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Ira Glass On Storytelling

Ira Glass is a radio personality and creator, host and executive producer of the award-winning public radio show This American Life. Glass discuses many helpful points for storytelling. It is important for storytellers to understand the building blocks of a story in order to be successful.

According to Glass, you don’t want to write in the style based on topic sentences and facts to fill the argument. Instead, Glass placed special emphasis on the anecdote. An anecdote is a sequence of actions that takes the audience on a journey that will eventually reach a moment of reflection. The sequence captures the audience’s attention by leading them from one thing to the next, making them head towards a destination. Anecdotes should constantly be raising questions and also answering them.

The second building block is a moment of refection. “ Here is the point of the story,” said Glass. Through the use of an anecdote one can make a boring story more interesting by engaging the audience.

Glass then went on to discuss the difficulty of finding a descent story. Finding a descent story and producing a story require the similar amount time. It is the storyteller’s job to determine what does and does not work in a story. “The trick is to have perseverance, have an anecdote that has an interesting moment of reflection,” said Glass. Creative work can be hard to find, but it is important to be ruthless when developing a story.

For beginners, the first couple of years their the work turns out to be not that great, but their taste is still good. A lot of people never get past this stage and instead they quit. Glass noted many people in the broadcast field go through this phase. Glass believes this phase it totally normal among beginners. “The most important thing you can do is a lot of work,” said Glass. It is normal for things to take a while, but you have to be a warrior. By doing a lot of work one will be able to eventually close the gap.

Beginners make two common errors, according to Glass. Many people want to sound and act like people on television and radio. Everything will be more compelling the more one talks like a human being. “ The more you are your own self, the better you are,” said Glass.

Finally, Glass placed emphasis on eliminating useless material. “Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap,” said Glass. By killing useless information one can make the story that much better. One has to be a killer about the boring parts and use the parts that get to the hearts. Failure is a big part of success claims Glass.