Van Neistat's Guide to Master Storytelling
Published June 24, 2022 · 9:47 · 232,876 views
About This Video
If your story doesn't contain a surprise, it's not a story. It's a report. Van structures the video as a demonstration of its own thesis: a Post-it note behind his iMac, two and a half years old, holds the solution to his structure problem. He'll hold it over your head until the end. Bert Kreischer tells a story on Two Bears One Cave that exemplifies the difference between good and bad storytelling: his baby daughter in the hospital, the distraught waiting room. Van uses it to build a framework: surprise is the architecture, everything else is decoration. The longest day of the year, June 21, 2022, and Van is at his typewriter wrestling with form. The Post-it note is the punchline. The video practices what it preaches: the surprise is withheld, the middle bit earns your patience, and the resolution rewards it.Transcript
if your story doesn't contain a surprise then your story isn't a story it's a report and the better the surprise
the better the story today's june 21st 2022 the longest day of the year and i wanted to structure this video
like a story so that i could keep your attention to the end and i could elucidate the story structure
which is a struggle got a lot of things i want to say gotta put them in the right form so that it's interesting
sitting at my typewriter last couple days how am i gonna do this how am i gonna do this and i notice behind my imac
this post-it note and this post-it note two and a half years old it is the solution to my structure problem
everything fell into line when i read this and i'm gonna hold it over your head until the end and that's kind of what a story is
bert kreischer top of the food chain apex predator comedian [Music] excellent storyteller master storyteller as all of
those top-notch comedians are he does a podcast with tom segura called two bears one cave [Laughter] and on this podcast he tells a story
that exemplifies the difference between a good storyteller telling a story and a bad storyteller telling the same story
and i'm just gonna steal the whole thing because it's the best example i've ever heard so here's my version of bert's
version of the story bert's baby daughter is in the hospital and if you want to see a grown man cry ask him about
the time his baby was in the hospital he's distraught and he's talked to the doctors he has to go back into the waiting room
he has no control over anything he's a comedian and in the waiting room an attractive african-american lady
sees him and says to him it's tough being a daddy and it was the perfect thing for her to say the perfect compassionate thing for her
to say and i imagine it allowed him to be vulnerable and pull the cork out of the tears and regroup which is what he
needed to do and here is the surprise the surprise that would allow me to embellish the story because it's so good
that woman was whitney houston the greatest love of all so that was my version of bert's version of the story
so here's my version of bert's version of leanne's version of the story leanne is his wife and she is the example of a
bad storyteller this is how leanne a bad storyteller tells the same story isla was in the hospital and whitney houston
was in the waiting room and then she goes into boring detail of all of the hospital visit of the she had
and isla had this and the doctors were running that and they did this test and we had to wait and blah blah blah now if
you save that whitney houston punch line to the end and you slowly build to it and you slowly work your way you can
include all those little details you can include and then the doctor's report came back and you might have to fudge the facts and
the chronologies around but the humanity of the story will come through and what got bert on this subject
to begin with was his beef that leanne would interrupt him in his stories with facts that made the story worse but just made it more
factual and never let the facts get in the way of the truth never let the facts get in the way of a good story you do
not interrupt a good storyteller okay now the post-it the spirited man is brought to you by the spirited man patreon team join our
patreon team at five dollars a month for exclusive access to archival videos with directors commentary and peer
discussions and live streams answering your questions and comments plus patreon exclusive limited edition zines
link in the description okay now the post-it it's dated december 11 2019 is a note to myself and it says this
write the story about the driver in maryland starts with the reason that we were at this particular hotel was because it was
in wedding crashers okay so here's the story isabel's best friend was getting married in maryland we had flown all the way
across the country to this wedding even though isabelle and i live in california and the bride and groom lived in california
and i think it was so that they could have this wedding at this place in maryland that was in wedding crashers
so we needed to get from where we were staying in town to the wedding to this plantation the hotel had a driver and a
car and the driver drove us it was like 20 minutes now the driver was an african-american man and he had said something
something in my tuition let me know oh this guy has seen think this guy has been places so i asked him i said
where have you been in this world tell me some of the places you've been in this world and he just he had like he was i think
he was in the army and he lived in germany and that started this whole foreign travel part of his life and he had been everywhere and he
had seen things he was someone i had i connected with closely i'm one of these very guys who hates weddings i don't care how fancy it
is i don't care where it is i don't like it i don't like being trapped there i don't like that i don't unless it's
somebody who's a very close friend of mine i especially don't like all of the small talk and having to be polite and i
knew almost no one at this wedding and so it was days of just small talk and no connection to anyone and this man
i connected with him in 20 minutes because we were both worldly people i think and so we're pulling into the driveway
of this plantation and we get to the end and he stops and and here's the surprise he said you know frederick douglass
was held as a slave for two years on this plantation and it made me feel better having heard him say that and it kind of
bothered me for a while like why that's a dark piece of data that's a dark fact why why and i think it was something about the
honesty of it it was it was as if he was saying i respect you enough to tell you this or i don't know
what he was saying but it was like you know storytellers are sensitive people people who choose to do this for
a living were sensitive and i would rather be strong and rational i'd give it away and i'd rather be a
strong rational person than this sensitive t cry baby and you know i think chrysler's like this his daughter's fine now she's off to college
next year and a story in its essence is a model that connects us to the human experience today is june 21st 2022
and yesterday was the first anniversary of the juneteenth holiday and at this time in american history the
the consensus is we're a divided nation we're divided divided divided division division division but in talking to people
i think everyone agrees that no one sang the star-spangled banner more beautifully than whitney houston
this week on the patreon zine one has been retired zine 2 is available to the next 160 new patrons who sign up here's the link
People Referenced
Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, Whitney Houston, Leanne Kreischer, Frederick Douglass, Isabelle
Films & Media Referenced
- film referenced for storytelling example