do well, and I was always helping him. I became, you know, I, I went in, uh, I became a successful accountant, but what really touched my heart was going back to what it. Killed the closest my closest friend, my father. That kind of thing immediately um connects you with the listener or the reader, because it connects you with them emotionally. It also connects you with um 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 gonna give them an answer to it. Uh, yeah, and, and, and likable too you said a character, some something something bad has happened to a character that’s likable. How can we not like you, you know, your, your, your best friend was your father. And now you want to help others not lose their best friends. 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, um, has been successful. I’ve been the leading money money getter in my company. You as a listener, what do you think about that? Do you like that person? Yeah, it sounds haughty, right? g bragging, insecure, um, and you think, do, 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 is gone, if a person is gone from failure. To success, then that listener thinks, OK, 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 listeners is gonna take away and extrapolate from, and how did that transform you? Um, and this is, you know, what a story has to has to tell. Um, here’s, here’s the story. Mark Benioff, Benioff of, uh, Salesforce, yeah, he, um, you know, he was like the youngest executive in Salesforce. He went to Harvard. He was programming at 15. You know, uh, he, 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. It was when my mentor fired me. From a company he had invested $2 million in and took away my shares. That was led to my growth. So Hits you emotionally, raises a question. And he’s gonna give you the answer. And your listener will, will, will wait for that answer. They want that answer, you know, uh, and you better deliver it. You talked about uh telling 1st, 1st person stories, but we’re gonna be writing about. People or animals or a forest. Uh, uh, that, that was, you know, it might not even right, so it may very well may not even be human, may not even, well, it’s certainly, it’s living, but not, not in human form. How, how does your advice translate to, to writing in 2nd, 2nd or third person? 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 Mark Benioff. He isn’t, I’m not him. When you’re talking about the forest, you know, the work that they do, um, I like to get it on a human level, so you know what is, what has your progress done to for people? How, how has that helped people and specifically how it’s helped people? I don’t know, does that answer your question? Yeah, it starts to get to, or even if it’s a forest, even, I mean, the forest is living and presumably the people we’re writing about care about the 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. Uh, yeah, OK, um, animals in 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. 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. OK. Uh, so let’s dive in a little, a little deeper on some of these. So the, the conflict, something, something that’s happened. Or is going to happen to to someone who’s likable? Can you say more about setting up setting up the conflict? Yeah, yeah. OK, so, um. Robert McKee, who is is like the guru of scriptwriting in Hollywood. He says basically a story starts out with balance, something knocks it off balance, you know, changes everything. The hero then takes it on him or herself to solve that problem, uh, is transformed and then rescues the castle, whatever. So, conflict has to be something that changes everything. Um, it can be internal, like that person, uh, 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, um, it can be an external conflict. And interestingly, um, I think you were in the Air Force, so one of the um one of the uh principles in the Air Force is that um there’s nothing like a good enemy to make a good plane. And so, um, 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, um, a a good enemy. The enemy could be the, maybe it’s the illness that we’re fighting the disease or the illness. It could be, it could be animal uh animal abandonment. 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 I, you’re, you’re just not, you’re not, um, reaching people. The number can be a lot of things, the enemy. When we’re writing, it’s OK to write informally, right? And, and also I, I just wanna make sure we’re, we’re, uh, we’re, I want to make sure that listeners know that we’re, we’re conscious that they’re not, uh, 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 is even long these days, but let’s let’s say at a narrow outer limit of an insider newsletter where people are actually reading your 300 words, whether it’s print or digital, um, so we, we’ve got to condense this down, we don’t have the. Well, I, I would say the luxury, you might say the challenge of writing 55 or 60,000 words. So where, what was my point? What was the point of that? What do you do when you, when you’re limited by the length? Yeah, you know, there’s something called flash fiction where people do this and people write short stories, but we’re we’re even shorter than you. The short story. We’re writing a blog post or a newsletter article or sidebar, right, but it’s still got, it’s, it’s like a scene in a way, in a book because a scene has to have a beginning, a middle, 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. Um, there’s gotta be a voice in the