Good storytelling/comedy [1]writing involves many of the same skills as good planning or project management but with the inverse goal.
When you’re planning a project you want to Murphyjitsu the most likely points of failure, you want to think through how can you minimize risk, disruption by thinking about all the likely causes of problems and putting in mechanisms to nip them in the bud. If you identify the raw materials for your factory not arriving by a certain date as a hazardous likelihood, maybe you instead seek supply from multiple suppliers so that if one supplier is late, you still have 50% or more of the raw materials you need. I dunno—I hope that example makes sense.
When you’re writing a story: be it a novel, a film script, or even doing comedy one you want to maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Take a cliched plot device like a guy is rushing to the airport before the love of his life flies away forever. I can already hear the roll of your eyes in your head—what a unlikely occurrence? Why did he wait until the last minute to decide to confess his love? Great questions: and a good storyteller should be able to make you not roll your eyes but nod your head and say “yes that makes, sense, I can see why this is the most likely occurrence. So then what happens?”
A good storyteller would have to use the same skills as a project manager—to anticipate all the likely, not mere possible or plausible occurrences, the most likely occurrences and obstacles to our hero declaring his love. Building up a causal chain of events where the most likely conclusion is they are rushing to the airport—now a good storyteller has to again come up with as many obstacles and reasons to slow down our protagonist and inhibit their journey to the airport as the audience will believe.
A meteor falls from the sky and crashes in front of the road, causing an unavoidable traffic jam? Too convenient. A dust bowl forces causes a general alert for everybody to stay in doors and avoid unnecessary travel (well wouldn’t that ground the plane—thereby buying our hero more time rather than less?).
A good storyteller will need to come up with a series of events that we as the reader or viewer will accept as just likely enough that we don’t lose the suspension of disbelief. But also not so obvious or predictable that we’re bored.
A project manager you’re trying to think of everything likely to go wrong so that you can find plausible mechanisms to ameliorate the effects. A storyteller you’re trying to think of everything likely to go wrong so that you can find plausible mechanisms to amplify the effects.
Another interesting inversion is that while a storyteller may in fact tell a story based not on what they know is more realistic but deferring onto what the audience believes to be true (i.e. apparently the early designs of the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey had large thermofoils—these were abandoned because they were decided to look too much like wings and would be mistaken for being atmospheric vessels), a project manager must be aware of what people on the project believe to be true and will be at pains to re-calibrate their expectations based on what is more realistic.
The basic point I’m trying to make is that storytellers and planners are looking for likely obstacles—they are both crafting the most believable story they can—even if one is to entertain by multiplying the obstacles; and the other is attempting to deliver a outcome by minimizing the obstacles.
Even in absurdist comedy where the element of utter surprise trades at a premium, where the suspension of disbelief is a hindrance, the comedian still needs to know what is believable, likely or predictable simply so they can avoid and invert it. One of my favorite Gilbert Gottfried jokes is:
I used to have dinner with Nostradamus and he’d sit there saying *smarmily* “I know… yeah I know… I know...” ...In Nostradamus’ day people would say “This is a long time ago! This isn’t now’
Obviously Gilbert Gottfriend never had dinner with Nostradamus and his contemporaries didn’t “this isn’t now” (they wouldn’t even say: “ce n’est pas maintenant”). He knows that, we know that. That’s why I and his fans find it funny.
I admit, where this veers away from the skills of project management is that it exploits the connotations of that come with Nostradamus as a seer—someone who could predict the future. As a project manager you’re less concerned with connotations of figure’s names and words and more concerned with constraints and mechanics that inhibit or facilitate certain undesirable events.
The point I’m trying to make is that both require certain skills of identifying what is likely to happen.
Good storytelling/comedy [1]writing involves many of the same skills as good planning or project management but with the inverse goal.
When you’re planning a project you want to Murphyjitsu the most likely points of failure, you want to think through how can you minimize risk, disruption by thinking about all the likely causes of problems and putting in mechanisms to nip them in the bud. If you identify the raw materials for your factory not arriving by a certain date as a hazardous likelihood, maybe you instead seek supply from multiple suppliers so that if one supplier is late, you still have 50% or more of the raw materials you need. I dunno—I hope that example makes sense.
When you’re writing a story: be it a novel, a film script, or even doing comedy one you want to maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Take a cliched plot device like a guy is rushing to the airport before the love of his life flies away forever. I can already hear the roll of your eyes in your head—what a unlikely occurrence? Why did he wait until the last minute to decide to confess his love? Great questions: and a good storyteller should be able to make you not roll your eyes but nod your head and say “yes that makes, sense, I can see why this is the most likely occurrence. So then what happens?”
A good storyteller would have to use the same skills as a project manager—to anticipate all the likely, not mere possible or plausible occurrences, the most likely occurrences and obstacles to our hero declaring his love. Building up a causal chain of events where the most likely conclusion is they are rushing to the airport—now a good storyteller has to again come up with as many obstacles and reasons to slow down our protagonist and inhibit their journey to the airport as the audience will believe.
A meteor falls from the sky and crashes in front of the road, causing an unavoidable traffic jam? Too convenient. A dust bowl forces causes a general alert for everybody to stay in doors and avoid unnecessary travel (well wouldn’t that ground the plane—thereby buying our hero more time rather than less?).
A good storyteller will need to come up with a series of events that we as the reader or viewer will accept as just likely enough that we don’t lose the suspension of disbelief. But also not so obvious or predictable that we’re bored.
A project manager you’re trying to think of everything likely to go wrong so that you can find plausible mechanisms to ameliorate the effects. A storyteller you’re trying to think of everything likely to go wrong so that you can find plausible mechanisms to amplify the effects.
Another interesting inversion is that while a storyteller may in fact tell a story based not on what they know is more realistic but deferring onto what the audience believes to be true (i.e. apparently the early designs of the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey had large thermofoils—these were abandoned because they were decided to look too much like wings and would be mistaken for being atmospheric vessels), a project manager must be aware of what people on the project believe to be true and will be at pains to re-calibrate their expectations based on what is more realistic.
The basic point I’m trying to make is that storytellers and planners are looking for likely obstacles—they are both crafting the most believable story they can—even if one is to entertain by multiplying the obstacles; and the other is attempting to deliver a outcome by minimizing the obstacles.
Even in absurdist comedy where the element of utter surprise trades at a premium, where the suspension of disbelief is a hindrance, the comedian still needs to know what is believable, likely or predictable simply so they can avoid and invert it.
One of my favorite Gilbert Gottfried jokes is:
Obviously Gilbert Gottfriend never had dinner with Nostradamus and his contemporaries didn’t “this isn’t now” (they wouldn’t even say: “ce n’est pas maintenant”). He knows that, we know that. That’s why I and his fans find it funny.
I admit, where this veers away from the skills of project management is that it exploits the connotations of that come with Nostradamus as a seer—someone who could predict the future. As a project manager you’re less concerned with connotations of figure’s names and words and more concerned with constraints and mechanics that inhibit or facilitate certain undesirable events.
The point I’m trying to make is that both require certain skills of identifying what is likely to happen.