An Interview With Michael Burns
Great stories are about the dance between who we want to be in the world and who we really are, who we project ourselves as and who we reveal ourselves to be.
I recently got a book that hasn’t left my writing desk since. It’s called Hack Into Your Creativity: Story Prompts For Every Type of Writer by Michael Burns. I’ll confess, the title seemed wrong to me. I don’t want a book that’ll show me how to hack into my creativity. I want that to be a natural process.
But it was the book’s innards that got me hooked on to it. Prompts, neatly sectioned, with enough space in there to scribble around and throw ideas, the book looked goregeous. And then I started reading the prompts, and well, fireworks haven’t stopped popping in my brain. There are so many writing prompts in there and each one makes me want to pick up my pen and write.
I had a chance to interview the author, Michael Burns, just before he left India for his home in the US. And there is no force in the world that can stop me from sharing it with all of you.
AG: I’ve got a copy of the book and it looks amazing. Going through the prompts really got my neurons firing all over the place. Where did you get this idea to have a book filled with such unusual prompts for writers?
MB: First, thanks for picking up the book. That’s always the first step towards actually reading it. Lord knows that I have a lot of books that I haven’t cracked yet that are on my list. I tried to take that into account, actually, and to create a book that writers would want to engage with rather than just put on their shelves.
What inspired this book is really interesting, to me at least. I always tell my students and coaching clients, especially when we’re talking about story structure in movies, that you can learn as much from movies that you don’t like as you can from movies that you do like. When you see something you don’t like, you learn to steer away from that. The same thing happened with this book.
Two years ago I was in a bookstore in the US and I bought up all the writing prompt books I could find to see what other people were doing. I like to give credit where credit is due, but I also like to call them as I see them. In nearly all the books I read, I was quite shocked at the quality of the prompts. Honestly, the prompts kept screaming out at me, “Look how clever this prompt is that I wrote!” To me, that is absolutely not what you want your readers, and your story writers on the other end, to be thinking. You want to them to write! So I kept this in the front of my mind as I assembled these prompts. I tried to hit on an emotional chord and to get out of the way as quickly as possible. I wanted the prompt to get the reader to think, I want to write about that, rather than simply admiring the prompt and then leafing through the book, which is essentially the worst case scenario for a story prompt book.
So the bottom line is that the “inspiration” for this book and its contents came from what I learned not to do.
AG: Your introduction tells us a little about your work with Tall Tales. Can you tell me a bit more about Tall Tales and how it influenced your thinking of stories?
MB: I started Tall Tales back in 2013 and it’s now grown to India’s longest-running, live, true, personal storytelling platform with over 215 different stories and over 110 different storytellers. Reading, editing, and coaching the Tall Tales submissions has taught me everything about what makes a great story, lessons that I tried to infuse into this book. Perhaps the biggest one is that great stories are about the dance between who we want to be in the world and who we really are, who we project ourselves as and who we reveal ourselves to be. In other words, a great story is about digging beneath the surface into the uncomfortable, terrifying, raw truth about just how deep our ignorance and insecurities are in order to come out the other side as a phoenix.
AG: The book is neatly divided into these self sustaining sections. How did you decide on which prompt goes where? Some of them seem so all-encompassing.
MB: Thanks for saying that. The method behind the book was for me to take my story workshop and to use it as a guide. In my workshops for writers, I talk about the seven factors that make stories not just interesting but unforgettable. I listed those seven ideas down and wrote 50 prompts based on each one, chiseling it down to the best 25 or 30 after that, and then subtracting or adding a few at the last minute.
To give one example, one of the things that makes a story unforgettable is when the world you’ve created as a writer comes alive for the reader. I always tell my clients that I want to be able to taste the world you’ve made. And when you can do that, when you can breathe the air of some magical kingdom worlds away and feel yourself there simply from the way the words are arranged on the page, then you know you’re being led by a writer to reckon with. I think that world creation is a skill wroth practicing and so I wrote some prompts, and collated them into one section that exercise those particular muscles.
Oh and by the way, if any writer out there thinks we have only five senses, only five tools to use to create environments, they’re wrong. Those five senses came from Aristotle, and although he was right about many things, he was wrong about some too, this being one of those.