scene. Who, who’s telling this story, what, um, uh, 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. Um, What was the issue? What was the key aspect that changed this person? How did they show that how they were changed and how does it apply to you as as well as others, and you can do it in 300 words. Um, you just have to be very, you have to pick out, uh, only the right details and the and uh the right things to describe. Does that make sense? That becomes the challenge, yeah, because we we wanna stuff so much in because our work is so important we want readers to know the detail you gotta know the details of what we did and then it becomes focused on us in our us and our nonprofit and our work instead of focused on the. The person or the animal or the forest that we helped that that’s where the focus should be, right? Not on, not on how good we are and how successful we were we’re, we’re obviously part of the story because we’re the change agent, but, but don’t focus it on yourself and your work. Right, right, and you can, and we wanna stuff it with detail because we want everybody to know how much we do for every single. Tree But the reader or the listener, they, they can’t absorb all that detail. What they want is one detail that sticks with them, 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, it, 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. Like what? What do you mean? But like, like, so, well, just, you know, for tree we could substitute, it was an animal or it was, it was a person, or you. Uh, that was a diabetic. It was a person with, um, with a, with a carcinoma, you know, what, so we’re substituting, but, but flesh out what you were saying about, uh, here’s a, here’s the objects. Here’s a, here’s a real story, OK, 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. Um, 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? Mm mm. Yeah. So those are the kinds of details you’re looking for. I mean, Joan Didion had a detail where um the objects convey love. Yeah, yeah, very much, very much, you know, you can find it uh in uh Little Women, um, Mr. Lawrence 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. Lawrence, 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 um uh in one of her, her fiction pieces in Latin America to describe the hotel, she said she went year after year and the postcards never changed. You don’t have to say anything about the furnishings or the places, yeah, you just know it conveys, all right, all right, so be savvy about the use of objects. Um, go ahead. I want you to continue and people like contradiction, um, you know, the, the, the, 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? Um, was the key to solving that question, what one change. That’s very good. Did you just think of that or do you use that all the time, and the root rotting roots that’s why you’re a fiction. Yeah. Yeah. The the the animal looked, uh, you know, the, the, the, the kitten looked, the, the kitten was purring, but her paws were bloody. Yes, well, from abandonment because she had, she hadn’t been cared for and right, but what? Yeah. Here’s another example from John le Carre. OK, so you can inform people or you can connect with people, right? And, and I think, um, uh, Lynn Bohart, I listened to his, he talked about this too. So here’s the 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. Uh, there’s a, there’s a conflict. Yeah, yeah. It’s time for Tony’s Take two. Thank you, Kate. There was something today, this very day in the gym, and it was, it was kind of cute. It was sweet and cute. Um, our friend Rob, you’ll remember he’s the uh former Marine, Semper Fi. Um, works out in the gym. I see him all the time, many times a week. And just as I was getting, getting uh set up on the elliptical, I was just getting started, like I was in my first minute or so early, and that’s the first thing I do in the gym is the elliptical. So I just got in there. Um, and he’s chatting with a woman whose name I don’t know yet. We, we, we, we’ll uncover it eventually. They all, they all get identified or identify themselves, uh, eventually. So he says, there’s a problem with my phone. It doesn’t have your number in it. I thought, oh that’s kind of hokey. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just, I mean, we’re adults here. I don’t know. It was, it was kind of sweet in the same way, like, it was a little bit like he was embarrassed, you know, like I was like a teenager, an adolescent. There’s a problem with my phone, it doesn’t have your number. So, and then he, and then he jumps right on, you know, he’s kind of, and then he starts to backpedal a little bit. Uh, is it inappropriate if I ask you for your number? Yeah, it’s like, you know, it reminded me of uh being in the 8th grade and I asked Michelle Bernardi to go to a movie and then I said, no, but you know, you’re probably very busy. And, and we, we never ended up going to the movie. Um. So, so she said, so she says, no, it’s, no, it’s only inappropriate if you ask inappropriately. So I thought that was just kind of a sweet. like adolescent type exchange. I don’t know, you know, the guy’s a former Marine, um, simplify. So, so, uh, she gave him, uh, she gave him. Her number. And then later on this morning, Rob. Semperify 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. Uh, 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, like 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, uh, Reds and Pinot Noir, this, this woman drinks uh Pinot Noir. By