Dear Friends,

Back when I was a fully-employed employee, I lived in a constant state of too much / too little.

Too much work...

...and too little time to follow my creative itches.

Now that I am a mostly-employed freelance person, the balance has shifted. It's true, sometimes I still suffer from too much / too little.

But on a dime, my internal balance shifts. And suddenly I am occupying a state of too little / too little.

Too little work…

… and too little motivation to give a damn.

Maybe this is what happens when a person has spent a lifetime frantically chasing unreasonable deadlines?

Anyway, for the past few months, I've been soooo busy. If I'm being honest, there have been days when I was too busy to shower.

And I’ve definitely been too busy to think creatively.

And now, suddenly, the worm is starting to turn. I have four projects wrapping up over the course of two weeks. And it leaves me wondering – will I be able to find the motivation to keep my creative juices flowing when there’s no deadline in sight?

Luckily, at this exact moment, my husband and I randomly started talking about our favorite movies.

Yeah, I know. Totally random. But stick with me here.

For a long time, my husband’s favorite movie was The Shawshank Redemption. And if Shawshank came on the TV, he was absolutely useless for the next 2 hours and 22 minutes … plus commercials.

These days, his “favorite” movie is probably The Martian? Or maybe The Accountant? Both are excellent choices.

I’m not great at favorites. But if pressed, I’d probably say that my favorite movie is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

Yeah. I know. It’s a mouthful.

As it turns out, this was the perfect week for me to re-watch a movie in which the main character writes a book – a whole goddamn book – that she has no hopes of publishing.

And in the end, she tells her editor that it doesn’t matter that the book can’t ever be published, because…

“Somehow the doing has given me a tremendous appetite for more.”

Oh, girl.

I SEE you.

I FEEL you.

I might actually BE you, except that I don’t live in post WWII London and I did not just buy the most magnificent gold satin gown that has ever been worn to a USO event.

But back to the actual point of my story…

The more I work, the more I am inspired by work.

At this particular moment, I am working on a project that has no guarantee of actually being made. My producing partner and I have already put a ton of hours into it. And we have many more hours of work to do before we know if we’re actually going to be able to make the thing.

But despite the uncertainty, the process of figuring out if this idea is worth 6-8 episodes is fascinating.

Inspiring.

So. Much. Fun.

And so I want to take you through the process of what it’s like to develop an idea, in a way that will hopefully result in a worthwhile project.

(By whatever the standard of “worthwhile” means to you!)

Step 1: Start with access

Far too often, I talk to reporters who think they’ve found a great story, and they just kinda figure that if they find a big enough home for that story, the subjects of the story will just magically agree to talk.

Sadly, that's not how any of this works.

When you’re considering which new ideas are worth your time, think about access. Are the people you’d need to interview actually accessible? Do you have a way to reach them? Are they likely to say yes?

Nobody’s going to give you the go ahead for a major project unless you can actually show that you can get at least some of the interviews you’ll need. So it just makes sense to start there.

Step 2: Fall down the rabbit hole

Not to get too dramatic here, but there are few things in this world that I love more than a good rabbit hole.

The first step to every project is to find everything that’s already been written about it.

And I mean everything.

If you’re already talking to people close to the story, ask them for every piece of paper and digital file they have related to it.

Every. Single. One.

Do a Google search. Change the prompts. Search again. Change the prompts. And search again. Do this over and over and over, until nothing new shows up in the search.

Then do the same thing on YouTube. And TikTok. And Instagram. And maybe LinkedIn? And really any other social media that might be relevant to your project.

And then come back a week or two later and do it all again. Because things are gonna change.

The internet is always changing.

Follow this same process with a LexisNexis search, if you’re lucky enough to have access. And newspapers.com – because some sources will show up there that don’t show up anywhere else.

No lie. This literally just happened to me. After spending at least a dozen hours on Google, LexisNexis and the local newspaper that covered our story, I logged into newspapers.com. And within 10 minutes, I found a magazine article that doesn’t show up on any other search. And better yet, the details in that article changed some very fundamental things about the way we’re approaching this project.

