The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unleashing Storytelling Power: Transforming Lives Through Engaging Narratives

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Well, hi folks, it's Voss here from The Chris Voss Show.com.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. There we go. I don't know what happened to the opera lady today. I think her voice is broken. So welcome to the big show. As always, friends and families and neighbors, to the Chris Voss Show for over 16 years and 2300 episodes, about to clock over to 2400 episodes.

Starting point is 00:01:01 We've been bringing the Chris Voss Show in astounding feat of the most amazing minds that come to us to guests on the show. Go to Goodreads.com, Forchess Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Forchess Chris Voss. Chris Voss won on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Today we have an amazing young man on the show and we're talking about, as John Lovitz from SNL

Starting point is 00:01:19 will put it, acting. I don't know, that's a good impression of him, but. And we're gonna be talking about acting, storytelling, writing things of that nature and how to be better at it. Today, we are joined with Jordan Christopher Morris, AKA the writer Ignatius. I think that we'll have to find out what that means. Jordan is a writer, producer and screenwriting coach known for his warm, approachable style and genuine passion for helping writers succeed.

Starting point is 00:01:45 Whether you're a beginner or seasoned storyteller, Jordan works with writers of all backgrounds and skill levels to help them uncover their unique voice and craft stories that truly resonate. His secret is a revolutionary approach to storytelling. He teaches a signature life and death story model, a fresh take on story architecture that helps writers build compelling narratives. Welcome to the show, Jordan. How are you? I'm very well, sir. Great to meet you. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. Where can you find people on the internets? I've kept a low profile until recently but I do have my own website which is Jordan Morris writer igniter.com and you can find everything

Starting point is 00:02:29 you need there including how to reach me. Including how to reach you. So Jordan you use the life-and-death story model in you what you teach with your students and people you help. Is that where you put a gun in people's head and say, write it or else? Something like that, yeah, yeah. There has to be high stakes involved. And the life and death story model that I use is kind of unique in the space. So it breaks down all the major architecture

Starting point is 00:02:58 of telling a narrative story in a different way that explains itself and gives every one of the major components a very clear and unique job to do. The results have been really, really good since I've been working with people. It takes a while to get used to, but once they get it, they really seem to take off with it. Pete So, where does the moniker, I think it's moniker if I'm using my English correctly, writer-igniter come from? What does it mean? Chris Just igniting the passion, igniting a passion for storytelling, igniting a passion for moving

Starting point is 00:03:29 people on an emotional level and helping people develop their own unique narrative voice. In this industry and really in any kind of writing, if you're replaceable, then you will be replaced. So I think the best defense is a good offense. And that's writing stuff that only you can write that's unique to you, tonally, subject matter, theme wise. And that's probably the most, really the most rewarding part of it. When I see the lights come on and people start to really get comfortable in their own skin and know what their brand and what their voice is, then they go on to write really special stuff. And that's, that's great. Yeah. The, why, why are, why is storytelling important? Why are stories important?

Starting point is 00:04:07 We've been doing it for, you know, since the dawn of time. And I think it's a way for us to learn what it means to be a human being and what the human experience is all about. Initially through things like mythology and folklore and movie and TV today is really just modern mythology. So if you don't have a really good grasp of the fundamentals of story architecture then typically what comes out is just a little bit of a muddy mess. So it takes,

Starting point is 00:04:35 it's worth learning the fundamentals first so that you can really articulate your ideas and again create something with emotional resonance because it really shouldn't just be about the plot it should be about the kind of emotional journey that your characters go on and if you're not great at articulating that then you'd better be Michael Bay and be able to afford a lot of explosions and you know fast moving objects to distract people for your hour and a half or however long it is. distract people for your hour and a half or whatever long it is. The car crashes, car chases, explosions and more.

Starting point is 00:05:12 Yeah. The Michael Bay movies just explode everything. And I don't know. And two hours later you have something. Yeah. And immediately after that, you forget about it. What just happened? I don't know, but it was loud and colorful. I'm very excited about the explosions and my heart's racing. So something, something good must happen. The story, storytelling is interesting to me.

Starting point is 00:05:31 I don't think I was really 50 until I realized, or in my late 40s, so I realized the importance of storytelling and that I'd been a story collector all my life. And someone came on the show a few years ago and they talked about, they introduced me to the term griot. And griots were West African oral historians, they were musicians who would preserve and then share the cultural traditions. And they would basically be the historians for the tribe. You know, the tribe would have its history back then, they tribe would have its history. Back then, they didn't have a lot of stuff to write it down with or stuff that you could keep it well with.