AG: Which is your favourite section? (Mine is Everyday Magic)
MB: Mine too. One of my big themes in story coaching is collecting, and by that I mean collecting the world around us through observations, notes, photos, or any other way of encapsulating moments. These are story seeds. Those seeds are nurtured when we see things as they are, in all their wonder. To do this, I play a game with myself called “Fresh Eyes.” I try to look at things and say to myself. If I were seeing this for the very first time, if I were an alien coming down from another planet, what would I think? I love to play this game because when you do that it strips away the mundane labels that we give things based on their momentary utility to us. It forces us to stop and see things. I mean really see them. And when we can do that, even the simplest thing in life is full of magic. It’s all around us. It really is. Everything we see and touch is shot through with someone’s hard work and ingenuity and dedication and sacrifice. There are stories buried in the atoms around us all day long. All we have to do is notice.
Storytelling is not something to pass the time: the stories we choose to tell will either save us or kill us. It’s up to us.
AG: There is this section in the book called Incredible India, prompts taken from day to day Indian life. How long were you living in India? And how was your experience?
MB: I was in India for more than six years and I loved it. There are so many things to love about India, but maybe above all is the number of stories. India is so massive that every kind of story is out there just waiting for you to find: stories of inspiration and perseverance alongside stories of neglect and devastation. Just like learning how to tell a personal story can transform a person’s life, a country learning how to listen to stories can transform a society. Like many other countries around the world, India is at a crossroads, where its people can embrace the under-represented and untold stories around them, realizing that different ways of seeing the world makes us stronger, or people can cede storytelling to capitalist and ideological forces that have either money or political interests as their priorities. In other words, storytelling is not something to pass the time: the stories we choose to tell will either save us or kill us. It’s up to us.
AG: In your introduction you say “great stories have structure, sequence, subtlety and surprise.” Would you say there is a recipe or a secret sauce that makes stories great?
MB: I do think there’s a secret sauce for great storytelling, and it’s transformation. There are some stories that I think about every single day. Why is that? Because great stories remind us that we’re all seeking growth. We all want, or at some point wanted, to be something other than what we are. And I don’t mean wanting change due to dissatisfaction with our lives, but rather wanting change so that we can be our best selves.
I sometimes get strange looks from my students when I say that any story worth your time must be a story about death. Why do they look at me funny? Because death is scary and something that causes anxiety and it’s not a very nice thing to think about. But not to me. Physical death is fascinating because it is the single universal human condition. The more we think about death the more likely it is that we’ll want to leave this world a little bit better than we found it. But that’s the minor point. The major point is that all great stories are about death because death is a pre-requisite to transformation. Unforgettable stories are unforgettable because they spotlight death of the old self and birth of the new self. And it’s this that we long for. All of us.
What separates the great writer form the causal one is not talent, but humility and perseverance.
AG: To round it all off, what advice would you like to share with young readers of the book?
MB: For anyone who picks up Hack Into Your Creativity, I have one central piece of advice. You have this book in your hands because either you or the person who gave it to you believes that there’s a writer inside of you. I share that belief. But, there’s one important thing to keep in mind. Writing well is one of the hardest things you can possibly do. You have to get to know other people’s universes, see other people’s lives through their own eyes, observe the world closely, give names to things and feelings that don’t have names, and be willing to be humble enough to know that you will make mistakes in these efforts over and over again. What separates the great writer form the causal one is not talent, but humility and perseverance. If you can manage to do the things I just mentioned then even though writing well is incredibly difficult, you will have opened up a treasure inside yourself and those around you that offers riches far beyond anything you can possibly imagine. That’s what stories offer if you’re willing to put in the work.
Michael Burns is a university teacher, writing coach, editor, and storyteller. He has a B.A. from Georgetown University, an M.S. from UMass Amherst, and holds a Ph.D. in documentary film history from the University of Birmingham in the UK. He has directed five films for international television and his work has been seen in over twenty countries. He is also the founder of Tall Tales, India’s longest-running, true storytelling event series that features live performances and writing workshops of all kinds. More online at writewithmichael.com.
Akshay G. is a writer of fictional stories, teller of true stories and secretly works on propoganda against pigeons.
