Hello friends,

You might have noticed that things have been a bit quiet here over the past few months? 

Don’t worry. I have not forgotten about you! I just got super busy with a couple of really big projects, and the newsletter had to go on the back burner for a while.

But…I’m back! Super Big Project #1 is in the cleanup stage. And Super Big Project #2 is all wrapped up. Whew!

Now that I’m out from under the CRUSHING PANIC of impossible deadlines, I want to share something really unexpected that I learned from working on these two vastly different projects at the same time.

So, first, I have to back up a bit and tell you what I've been working on.

Super Big Project #1 is a true crime adjacent, longform narrative limited series for Campside and Audible. It’s set to launch in October, but it’s not announced yet…so I’m going to keep the details vague. Here’s what I can tell you:

My producing partner and I have been working on this project since January of 2024. We’ve recorded close to 50 hours of interviews, sifted through thousands of pages of court documents, and reviewed months worth of court testimony. Somehow – and I’m still not exactly sure how – we have managed to craft it all into seven episodes, totalling a bit more than four hours of compelling narrative audio. 

(Let me know, but I think my next newsletter might be about how I used AI to help me sort through the mountains of research I collected for this project and make sense of the overall arc?)

Super Big Project #2 was a completely different type of challenge. It was a time-sensitive, interview-style show with significant narrative elements for Foreign Policy and the UN Foundation.

Our timeline was silly. We didn’t have two and a half years (and counting!) to craft something spectacular. Instead, we had four weeks and one day from the time that the project hit my desk to the day our video trailer was contractually required to drop. During that time we had to design the show, hire a host, record interviews, write an audio trailer and animate it – so that it could be released on video.

(I didn’t actually make the video, but this process seems like a good newsletter topic too, no?)

Once we got the first video trailer out in the world, the real work began. Because the contract was for 8 episodes. Each episode was released in audio and video and included a two minute video trailer, a 8-12 minute narrative open, a roundtable with three guests and a “host chat” to wrap it all up. 

It was a LOT.

The focus of today’s newsletter is going to be those two minute trailers. Because it was something I hadn’t done a lot of before. And it required my brain to do a lot of switching. One morning I’d be working on a 4+ hour narrative, and later that afternoon I’d be trying to cram a story into two minutes. 

It seems crazy. But it was surprisingly…sane. Because whether you’re going long or going short, storytelling follows the same rules.

So, let's get into it.

Characters

Everyone knows that characters are super important for a 4+ hour narrative. Without characters to connect to, the story feels untethered. Unsupported.

Lost.

Turns out, the same is true for a two minute narrative!

Now, I know what you might be saying. 

“But Karen,” (imaginary) you might say. “I have watched that first trailer, and you didn’t have a main character.”

And I can see why (imaginary) you might think that. But I want you to go back and listen/watch again. And if you do, you’ll realize what I realized when (imaginary) you put that doubt in my head. 

The main character of that first video trailer is, without a doubt, the United Nations. 

Remember, friends. Characters are not always people. They can be organizations, places, animals … even things!

Anyway, when it came time to write the trailers for individual episodes, it became clear that leaning on the UN wasn’t going to be enough. We were gonna have to do a little character development.

Not REAL character development. That takes time! And there’s no time to spare when you’re trying to tell a story in two minutes.

But we needed to find a shorthand. A way to learn a lot about someone while also learning something about the story. 

And you know what that means?!?

Anecdotes

Yep. Just like you use anecdotes to introduce characters when crafting a longform narrative, super short anecdotes did a lot of heavy lifting in these little two minute narratives. 

I’m gonna link to another one of these trailers here. Don’t worry! You only have to listen to/watch the first :30 seconds to understand why this one is interesting.

Okay, so the main character of this trailer is U Thant. In case you’ve never heard of him, he was secretary-general of the UN during the Cold War. 

Becoming secretary-general wasn’t exactly part of U Thant’s life plan. His predecessor had been killed in the Congo under mysterious circumstances and U Thant was the only person that both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could agree on to replace him.

But…we had already told parts of that story in the first episode of our podcast, so it didn’t make sense to repeat it again. 

And that’s how we ended up with U Thant and Nikita Khrushchev, bobbing around in the Black Sea.

Incidentally, this is my absolute favorite illustration of the whole series. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

Pre-Planning

Okay, so we never would have ended up with U Thant and Nikita Khrushchev, bobbing around in the Black Sea, if not for the fact that I found mention of it in a book written by U Thant’s grandson, Thant Myint-U.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. How did I find time to read a book when I was churning out episodes at an already shocking rate?!?

