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Bob Stobener , a seasoned leader celebrated for his adept communication skills, has a unique perspective on improving communication as a means to foster understanding and collaboration. Drawing from his creative background in cartooning and strategic advertising at a successful comedy club, Stobener believes that effective communication is essential not only for resolving conflicts but also for enhancing personal and professional growth. He emphasizes the importance of listening and forming genuine connections, demonstrating how these practices can lead to positive outcomes, as seen in his ability to guide team members toward fulfilling career paths. By advocating for open and honest dialogue, Stobener illustrates how strong communication skills can support individual success and organizational excellence across various industries. (00:01:52) Communication Skills: Comedy Club to Corporate Success (00:14:21) Transparent Interactions: The Foundation of Leadership Success (00:14:21) Transformative Impact of Transparent Leadership Communication (00:19:41) Mastering Communication Skills for Multifaceted Success Hosted by Larry Wilson Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions Producer: R. Scott Edwards Sponsored by: The Wilson Method **Check out NEW upgraded website with FREE offer !! Visit: https://theWilsonMethod.com Link: TheWilsonMethod.com…
Conteúdo fornecido por Charlie Bleecker. Todo o conteúdo do podcast, incluindo episódios, gráficos e descrições de podcast, é carregado e fornecido diretamente por Charlie Bleecker ou por seu parceiro de plataforma de podcast. Se você acredita que alguém está usando seu trabalho protegido por direitos autorais sem sua permissão, siga o processo descrito aqui https://pt.player.fm/legal.
Charlie reads memoirs and talks about what she learned, so she can write her own.
Conteúdo fornecido por Charlie Bleecker. Todo o conteúdo do podcast, incluindo episódios, gráficos e descrições de podcast, é carregado e fornecido diretamente por Charlie Bleecker ou por seu parceiro de plataforma de podcast. Se você acredita que alguém está usando seu trabalho protegido por direitos autorais sem sua permissão, siga o processo descrito aqui https://pt.player.fm/legal.
Charlie reads memoirs and talks about what she learned, so she can write her own.
Here’s what I learned from Happy To Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser by Amy Wilson: Include your fantasies. It’s especially funny if you can incorporate four levels in the build up to the punchline: First: set the scene—what’s about to happen Second: set the stakes—why is this a big deal Third: fantasy/a positive hypothetical of what’s to come Fourth: Dialogue/action of what actually transpired Write a short and snappy analogy that has pronouns and alliteration: “It was like hiring Kidz Bop for a bachelor party.” Include proper nouns. Proper nouns that are personal to you make the writing more compelling, specific, and yes, even funny: “I used to make fun of my husband for letting his perception of a good night's sleep be ruined by what his Whoop told him.”…
Memoir deep dive #21 Here’s what I learned from Here After by Amy Lin: One way to treat your audience like a genius is to not say the next obvious thing. Where can I leave out what the reader already knows is coming? One approach to this: in every paragraph I write, where can I remove the last sentence? “I stare at the blank ceiling tiles and wonder when Kurtis will call me. I have so much to tell him.” Expressing negative feelings about a person’s appearance is funnier than directly expressing negative feelings about the person. “Also, I hate Michelle’s haircut.” When using Anaphora—which is repetition at the start of a sentence or clause—the last line should punch with specificity. “It is the only thing I feel able to do since he died. The only way I am able to say what it is like for me. The only place I can meet grief without being utterly consumed by it.” The most important place to leave out thoughts and feelings (and only show dialogue and action) is when I’m the most emotional. The angrier I feel, the less feelings should be put on the page.…
Here's what I learned from Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd: -When writing memoir, never insert present knowledge about your past if it means condemning your past self or celebrating your present self. -Avoid casual prose such as, "you know," or "bet you thought," or "ummm, hello?" This style of writing seeks instant intimacy with the reader. It's a style what wants to SEEM fresh and authentic but has the opposite effect. -Don't be melodramatic! I cannot write that "I was homeless" because I was crashing on my friend's couch in between living situations. Just write what happened. Just write the facts. -If you want to publish a book you don't need a marketing plan or a book proposal. You need 20-30 pages of good prose and a trusted agent's counsel.…
