There’s always time for story
You might have gathered from my argument against brand archetypes that I’m not a big believer in following the rules.
Treading well-worn, familiar paths has rarely led to anything original or authentic. It’s true whether you’re painting à la Bob Ross or recording a soon-to-be Top 40 song because your label told you to. (Though I guess the latter would be a pretty good problem to have, financially speaking.)
The art of breaking through self-limiting frameworks has been top of mind for me again recently as I’ve launched the Hyperactive Imagination podcast.
As with anything in the content economy, there are “rules” about how a podcast needs to be structured and produced to be successful.
Keep it short. Keep it simple. Get straight to the point. Don’t be “clever” with naming. Don’t wander.
These are all “rules” about podcasting you can find right now by Googling for podcasting tips. And I’m not suggesting you can’t build a good podcast (or any creative asset) by following guidelines like these — you most definitely can — but if you go into an endeavor like this feeling beholden to and burdened by them, the result will fall short of its full potential.
This brings me to the real rule I’ve found to be true about podcasting: there’s always time for story.
You may have heard it said that our most precious commodity is attention. Rules like those in italics above are crafted with good intentions to respect the time of one’s audience, but too often are followed out of fear of losing their attention.
Here’s the thing, there’s a world of difference between following guidelines because you’re afraid to lose someone’s attention and making decisions because you’re excited to skillfully hold and reward it.
Not to go all Adam Smith on you, but story is the invisible hand that takes the podcast where it wants — and needs — to go.
A keen understanding of how story works is key. And I don’t mean “rules” like “get to your inciting incident within the first 25% of the plot.”
I mean a deep understanding of the cause-and-effect nature of what powers story: the values that are at stake, the empathy we have for a protagonist in whom we see ourselves, the burning curiosity we have to know how something will turn out.
There are complex, abstract, and profound truths about life, purpose, and meaning that we can only process through story. And these truths are not beholden to arbitrary constructs like “make your podcast no longer than 35 minutes.”
If a guest on my show were about to reveal the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, but I cut them short because we just hit minute 35, my audience would never forgive me — even if they already knew the answer was 42.
I’ll say it again: there’s always time for story. And I think it’s high time we change the story that arbitrary creative rules deserve our unquestioning obedience.
Anita Stubenrauch is an ex-Apple creative and the founder of Cause:Effect Creative, an agency that helps brands express visionary ideas with poetic power, and the host of the Hyperactive Imagination podcast, a high-voltage channel for creativity.