the way, her, uh, her birthday is October 26th, I learned. We’ll get her name later, as I said, you know, and eventually we’ll come. Uh, Rob’s birthday is October 24th, so they have a birthday within two days of each other, both Scorpios, they made that point. And, uh, and then at the end, you know, so then he’s, so he’s got his bread now, and then they continue working out. And then he’s, as he’s on his way out, he says, uh, to the bread lady, uh, I’m going for a, for a coffee, uh, if you’re not busy, you know, like, you know, but he doesn’t really say, do you want to come with me and say, if you’re not busy, so again, you know, like, Soft, very soft ask, very soft teen, teenage ask. And she said, uh no, I, I, I, and then she hesitated a little bit. I wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth. No, no, uh, I, I, I have to get my hair cut at 11. I don’t know. It sounded, it sounded weak. I, 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. Uh, so, but Rob getting a little flirtatious, uh, coming on to the ladies a little bit at the gym. Uh, when I, when I find their two names, uh, they, they both are frequent attendees at the gym. Uh, I’ll certainly report their names, I’ll let you know, but, uh, you know, it was, it’s kind of cute, but a little tragic also, poor Rob. Simplify That’s Tony’s take too. Kate. No, he sounds so charming. I think, I think the younger generation would say, uh, like he’s got a lot of riz, like charisma. Oh, really? Really? I, I don’t know. OK, uh, that’s interesting. Riz, he’s got Riz. I never heard that, of course, because, uh, you know, he’s got a lot of Riz. I, I don’t know, it didn’t come across to me as Riz. It kind of came across as a little, little sad and tragic, but, but, but cute also, but still, you know, the guy’s 45 or 50, I mean. You know, we’re too late. I know, but uh 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 Rob. I’ve lost my phone number. Is that what he said I’ve lost my phone number. Can I? No, he said there’s a problem with my phone. It doesn’t have your number. OK, he’s he’s trying. I think that’s cute. It’s cute is the way I see it, yeah, I’m not sure about charisma, but riz Riz, I have, I have to try to use riz in a sentence now, but nobody I talked to will know what it means. They’ll say, what? What do you mean? Cause nobody I nobody I talked to is gonna know riz. I better not. I’m a baby boom boomers trying to talk like Gen Z. It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing. I, I think I’ve never done, I, you know, I think about it sometimes when I’m writing a LinkedIn post, like, I’ll try to use something colloquial. I can’t, I can’t think of an example right now, but I, if I type it, I delete it. Uh, now, it’s, it’s, I’m a baby boomer. I’m stuck with that. I’m not gonna try to be, uh, a Gen Z or, or even millennial, you know, just. Use my language that it’s embarrassing. It’s like, it’s like, uh, it’s like an old guy who can’t get out of his sports car, you know, like you got, you know, it’s humiliating. So, don’t try to be something you’re not. Just, you’re a baby boomer, just stick there. That’s it. Like, stay in your lane like I would say we would say stay in your lane, stay in your lane. Well, we’ve got book who but loads more time. Here’s the rest of storytelling with an award winning crime fiction author with Karl von derro. 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 uh elementary school, English composition class or something, uh, you know, that. There there’s a, there’s a formality. We have to write a certain way and not write the way people talk. I, I, but I, maybe, maybe that was, maybe that was right. 50 years ago or so when I was in high school, but I don’t think it’s true anymore. Do you, do you agree that writing has, is, we can write the way people talk and that, and that’s OK. Absolutely, absolutely, and Mark Twain did it, right? You write the way people talk, and that’s what because uh people believe you, they, they think, you know, you’re not doing something staged, you’re not talking from a PowerPoint presentation. Um, it’s your voice. Are you humorous or you not humorous? Um, uh, do you like to describe things a lot? Do you like to use numbers? Do you not like to use numbers? Now, 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, um, cause they can tell. They can tell when you’ve memorized a pitch, you know, um, and here’s something else. Oscar Wilde said, be yourself, everyone else is taken. Yeah, I’ve heard that. Yeah, 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. Yeah, say more about the vulnerability. I, I admire that, you know, some. There 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, and able to open up and, and explain, share your vulnerability, explain what what went wrong, what you did wrong, how you failed, how you let someone down, etc. whatever, whatever it might be, how you let yourself down, but. Say, say more about the, the, the empathy that comes with vulnerability. 