Yeah. Let’s not get silly. I did not actually read the book. 

I read the index of the book. 

When I found the chapter I needed, I backed up a few pages for some extra context. And voila! 

U Thant and Nikita Khrushchev, bobbing around in the Black Sea.

The truth is, I had a huge amount of research support on this project. The UN Foundation provided us with an extensive brief for every episode. It covered the background for the roundtable discussions, which our fabulous host Jasmin Bauomy handled. 

(The short answer of how we managed to hit our deadlines? Divide and conquer! I never would have had the bandwidth to produce these narratives if I also had to prep the host for the roundtable. Luckily, I had Jasmin!) 

The brief from the UN Foundation included a bunch of info about the “historical case study” that had been chosen to set up that roundtable discussion. And it was my job to turn that brief into a two minute video trailer AND a 8-12 minute narrative open for the audio episode.

I treated the brief like a choose-your-own adventure book. I read through the whole thing, highlighted the bits that worked for storytelling and designed a long and short version of the narrative arc.

But even though the brief I got from UNF was much longer than necessary, it didn’t always have all of the elements for a good narrative. So, I’d supplement with some of my own research.

Bottom line: There’s no substitute for doing your own research. Especially when you only have two minutes to tell a story, you want to make sure you’ve got something in there that’s going to sound fresh and new.

Otherwise, why bother? 

Variable Pacing

Okay, so we’re all familiar with the idea that if you want to cram a lot of info into a short period of time, you gotta do a lot of quick cuts. 

You might hear the host read half a sentence and then a soundbite comes in with the punchline. Or vice-versa.

Or you might use lots of fragmented sentences.
Ditch unnecessary words.
And go for the drama.

It can all start to feel a bit choppy. 

Disconnected.


Weird.

And so the best tool in my “make it shorter” toolbox became variable pacing.

So, yes, you’re gonna hear a lot of fragmented sentences. 

Lots of fragments.

But I tried to make sure there was at least one place in the script where the guest could step into the spotlight and say ONE BIG THING. All by themselves. Without the host butting in to steal the spotlight.

Usually, this would be at the end, or near to the end. And it almost always explored the meaning of the story. 

Truth is, you can use narration to fill in all sorts of details about the who, what, when, where, why and how. But when it comes to why this is important – I wanted to hear from my source!

Letting Go

Yeah, the ability to let go is key to storytelling, whether you’re telling a two minute story or one that spans many hours. 

We call it “killing your darlings,” because sometimes you have to let go of your very favorite piece of tape, in order to make the story sing.

It’s not going to be a surprise if I tell you that I had to kill a lot of darlings to tell these stories in two minutes. 

So, so many darlings…

But killing your darlings doesn't mean you can't have fun! (See above: U Thant and Nikita Khrushchev, bobbing around in the Black Sea.)

It just means that you need to make sure that every element of your story serves the story -- and not your own, personal interests and ego.

Shifting Your Mindset

Okay, now that I’ve told you all the things that are the same regardless of whether your narrative is long or short, I’m going to talk about what’s different.

I had a plan in mind when I started this project. Knowing that time was going to be tight, I wanted to make the long version of each of these narratives first, and then cut it down to fit the two minute format.

Wouldn’t that have been lovely?

But it just didn’t work that way. Because a two minute narrative isn’t just a super short version of a 8-12 minute story.

It has a different structure.
Vastly different pacing.
And, most importantly, a completely different purpose.

In the 8-12 minute version of the story, the goal was to have the listener walk away with a decent understanding of what had happened, the lessons that were learned and how those lessons might be applied to the challenges facing the world today.

But there’s no time for any of that when you’ve only got two minutes.

As the project evolved, I realized that the two minute versions could do one thing – and one thing only.

They could inspire.

In this case, specifically, I was trying to inspire them to think about what the UN can accomplish. But inspiration comes in lots of forms. You might want to inspire your listener to be angry. Or scared. Or proud. Or curious.

So, yeah, in those two minutes, I had time to do just one thing. But that’s okay. 

Because -- as it turns out -- that one thing was super powerful.

This is generally the place where I remind you of all the ways to support this newsletter. 

But wow, it's been a long time. And I don't really feel like I've earned your support over the last few months.

So instead, I want to ask how I can best support you. As jobs in our corner of the industry have dwindled, I've found myself second guessing what would be most useful to Narrative Beat readers.

Do you still want narrative tips? Or would you like more insights into chat shows and other forms of podcasting? Or more industry talk?

As you might have realized by now, I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of different topics. So please, reply to this email and let me know what you need!

Karen