Starting point is 00:06:10 And so they would, you know, this person, this griot would be the person who would keep track of their histories. Like you say, all through time, we've collected stories. And stories are kind of like what I like to call the owner's manual to life, where you, you know, that we don't get an owner's manual to life. So we tell each other stories so that we can learn from each other and we can see that we're not alone and that our struggles are the same and that, you know, we're all human as it were. And we hope so. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's really what the Kurukshvarsha does. We bring on people, they tell their stories, they share their lessons of life, the things they learned, the things they survived.

Starting point is 00:06:49 And in the end, people come through it. Tell us about your history. And you're welcome to reply to my comment there. But tell us about your history too, how you grew up, when you started writing, etc., etc. Pete Yeah, I think that most cultures started that way with oral histories first, you know, before the printed word became a thing, it was a standard that an important person within the tribe, so to speak, would memorize and then share these stories. And we've just been doing

Starting point is 00:07:15 that in printed form and now video and all other kinds of form like that. So yeah, stories really really important. For me, it started out with things like comic books. I was obsessed with it. My uncle owned a comic book shop in my hometown, and I would want that place. Yeah. So I got to buy the few that I could afford. But then I got to skim through all the others that I couldn't. So I was pretty spoiled that way. At the time I got to age about 12 or 13, I was given the opportunity to hang out with my dad. My dad could really spin a yarn.

Starting point is 00:07:45 So I would travel with him to friends of his. He was a car collector and he would go, take me to garages and listen to other grown men tell stories amongst each other. And that was some of the most exciting stuff. I mean, the language of course, that an adult man in a garage setting were using was pretty exciting, but just it started to land on me how

Starting point is 00:08:07 even when they weren't thinking about it, the really good stories were structured in a certain way and had a punchline or something or a climax of some kind. And I started to identify those rhythms really, really early on. And then took an interest in like scribbling my own comic books and trying to create my own stories. And from there, made my way into theater in high school and then theater again as a young adult after I'd spent years away from it. And that's when my relationship with storytelling in particular got really, really intense. It was while I was in local theater here in Ontario, Canada.

Starting point is 00:08:41 Pete Slauson Mm hmm. You guys have a great theater up there too, the Second City for comedy and great stuff that trickles down to us. John Lennon And the Stratford Festival is just an hour north of us or so, and that's one of the best Shakespearean festivals in the world. So yeah, we've got a rich history of really, really strong storytelling up here. And that was great. Not only did I get to experiment with writing stories, but performing them in front of a live audience is the fastest way to learn.

Starting point is 00:09:09 Once I started to write my own, when you walk out on stage and whatever you write just bombs and everything, it doesn't work. You'll commit very quickly to learning why and making sure that never happens again. If you wanna be a writer, I recommend everybody do it live in front of an audience and see what happens, because you'll learn quick.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Yeah. Unless you enjoy bombing, bombing can be sometimes artful. You know, Norm MacDonald from Canada, one of my, I think probably one of the best comedians ever in the world. Oh, love Norm. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize Norm wrote for a lot of years for SNL, or a lot of decades. I mean, he wrote, I think think pretty much the 40th anniversary. Sadly,

Starting point is 00:09:46 he didn't see the 50th, but he was the most, one of the most spectacular comedians I think I've ever seen or known or studied. And the guy that didn't need to win over the audience, right? Like he didn't need that. He would try for it, but at times he seemed to just love having the audience turn on him and play with that as well. Yeah. So you can kill you, you die to kill and it's, it's a really hard thing to do in comedy. There's few people that can really pull it off where they can kill on, or they can die on purpose and kill, you know, once the audience is into it, like most people would know after a while what norm was up to. And they're like, yeah, he's pulling our chain. He's pulling our leg. He gets on Conan O'Brien and starts

Starting point is 00:10:30 reading the newspaper. Yeah. Yeah. What's his face used to do that? He might have been Canadian. It was the taxi comedian, the guy who used to be on taxi, the comedian who did the immigrant voice. I forget his name, but he'd get up and read the Bible or, you know, just do stupid shit on stage and. Yeah. Push. Push the boundaries of keeping people kind of hooked into your story and pushing buttons too. They were both really, really good at, are you talking about Andy