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 anothers. Plus you’ve raised a question, because they know you’re gonna tell about how you, how you became successful afterwards. So you’ve raised a question, how did you do that? What lesson am I gonna learn from that, from 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, OK, so here’s another story from a a reason to survive, which was arts, and they’re here in San Diego, and they would do, um, art therapy for kids in high school, so they could discover who they were and they 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 gonna go, you could say we were gonna 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, uh, wrong strategy and how we made it into the right strategy. Um, you could talk about, you can be personal too. I worked 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. I, um, I didn’t, I couldn’t talk with my wife. I was gonna have a heart attack. Um, I was, uh, you know, I was hyperventilating, um, I was yelling at my kids, um, and then I realized I had the wrong personal strategy about how to make a business successful. Mm 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 about how bad things were, but you can also use some writer elements in it, in terms of, uh, when you, 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, um, and most people use sight entirely too much, um, there are the other senses you can use as well in in making the listener feel your story. When uh so somebody described in my in my primer, they said when. Let’s see, when we first started out, um, the only clients we had were, uh, insects. We were in the basement of a building. The floors were slanted, it flooded. The only uh clients we had were insects and rats. We, we maxed out our credit cards, you know, you’re getting a feel for. You could even do it farther by saying, well, it smelled musty, it was so cold in the winter, we all, we, we grassed 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 probably got a little bit off the track of what you asked me. I can’t remember. That’s all right. I will go back to some, no, it’s valuable. I mean this is all, it all translates, you know, it’s just we’re, we’re, it translates to our work. Um, The um It’s interesting that you, you pronounce the word uh primer. I I learned it as primer. It’s a primer. You didn’t learn it as primer? No. I don’t know. I’ve got it wrong. I’ve always you know, in prime prime numbers, so you think primer, yeah, prime. I don’t know, we’ll have to check, uh maybe it’s, 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 primary in my life. How can I say I might be wrong? I can myself up that way. It’s gonna I can’t do. I am a writer and I don’t even know how to pronounce something. I’ll never be a successful writer. No, I, I may be wrong, but maybe it’s both. The evolves. That’s one thing that I’ve learned at 63, I’ve learned language evolves. Uh, words that used to mean one thing now mean the complete opposite sometimes, like something was, was hot or cool, and you know, now it’s it, things have language has evolved, so it could very well be. Primer is just as bona fide as primer. OK. And one could be English and one could be American. I don’t know. Yeah. What’s in, I’ll even, uh, I’ll I’ll I’ll even be generous. Uh, tell us what’s in your primer at uh Karl von derro.com. Oh, OK. 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 are examples from other people and throughout. So you can see how someone is actually used this, um, 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? Um, what about sidekicks, you know, and these are all the elements in the story, um, the nitty gritty inside story description, which we’ve been talking about. It’s not everything you described, but the one thing that that illuminates everything. Let’s amplify one of those, so, so tell us more about sidekicks. Yeah, yeah, Sidekicks is something we all could use a little bit more of, you know, um. Here, here’s an example, um, in the Cheetos, uh, they had this, um, Cheetos hot Hot Cheetos from Frito-Lay. OK, so how did that originate? Um, and here’s, that’s another technique of storytelling, you’re telling where you’re gonna end up and then how do we get there. Um, so the uh CEO of Frito-Lay said, look, uh, we’re all gonna 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 the 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 saved the company. You know, in stories, sidekicks are often doing all the wrong things, but they almost always come up with one key, um, 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 uh bo bona fides as as a leader. And you’re inspiring people to, you know, um. Wanna wanna wanna be told the next story, wanna be the character in the next story. So I think it’s underused. That example that you just cited, uh, is, I think is very instructive that occasional stories about your own work. Yeah, you know, they can’t dominate your feed or, you know, but, but occasional like insider stories. I think, I think that that lets the let’s 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, let’s people inside a little that that goes back to the vulnerability, right, a vulnerability, um. Set some emotion, but you know, occasional, you know, I, we don’t, we don’t want to dismiss it as as navel gazing or you know, nobody’s gonna be interested, nobody’s gonna be interested in the, the way the sausage is made. That’s another way of writing off the, the insider story. But I think an occasional insider story. Again, makes you vulnerable and, and lets people in to your work. 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 gonna continue the mission of the organization and, and they’re gonna take it in ways that you never dreamed of. That’s what you want. Um, here’s another story of, of like a a sidekick. Um, there was a kid here in San Diego who, um, he was poor, he wanted to go to college, he didn’t have a lot of money. He went, he worked at Burger King, um, 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 uh 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, 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, 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. And uh and he hopefully we will become a leader, you know, well, he was a leader because he, uh, how many kids would go in their gown and help at Burger King? I mean, that’s real leadership. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, uh, leave us with, uh, something else, uh, something we haven’t talked about or something you want to go deeper and, you know, again, our, our listeners are all in small and mid-size nonprofits. Writing 50 to 300 words. What else, what else would you like to share that, uh, we, we haven’t, we haven’t covered or covered? Yeah, OK, so I think um 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? Um, Abraham Lincoln had a famous quote, If I had an hour to cut down a tree, I’d spend the 1st 45 minutes sharpening my ax. you know, so all that preparation is really important. Um, what does that person stand for? What are they involved in, um, what of your stories are going to reach that, that person, um, what, figure out the five questions you wanna ask that person before you even get in there, um, and then you have a, you have a, 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 acknowledgment from that person as to what they’re really interested in and what they’re passionate about because that’s where you’re gonna 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, um, making that transition. So, you know, uh, for the kid in Burger King, um. We want to help teenagers like him become a hero like he was, and we we’re looking for people that can invest with us in doing that and we uh we think you might you might really be uh 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 gonna change San Diego that way, you know, some kind of bigger message to the story. Um, if you want to in part in my book, um. If you want to see somebody that really knows how to tell a story well, um, there was a TED Talk by David Miliband, who um is in, was in charge of the um refugee organization, and it’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 use messaging, how he uses bigger message, how he transforms it into a, 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. David Miliband. Yeah, yeah. OK, um, you know the name of his TED Talk? Uh Uh, it’s refugee status. Let’s see. Well, here I got it right here. I’m sorry to. Um, International rescue Committee is in charge of, and it’s the refugee crisis is a test is a test of our character. OK, well, and IRC is a charity itself. International Rescue Committee. All right. Yes, yes. All right. Well, we will, uh, we can check out David. And uh we can check out your primer. See how generous I am saying I said primer. I said primer twice. When I, when I know it’s dead wrong. No, no, yeah, maybe it’s uh Premier Fosse. We’re gonna look it up and uh they’ll know who’s right. It might be both, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be so generous as to say it a third time. We can check out your primer. At Karl von derro.com. You can check out your, your latest novel, Saving Miles, Miles by Carl Vonnro. Yes, and, 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. OK, we just, you just gave us the pro tip. We, we don’t, but we to join your join, join Carl’s join Carl’s newsletter, uh, join his email list, join the list because then you’ll know about the new, the next book that’s coming out, um. And I 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. All right, let’s not, right, sometimes the financial scams get too much public press, too too much mass media, and then people think, uh, I don’t, 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 and led by Marjorie Taylor Green is so they’re so nonprofits and scams and, and Elon Musk called us uh uh a Ponzi scheme. Don’t, don’t do a negative story. Do, do, do financial crimes on Wall Street. Do an uplifting nonprofit story, please. All right. How about that, please? I, I’m, I’m, I’m asking, I’m asking, I’m asking the, uh, my captain, please do, do, do the uplifting. If you’re gonna do a nonprofit story, make it a positive one. All right. All right. Karl von derro Karl von derro.com. Carl, thank you very much. I knew this was gonna be fun because a couple of a couple of several weeks ago we had storytelling, but it was from a PR. Uh, a PR consultant perspective, which was valuable. She was very, very good. Talked about local media and think, but I, 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 and very different than anything we’ve ever done so thank you thank you for bringing that to us. OK, well thank you it was fun. Like I said, it was gonna be fun. The fun did continue. It’s still fun now at the end. It’s still fun. OK, good. And it was fun in the middle too. It didn’t wane and then become fun again. It was fun in the middle is what every novelist. No, we didn’t have that. No, we had a consistent, no, it was linear, linear probably logarithmic growth in fun. I would say not even just exponential. Yes, it was logarithmic fun growth. I’m sure of it. All right, so we’ll leave it there. Thank you very much, Carl. It was a real pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, same here. That was it. Thank you so much for inviting me. My pleasure. Next week, the value of nonprofit journalism for your work, with Mother Jones CEO Monica Bauerle. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
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