Here’s what I learned from my conversation with Sandy Schnakenburg, author of The Housekeeper's Secret : When you’re writing about a tragic or shocking event, one way to create suspense is to tease that something bad is coming. In the book she had a terrible accident on her bike, and at the beginning of the chapter a character calls out and tells her to be careful riding to school. From there until the moment of the crash she slows down time by including the tiniest details and specifics surrounding the moment—what time she left, her route to school, who she was meeting, why she couldn’t be late, and that first period math was her favorite. She described the actual ride, the way she rode with no hands, and later how she stood up on the pedals. It took Sandy 14 years to write her book, and the structure changed from a book of essays, to a braided memoir, to a chronological, compressed timeline with a hook at the beginning pulled from the midpoint of the story. An editor helped her to remove 50,000 words and bring the reader more onto the page by removing her analysis of the scenes. Her editor said, “Leave it to the reader. Let them decide. Let them process what happened.” Sandy wrote a synopsis and summary of her book before it was ever finished. She sent the synopsis to an agent and he picked her up—just like that! She attended the San Francisco Writers Conference, where she pitched her book all day long to writers, editors, and agents. It was there she met her editor and book publisher. If you want to publish a book your story needs to have a universal theme. Once you have that and can really communicate that, then you need to figure out how to distribute it. Then you need a good publicist. (Sandy interviewed twenty-five publicists.)…
Here’s what I learned from Long Live The Tribe Of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden: First lines should make the reader curious to read more. They can be surprising, specific, and/or present a conflict. It’s important to stay in moments longer by going deeper with details and going on tangents that add context. Write unsparingly about yourself to get the reader to root for you—without disclaimers. Write about complicated characters in your life by sharing stories that show their different sides.…
Here’s what I learned from Still Life At Eighty by Abigail Thomas: Revealing the dark parts of yourself in writing makes those things less scary and less powerful. Simple, clear, no-frill writing can be just as powerful and moving as fancy prose. Lean into your style, whatever it may be. Sometimes writing can just be keeping a log of your feelings and experiences. It might not be something to publish now, but later, when you can look back at that time in your life and have rich details to include once you’ve had some separation from it. If you don’t know what to write about, write about what you’re struggling with. Rhythm is important: Print out what you’ve written in a different font so it looks like somebody else wrote it and read it out loud. When your voice goes dead, there’s either something hiding behind that sentence or it’s just boring. Memoir is not a place to get revenge or cast oneself as victim. Freelance Writing Direct podcast interview with Abigail Thomas…
Here’s what I learned from My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff: How to write dialogue in a novelistic or cinematic way: Include details about the surrounding area. The weather, scenery, anything the characters interact with, other people in the room. This is especially useful at the start of the scene, and if/when the scene changes. When you add context for the reader it should relate to the dialogue before it. It can also help establish the relationship of the characters. There are three people to consider in a two-person conversation: the two people in the scene and the reader. Dialogue can be inside-baseball between the two characters even it’s unclear to the reader, but interjections by the writer can clarify and invite the reader into what’s happening. A scene should not end at the end of the conversation, but at a point when a character says something that transitions into the next scene. And here’s the link to Joanna’s conversation with Estelle Erasmus on Freelance Writing Direct.…
I submitted a personal essay to the New York Times weekly column, Modern Love. In this episode I talk about how I learned about the column, how I decided to submit an essay under my real name, and a little context for what the essay is about. References: 39 Submission Tips for Modern Love Estelle Erasmus interviews: Noah Michelson Joanna Rakoff Abigail Thomas Maggie Smith Cheryl Strayed…
Here’s what I learned from three sobriety memoirs: The Night of the Gun by David Carr: Interview the people from your past. It doesn’t have to be formal or recorded. It could be as simple as a text message to see what they remember about the event. This can accomplish three things: It’s a way to add more details into your story. It allows the person to feel like they’re a part of the process of writing it as opposed to feeling like it’s one-sided. It makes you, the writer, more relatable and reliable because you’re giving different perspectives. The Unexpected Joy Of Being Sober by Catherine Gray: Don’t break the fourth wall to manipulate the reader or try to get them on your side. Breaking the fourth wall should always be a statement, not a question. Option: Use sarcasm or let them in on a secret. We Are The Luckiest by Laura McKowen: Just tell the story and leave the reader out of it.…