Starting point is 00:10:59 Kaufman? Andy Kaufman. You never remember his name. Yeah. He was really good at pushing buttons and that would be the reward, you know, most of us want applause or some kind of you know Support from the audience But those two guys didn't need that as long as they had you hooked and they got an emotional response out of you then they were Happy Dave Chappelle does the same thing. He's really good at CS Lewis CK Lewis was was great at it, too Yeah, yeah, yeah he's really good at. CS Lewis, CK Lewis was, was great at it too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:30 CK Lewis. That's a, that's a guy who wrote a book, right? So yes, Lewis. Yeah. I wrote the book. Yeah. So Louis just kind of changed the name structure and anyway, he's a great comedian. The, so tell us about some of these programs you offer on your website to help people and who are your clients so that people out there in the audience know? Yeah, the thing that I've become most kind of sought after for is a program I've got called The Story Forge, which takes place over the course of one month. So it's two hour sessions once a week for four weeks. And it's a really protracted kind of interview format where I just ask a thousand questions

Starting point is 00:12:09 about the writer and what their project is, what they hope to achieve with it, genre, theme, the character arc, all that. And I test the concept at its core at a conceptual level. But while I'm doing that, I help them kind of develop their own personal voice and to decide what it is that they actually want to talk about. The three of the questions that we often talk about are, what's it about? What's it really about? And what are you trying to say?

Starting point is 00:12:36 So what's it about is easy, that's plot. And that's where most people spend most of their efforts. But that's not where the big payoff is. What's it really about is about theme, which is a particularly frustrating and slippery subject for people to talk about and understand how to deploy in their work. And then the third one, what are you trying to say is what do you want to say about that particular thematic idea or concept at the center of your story? How are you going to put your fingerprint on this? Over the course of a month, we build out the concept

Starting point is 00:13:03 and then we start laying it out in an outline form. And by the end of the month, we've got a very robust outline with up to 20 or 30 pages of information that they can use to then jump right into writing their first draft. So that thing's most often what I do. But then I've got a six month program that'll take somebody from just a fragment of an idea to a completed screenplay as well. So I can walk them through the whole thing too. Pete Slauson And you know, learning to tell a story well is really important. It's good for communicating your ideas, it's good in engaging, you know. I think technically we're all telling stories, you know. Jared Larkin All the time.

Starting point is 00:13:37 Pete Slauson All the time. We're telling stories to people in our lives. You know, when I go on a date, I'm telling stories, they're telling me their stories. It's interesting, you know, and the, I'm telling stories, they're telling me their stories. It's interesting, and the better you can tell stories, the more you can engage the audience, the more you can capture them, the more you can get them involved in what you're doing, the more you can influence them. And we mentioned earlier some great comedians, George Carlin and Dave Chappelle and different things where they can do comedy, but they can also educate. Like one of the hosts that I really admire is Stephen

Starting point is 00:14:10 Colbert. Stephen Colbert has that ability to breach, talking about politics on the late show, late night show? Johnny show. I'll just call it that. Fuck it. He has the ability to talk about politics, but be able to make it funny. And people tend to learn that way. And a lot of the comedians can, you know, they can take just about any subject and, you know, you can teach through laughing. Because what's interesting is, is learning to laugh and hear our stories, we, I think it gets us outside of ourselves and we can kind of see our own fallacies as it were. Yeah, I think that's really true. Some of the comedians that are good at telling longer stories, long-form stories that are all set up, they'll take you by

Starting point is 00:14:53 surprise so that you're not just having a knee-jerk reaction to maybe something that's challenging for you. You know, they've kind of worn you down and let you settle in a little bit before they deliver that punchline which will be some kind of an epiphanal look at a subject that you may have already thought you had your mind made up on. That's really, really great. Yeah, and I grew up with the idea that the best story wins in all cases. And there's so many stories being told, even if you go into the corporate world, they're looking for the best way to tell their stories so that they can win over people and, you know, sell their wares, whatever it may be.

Starting point is 00:15:27 And I learned that when I was in the retail industry, because even when I stepped away from live performance for a while, I had a series of toy stores and retail at the peak of retail. That's kind of all dead now. Brick and mortar is kind of dead. Thanks, Alan. Amazon. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:42 But at the peak of brick and mortar retail, I had a series of toy stores and we would experiment with telling stories in the store. And it made us kind of an interesting destination for people, how we went about displaying our products and telling the stories behind every one of the toys that we sold. Some of them knew some of them vintage made a huge difference in, and how the audience, like the customers in the store, would respond to them. Yeah. So when you sit down and teach people, how long do they work with you?