I literally shrieked out loud when I read these details. They were THAT BIG.

Step 3: Make sense of the nonsensical

Okay, so now you have a LOT of information. You might even feel like you have too much information? So what do you do next?

May I interest you in a timeline?

If you’re working on a project that has a lot of plot points, a timeline is really going to help you. Start adding items right away, even before you know which ones are important.

You can always trim it down later. But being able to see everything that happened, all in one place, can really help you figure out what you’re dealing with. And they can help you identify the important moments that you still don’t understand.

And please, please, please – learn from my mistake. Do not put anything on this timeline without linking out to the source where you found the information. Because some day, in the not so distant future, you will have built an entire episode based on an entry in that timeline. And your fact checker will ask you where you got that information. And you won’t have a clue.

Been there. Done that.

You might also consider a character list? Literally just make a list of every single person who you might mention in the story. Plus sources. And people who might be able to connect you with your sources.

Some of the people on this list will be out of reach, but that’s okay. I have had Celine Dion on my list twice, for two wildly different projects. She has not yet agreed to talk to me. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

And you'll never know, unless you ask.

Step 4: Find meaning among infinite possible meanings

I feel like a lot of people try to skip this step. They have a series of events. They have a couple of interesting characters. And then they figure that they’re ready to pitch.

And then when the pitch fails, they start to think that their idea was not good. Or they just assume – for good reason – that there are not a lot of pitches being accepted right now, and maybe they should just give up?

And truly, there are not a LOT of pitches being accepted right now. But there are SOME. And there’s no reason why yours can’t be among them.

As a person who sometimes is on the accepting end of the pitch process, I can say with certainty that many – maybe even most – of the reporters who are pitching have failed to figure out the meaning behind their story.

They have a compelling central character…or two.
They have a surprising series of events, showing change over time.
They might even have an important, educational reason why the project SHOULD be made. Why the world NEEDS to hear it.

But I have some bad news for you…

Most listeners don’t care about SHOULDS. They’re not necessarily interested in what they might NEED.

Mostly, they want to be entertained. They want to be challenged. They want to be exposed to something new, in a way that feels fresh.

(But not too fresh. Sadly, there’s a bit of a fine line here!)

So once you’ve assembled all your research in a way that makes sense, you’re gonna have to start choosing between possible meanings. Why is this story important to people who are not directly affected by it? Why should the rest of us care?

And really, it’s okay if this meaning shifts during your reporting. That’s fine.

But to prove that you have a compelling story, you have to be able to articulate what it might all mean.

Just one more thing for today...

A while back, I had the great pleasure of having a cup of tea with Jasmin Bauomy.

If that name is familiar, you might have heard of The Ecco -- Jasmin's amazingly inspiring project that gathers audio makers for a retreat to make work that inspires them, without having to worry about the commercial value of that work.

Ooh...goosebumps.

So, a couple of weeks back, Jasmin sent me a sneak peek of the project that came after the Ecco.

This is a project fully supported by Jasmin's employer, TRZ Media, because they saw the amazing things she was doing to feed her creative soul, and they wanted to be a part of it.

And I'm sorry to say that I did not get the chance to listen right away. Weeks went by, and I still hadn't listened.

Remember that thing I said about being too busy to shower?!?

Well, I listened tonight. It's called Little Devils. And friends, please do check it out.

This is not something you listen to while multitasking. It's something worthy of putting on your headphones -- even after a long day of wearing headphones. And if you're anything like me, it'll remind you of all of the reasons why you love audio storytelling.

For reals.

Remember, the best way to help our little Narrative Beat community grow is by sharing this newsletter with someone who needs it. You can simply forward this email, or send a link to my full archive!

For those looking for extra credit, consider joining our Patreon or dropping a few bucks in the Narrative Beat tip jar. As they say in fundraising, every dollar makes a difference!

Okay, that's it! See you soon...I hope!!

Karen