Heres’s what I learned from Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp AND The Elements Of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth. Anaphora is when you start each phrase, sentence, or paragraph with the same word or words. But be careful: readers always remember the opening words but often forget the rest. So when using anaphora, be intentional about what you want to emphasize. Also, only using one word for the anaphora—as opposed to a phrase—is slightly less powerful but beautifully hypnotic. Epistrophe is when you end each phrase, sentence, or paragraph with the same word. Diacope is when a word or phrase is repeated after a brief interruption. Parataxis is short, clear, matter-of-fact sentences, often subject-verb, without conjunctions (think Hemingway). Knapp was selective with parataxis, using it when she wrote about the moment she found out her father died and again at the moment her mother died. In both instances, it was a shocking, cringey admission because she was drunk both times. Pleonasm is the use of unneeded words, sometimes repeating the exact same word, other times saying the same thing in a slightly different way. This can annoy readers, but when utilized for intentional redundancy can be quite effective and powerful.…
Do you want to write under a pseudonym or not? I have been writing as Charlie Bleecker for over four years. If you want to give it a real go, commit to it for a year. Do my friends read my writing? No. Does my family read my writing? No. That is the whole point. If you care at all about growing your audience in a time span of less than 10 years, don’t do it. What about support? It’s nice to have your family and friends support you… That’s true. But give it time. You only need one or two people to support you in the beginning. I have SO much support now, and none of it comes from my friends or family, except for my husband. He is the one person in my life who knew about Charlie from the beginning. How to choose your name: Pick a name you like! One that’s easy to say and easy to spell and isn’t super common if you search it in Google.…
Here’s what I learned from Life On Delay by John Hendrickson: On Structure: When you open with a big event, where something big is about to happen, it creates suspense. The opening is a pivotal moment. There was life before this moment, and then there’s life after. Around ¾ of the way through the book he comes back to this moment and finishes the story. The life-changing moment is only the beginning of the major changes to come for John (aka, the main character). The life changing moment, then, is a catalyst for change and growth. On the relationships with his family, namely his brother Matt: Adjectives are manipulative when describing the people you’re close to. Showing is always more compelling than telling. When writing about your past—especially your adolescence—the best way to evoke emotion out of the reader is to leave your feelings out of it, whether they were your feelings back then or your feelings now. The best way to introduce a main character in your story is through multiple stories about them. When introducing a character who you had or have a troubled relationship with, it’s important to write about them completely separate from you. So there should be stories that involve you AND stories that don’t involve you, so the reader can get a fuller sense of who this person is. Phrases I will never write in my own book: “I don’t blame them,” or “absolutely thrilled.” Other Notes: When jumping around to past, present, and future, it’s important to find ways of anchoring the reader and orienting them by letting them know where we are on the timeline, in relation to big events that have already occurred in the story. Freeze frame: when you’ve finally arrived at a big moment—in this book’s case, a hard conversation—one way to build suspense is to break up the dialogue by commenting on something else that’s happening at the same time. In this instance, John wrote about what was going on in his head simultaneously. On Endings: A powerful way to end is with a story. It doesn’t have to be fancy or clever. This was simple, abrupt, and beautiful. Here’s the link to Michael Dean’s video about the David Foster Wallace essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbjup1xuo8Q&t=1s…
Here’s what I learned from How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart by David Foster Wallace: Rather than tell us how bad the memoir was, he lists eight (eight!) examples—all quotes from the book. Later, he explicitly tells us how bad TV interviews of top athletes are, then gives two very long and detailed back-to-back examples to make his point. The best memoirs are written by writers, and celebrity memoirs are trash.…
Here’s what I learned from My Fair Junkie by Amy Dresner: Amy Dresner is the second memoirist I’ve read who had a life changing moment with a breathwork teacher—Glennon Doyle was the first, in Love Warrior. So I found a breathwork person near me and did it! I don’t know if it was life changing but I definitely had a moment. Character intros should have lots of specific details, and don’t be afraid to make them long, like three or four sentences. A rule about parentheticals: they should always only be hilarious. Lots of examples of how to not write your feelings or your own commentary to the story, especially when the dialogue is gold (as it was in Amy’s story). And a quick update on my memoir!…
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