Starting point is 00:16:12 I see you have a six-month course, I think, or something. Yeah, six months of screenplay is probably the longest course, the longest engagement that I have. And again, they can just show up with a fragment of an idea or maybe a first draft, and we'll basically start over, break it down or rebuild it. And at the end of the six months, they'll have what I believe to be a professional quality

Starting point is 00:16:31 screenplay that they could then take to producers or readers, whatever, and start marketing it into the industry. So that takes a lot of time. And that's broken up into two basic skill sets, which is storycraft, which is what we're talking about, and then Pagecraft. And if you want to be a working screenwriter, you've got to have really top notch Pagecraft skills as well, which means how you display your work on the page, because your Pagecraft

Starting point is 00:16:57 will either help you tell your story or hurt you. It's never a neutral. You better learn those skills too. And screenwriting formatting is really weird and counterintuitive. So I refer to it as the platypus of creative writing, because it doesn't make any sense until you've spent a lot of time with it. And then hopefully you'll see it as an opportunity and not an obstacle that you have to get around. Pete Yeah. And telling stories makes people interesting, you know, if someone can't tell a good story

Starting point is 00:17:26 or I think what's the other thing that stories teach us is to look around at life and analyze it. I used to, I have told this before, but I used to have a wonderful girlfriend. She was a good, she was a good lady and we lived together for about a year and a half. And I would come home with a million stories because you know I'm running three different companies I've got you know hundreds of employees and you know they've every day there's something going on with these employees right I could have written four books of employee stories back then I wish I had because I can't remember them all now but I mean the stuff that

Starting point is 00:18:00 would happen on a daily basis. Our first sexual harassment was a woman, you know, claiming a man is sexually harassed and it was two guys. I mean, it's, you know, it's just oddball stuff like that. You're just like, I did not see that coming. And to think, oh, so I would come home with stories every day and I'd be like, yeah, you won't believe what happened with Bob at work today. Bob, you know, this, that, the other. And there, you know, there was always something interesting. When you have a hundred plus employees, you're going to have interesting stories every day to bring home. And then I would ask her, I would say, you know, what happened your day? Give me a story. Give me some stories. Be interesting. She'd be like, good, nothing. I'd be like,

Starting point is 00:18:39 I'd be like, wait, now given she's a wonderful lady, but she worked for Delta as a flight attendant manager. Oh, there has to be stories there. So every day she's on a plane with 200 some odd people talking to them individually about their beverage preference and nuts. And then she would travel to usually one or two routes and cities on an almost daily basis and stay in hotels and like New York and Atlanta and stuff. And so I would just be like dumbfounded. I'm like, what do you mean you don't have any stories?

Starting point is 00:19:15 You traveled through four airports today, hundreds of people. You didn't see anything weird. There's always some weird thing to see or weird person. Probably in the airport. Look at that Chris Foss. What's he wearing flip flops the socks? You know, I'm probably the freak show, you know, if you don't know who the free show is, it's probably you. But I would just be like, do you do you pay attention to what goes on in life?

Starting point is 00:19:41 And I found there's some people and they're good people, but they're just kind of barely operating in their own private Idaho. Like they're just functioning and they don't see the world around them. And, and I just always found it was so disappointing. I eventually broke up with her because she was so boring. I reached a point where I was like, you know, I think I haven't said this to her. I go, you know, I, I've actually thought about hiring someone to kidnap you and just go hold you from day or something. Just so you have a story to tell me, Hey, Chris, this van pulled up, you know, and someone grabbed me just, just, just so you'd have a damn story. Like I mean, for two years, no, no stories. And she had them every single day day but didn't see the value in them.

Starting point is 00:20:25 That's interesting. And so I think number one, stories help us understand life. They help us understand ourselves, their reflection of ourselves. You know, the great thing about comedy is comedy can kind of put that mirror up to us that most times you can't. You know, people's ego gets in the way, but when they hold up that mirror and they can put it on a funny slang, you kind of go, yeah, that's really funny. I laugh at that. And you don't come to think of it. That is a stupid thing that we do as human beings, you know, whatever the rap is, but also being able to tell stories of being interesting. I mean, she was just boring the crap out of me. She's a wonderful person, but she was boring the crap out of me. I'm like, I can't marry somebody who's just going through life dead inside.

