Producing a Story, Step 2: Hire a Writer

The first step of producing your story is authoring. The second step is writing.

In a previous blog post titled “Storytelling,” I discussed the difference between authoring and writing a story. In short, authoring is the process of ideating, whereas writing is the process of putting pen to paper (or type to a word processor) to masterfully craft the story to meet the desired end result. The writer is the guardian of the author’s story.

I do not consider myself a writer. I use words as a means of necessity to communicate, but the craft of writing is not my forte. It’s for this reason that I’ve reached out to a few friends and colleagues of mine, both brilliant and experienced writers by trade, to help put the role and importance of a writer into perspective.

First, there’s a reason hiring a writer is the first step to producing your story. My good friend and former colleague, Jerry Cipriano, put it to me this way: “The writer is the guide leading the viewer from the beginning of the story to the end. It is our job to weave the visual and audio elements together to form a coherent narrative. We choose our words carefully to make the story clear and accurate. Simplicity is the key.”

For background, Jerry was Senior News Editor for the CBS Evening News from 1991 to 2018. He was the head writer and editor for the broadcast under Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, Scott Pelley and a few others. I joined the broadcast while Katie Couric was the anchor, which began the growth of what became an imperative mentoring and collegial relationship between Jerry and I. We worked together to tell stories of all subjects and tonalities from around the globe.

As Jerry said, “the writer is the guide” for the audience. The writer sees the story from the audience’s perspective and puts it into script form. This scripting includes what the audience should see, experience, feel and understand when they come away from the production. The writer’s script becomes the bible by which all other members of the production team will take inspiration and make decisions for look, feel, color, sound, tone, smell, temperature, cinematography, location, costuming, makeup, stage direction, dramatic interpretation and SO much more. The writer is the only one who can successfully rearrange the story when elements have to be cut for budget or time. This is why it’s imperative that the first role brought into the production process is the writer. As the key-holder and gatekeeper to the story, the writer should be first in and remain until the curtain comes down, the lights go out or the credits roll.

Another friend and colleague of mine, Stacy Barton, put it like this: “Storytelling offers empathy - a pathway to emotion. People don’t want to be sold a product or a service, they want to be invited into a story; they want to feel something. A theme park attraction and a killer commercial have this in common: the ability to speak to the heart. As a writer, my one job is to make sure we tell the right story to the right audience. I love working with visual storytellers (like Chris), because after they’ve added images and graphics, even music, less of my language is needed. Which is great because people’s initial attention span is like... 3 seconds.”

Stacy is a writer of both books and theme park attractions. She has spent over 20 years working in story development for themed experiences, including major projects for Disney, SeaWorld, Ringling Bros. and many others.

“Everyone has a story,” Stacy says, ”but not everyone knows how to tell it. It takes a deep understanding of human nature and an intuition for what emotion will connect an audience to a story.”

Stacy asks her team three questions throughout the creative process:

1. What is our promise to the audience?

2. How do we deliver it?

3. What does the audience take away?

While there are many roles in the process of producing a story, there is one whose sole job is to see the entire story from a strategic and audience perspective, and be advocates for both. What is the strategic purpose? What are we trying to sell? Why are we using THIS story to sell it? What are we doing to effectively engage the audience? What do we want the audience to feel and subsequently do? What is imperative to meeting these goals and what is simply window dressing? What is the audience going to be left with when the lights go down?

A good writer sees and answers ALL of those questions in their scripting.

Two final thoughts from Jerry and Stacy, written as only writers can:

Jerry: “The storyteller, like a music composer, writes for the ear. Words are our notes, and putting them in just the right order gives the sentences a rhythm and can make them memorable.”

Stacy: “If your team… is without a writer - [one] who braids the threads of the design into a golden cord that captures not just your guest’s imagination, but their hearts - you risk missing the emotional connection that drives success. Content, technology, spectacle, even story - without connection - will not be remembered or returned to.”

What comes after you hire a writer?

Finding a project manager; more on that, next week.