Starting point is 00:21:07 Same thing with jobs. You know, I've hired hundreds of people over the years, being able to tell a story in hiring and, and, and portray yourself in a, in a way that you want to, to get a job and different things, like I said, dating, you know, being able to, to communicate well, it makes all the difference in the world. I mean, even if, you know, being able to, to communicate well, makes all the difference in the world. I mean, even if you know, you don't have to be a screenwriter, I guess what I'm saying, you don't have to be a book author, you don't have to, you know, be, you know, obsessive B to A, you know, whatever, you don't, you don't have to, it

Starting point is 00:21:40 doesn't have to be used for anything other than just your daily communication and telling stories and telling them well. Yeah. And you have to listen too. That's part of it. What? You have to, exactly. If you're not paying attention to people and connecting with people, then you won't learn

Starting point is 00:21:55 those stories and they won't be listening to you either. So that's kind of disappointing. But yeah, even when we were in, like I say, we were in retail, like learning how to tell great stories about these kind of old, rare collectible toys that we'd have come through the store would make all the difference in the world. Because if you couldn't tell a good story, nobody would take an interest in the thing. But my favorite experiment that we had in the store was we had a series of superhero action figures, nothing unusual there. But they were by a company called Toy Biz, which made a particularly low quality toy. So some of them are really genuinely awful.

Starting point is 00:22:29 And I ended up getting laden with a bunch of these things. The one that I remember is the Superman villain Lex Luthor. And they would have an action in them, you squeeze their legs together and they would punch or do something. And then the Lex Luthor would raise his arm up because he's wearing the kryptonite ring. You know, that would be a problem for Superman. But in this particular case, the toy was designed so poorly that when you squeezed his legs together, he would punch himself in the face. So we couldn't get rid of them because it looked bad and it wasn't fun to play with. But I took most of them and I put them on pegs in the aisle like you would in a regular toy store, but nobody would buy them. But I took one and I wrote a story about it and I put it in a glass cabinet with a light on it and

Starting point is 00:23:14 I said, worst action figure ever made. Punches himself in the face and just basically told a funny story about the thing. And we sold every one of those things out of the cabinet for twice as much money as the ones that were in the worst toy ever made of its kind. Yeah. Pete Slauson People are all on that one. Pete Neal Yeah, it was special. Pete Slauson Yeah, that sounds like my first date marriages. Anyway, I don't know what that means, folks. It's just a marriage joke. We do want to show.

Starting point is 00:23:44 But yeah, learning to tell stories is so important and, you know, just being interesting in life, you know, and we are, you know, this is another thing I say on the show all the time, fabric of the stories are the fabric of life. They're, they won't make us like, you know, and we've talked about this on the show before, but you know, on one hand, we don't, we don't have the greatest of stories. I mean, a lot of our stories are overcoming adversity, trauma, there are the Phoenix rising from the ashes. This is why we love the, the hero's journey tale.

Starting point is 00:24:17 You know, it's, it's the, it's the person who crawls out of the primordial soup and hell and, you know, hellfire and whatever, and comes through it comes through it all and in the end wins. We love those stories because we want those for us. But stories of the fabric of life, you can look at your life and you can be like, some of the things maybe you don't get to choose your childhood or your family or your experience, but as you get older, you do. And, you know, you can look at your life, at your, the things you failed at, the things you made mistakes at, the things didn't maybe go so well for you. And then how you've, you know, Phoenix for the ashes resurrected yourself from

Starting point is 00:24:57 the, those challenges. You know, on one hand, you know, I, I'm resentful of some, I'm not, I'm not actively resentful, but you know, there's some things I rather would not have gone through as a child. But when you look at the arc of your life and the things that it contributed to shape you in the way that you are, that kind of help you succeed at what you do, you kind of, you realize that you're nothing without those stories. It is the fabric of your entire life is your stories. You take my stories away, I got nothing without those stories. It is the fabric of your entire life is your stories. You take my stories away, I got nothing to talk about. They learn nothing actually from life.

Starting point is 00:25:31 Pete Slauson Walking, talking, collections of scars. All of us have been through it. Pete Slauson Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I got a lot of those scars. In fact, I'm missing a few limbs, I think. Pete Slauson That's really what the hero's journey is about. You know, the hero enters the story with some kind of preconceived idea. They're broken in some way. So they've got it wrong about themselves, about the world, about their place in the world. And then you put them through hell. And it's that, you know, fire that you put them through that allows them to see things

Starting point is 00:25:59 a little differently and finally grow out of whatever is keeping them stuck in life. And when we're teaching the life and death and the story forge principles, we try to get people to zero in on those emotional shifts that take place at those major milestones in your life. You know, it's not about what happens, it's about what changes. And good stories are always about transformation of some kind. That's really the heart of it. Pete Slauson Yeah. And some stories aren't, don't, I think it's kind of interesting how some stories don't end well and that's the lesson. Like good doesn't always triumph over evil. Sometimes evil does win.

Starting point is 00:26:35 Jared Slauson Cautionary tales. Yeah. Pete Slauson You know, I remember, it always brings me back to the movie Seven. I don't know if you remember it. What's in the box? Jared Slauson Oh movie seven. I don't know if you remember it. What's in the box? Brad Pitt said, that thing, that movie had a double mark. I mean, I, I totally, me and my girlfriend were watching it. We were so just emotionally disturbed and visually disturbed that we got into a huge fight and broke up on the way over from the movie. We later got back together, but we were just, it was so dark. And yeah, we were just, you could tell we were just really shaken by it. But, you know, there's a story where good doesn't win.

Starting point is 00:27:12 Pete Yeah. Pete Evil doesn't always, right? Good doesn't always win. The only time that a story like that should feel like a loss is if you don't learn something from it. So, no matter what you're writing about, no matter what the tone of the story is that you're writing, you're trying to elicit an emotional response for someone and hopefully infuse a little wisdom that they otherwise wouldn't get if they hadn't kind of read or watched your movie, you know, whatever your storytelling platform is. Yeah, as long as you move people on an emotional level, then you're winning. And so part of the conversations that we have is what do you want to do with that? What do you want people to feel? And what do you want

Starting point is 00:27:48 them to kind of walk away with in their mind? If you don't have those kinds of high-level questions going on while you sit down to write, then typically what you're going to write is pretty surface level. Pete Slauson Yeah. It's trying to connect with people emotionally can be a challenge. You know, you've done acting and appeared in films and TVs, I understand correctly. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, a little bit of on screen stuff,

Starting point is 00:28:11 mostly on stage as an actor, but yeah. Okay, yeah. Stage is one of the more harder things to do because, you know, with film, you can do like a cut here, cut there, cut there, you know, piece it all together and stuff. But stage, you got to go on and it's live, right? You're out there. Yep. You've got to make it happen on your own.

Starting point is 00:28:29 Obviously you're working with other actors in the scene, but the editor isn't there to save you if you happen to, you know, muffle line or something like that. So it's real. And that was a great proving ground for me, again, to being able to connect to an audience. Because you know, when you have it, you're on stage, you know instantly whether or not you've got the audience. And if it's crickets, that's painful. But if you can get the whole house to just come down with laughter or with a gasp,

Starting point is 00:28:54 I played an abusive boyfriend in a play once and after I slapped her, the whole crowd just sucked the oxygen out of the room. It was great. It was so satisfying to get that kind of an immediate response. But laughter, crying, you name it. If you can elicit that emotional response, and I should say the intended emotional response, because if you write a horror movie and people laugh at it, I wouldn't call that a victory.

Starting point is 00:29:18 But if you could get the response you wanted of people, then yeah, you're on your way. And then it's all a matter of what do you want to do with that power? Because it's really a pretty powerful skill to have. And you got to know what your goals are with it and what you want people to kind of do with what you're making them feel. The, you know, it's, we, I had an acting and modeling agency back in the day and it was in Utah, I went and touched by an angel was like really popular. This is clear, clear the nineties and two thousands. Yeah. And LA had had this huge, had had this huge, what is it?

Starting point is 00:29:54 Union fight, union strike. Strike. Yeah. And so they, they, there was a lot of films going to states like Utah that were non-union and people were filming off site there where the whole thing got worked out and rearranged. And so I started sitting in with the directors and producers to see how the casting thing worked because a lot of my, my, my, the people in our agency were being cast. And it was interesting to watch.

Starting point is 00:30:23 I didn't know a lot about acting from it. And you would have just an endless amount of these people come in to cast for a movie. And, you know, they put up these performances where they would just, you know, deadpan read, you know, the lines and stuff, little to no emotion, or maybe they'd try and invoke some emotion or try and have brought a character. And then you'd have people that would come in and there's no, the crazy thing about it is probably a lot like stage. There's no music that can come up in a, when you're doing the casting agent thing, there's no music that comes up. There's no scenery. There's no, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:01 the emotion is helped and aided by a lot of music, but there's just the actor there. And you know, you don't even sometimes have fellow actors unless they gear it that way. And to see, you know, you would see actor or actress over and over again of different ones that they just wouldn't land it. You just be like, okay, boring, boring by, see if I, and there would be like one guy or gal who come on and they would just blow your freaking mind. And with no music, no background, you know, the whole, the whole dais of producers and directors

Starting point is 00:31:38 would be in tears or in laughter or in just emotion. And it would just be like an explosion. And yeah, the level of different acting, acting is probably another thing people should learn in telling stories and just learning how to present yourself and present things well, you know, just like a speaker has to do when speakers go on stage and stuff, you know, you've got to present well. If you're a public speaker, then you're an actor of sorts too. You're just playing a different version of yourself. But yeah, it's the, in my experience, there's, there's basically two

Starting point is 00:32:11 containers for all actors. If there's the, the actor that wants to be seen, and then there's the actor that wants to disappear. I was always one that wanted to disappear and we won't get into my mental health issues for that reason, but I wanted to disappear into a role. And I found that a lot of people showed up and would want to jump up and down in front of the camera or the director, you know, the casting agent to try to get their attention and thought that that was the way in. But it was always the still ones that really caught the eye. And it was a couple of people that

Starting point is 00:32:42 had years and years of experience in theater that taught me that trick that if you've got a bunch of people on stage and a bunch of them are noisy and jumping around and just doing like physical shtick, it's the one that's the stillest that will draw the eye. That one will pull you in and what is that character's story? What's going on in their head? So it's just another way of learning to show the audience and not tell the audience. Don't spoon feed them. Kind of draw them into whatever's going on in your mind and make yourself as fascinating as possible. Use the audience's curiosity to control them and then manipulate their emotional state. It works.

Starting point is 00:33:20 So tell us how people, as we go out, how people can reach out to you, how they can work with you, potential, you know, client structures you look for, you know, do they have to have the experience, et cetera, et cetera, and your dot coms as we go. Yeah, we don't, I don't, I work with a lot of people who are brand new that are just interested in learning the craft of telling a compelling story. So if you reach out to me at the website, Jordan Morris, writer, igniter.com, you'll see contact info there. Typically I will meet with them at no obligation.

Starting point is 00:33:49 I'm not a salesperson. I don't like selling hard on what I do. But if you want to get together and kind of converse with me about what's possible and what I might be able to help you with, I'm happy to do that. Because if you're going to invest in me, that's the least I can do is to invest back in you first. And if we get on and you like the sound of what I might be able to offer you, then perhaps we can work together. And if not, then I'll just do my best to be as of value to you as

Starting point is 00:34:11 I can at the time we have during our conversation. Yeah. I love to talk to storytellers. Yeah. To learn to tell stories, folks, I'm still learning to tell stories. I don't think I mastered it. The, uh, but you want to be an interesting person being an interesting person. Life makes you, I don't know. I think you go much farther than it being able to tell stories, being able to weave stories, be able to take news topics and weave them. You know, no, no one likes someone who's, you know, I've met people, they're just, I don't know what's going on with them, but there's this, there's a hole in their head,

Starting point is 00:34:44 you know, do you have any stories? No. Did you learn anything today? No. Sometimes it's a matter of them not really being sure of who they are. If you've got a really strong sense of self, then you've got a much better shot at telling a compelling story and having some kind of charisma when you walk into a room. You're just assured of who you are. That's a part of being a successful writer too is again, knowing your brand, knowing what you're good at writing, what you want to be famous for writing and how you want to move people specifically. Being a parent, being a partner

Starting point is 00:35:16 in a relationship, you know, being able to, you know, we have to entertain ourselves throughout all these relationships and stuff that we do. You know, I mean, my parents were told great stories. Evidently Santa Claus was real and so was the Easter Bunny. I knew them for a while. Until my grandfather tipped me off otherwise. So he had a different story. Anyway, thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:35:42 Very insightful and the importance of storytelling, Jordan. Jordan Weiss Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. I really had fun getting to meet you and yeah, I'll be very appreciative of anybody that kind of reaches out. Pete Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com for us, it says Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com for us, it says Chris Voss. Chris Voss one on the TikTok, and he and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other, stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out. This should be up

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unleashing Storytelling Power: Transforming Lives Through Engaging Narratives

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