Episode 12: Advance and Expand With Jeremy Richards

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Well, hello and welcome back. Today's going to be a very interesting and special module that we're going to be doing. And I have my headsets on because I need to be able to hear the guest artists that will be joining us today.

We are going to be talking about advancing and expanding. Have you ever met anyone that tells you a story and it goes on and on and on and on and you just want your five minutes back and there's no point? That's called meandering.

Or they go so fast that you don't really see anything because they're just advancing so much. We don't want that either. So it's a balance.

When you're writing and crafting a great story, you want to have moments where you're advancing the story to the next scenes, because this is like a mind movie, right? Scene by scene. But you're expanding on the juicy details. You're letting us know what the characters are going through. How are they feeling? That's where you have dialogue. That's expansion.

But advancing is when the storyteller pretty much is usually headed into a narrator role, and then they step back into a scene and that's when they enjoy the expansion part.

So it sometimes takes some weed whacking to get all of that expansion done, because you don't need to do everything. You just want to have enough so that the listener can just slip away as they're listening to your story.

Okay, so I'm going to be bringing up a very good friend of mine. Hello, Jeremy Richards. Hi.

Jeremy Richards
Hi Melissa

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
So Jeremy is also very, very strong author of his own book that went internationally number one this year. It's called The Accomplished Creative. I loved it. I laughed so many times and I practice things through that book every day. So thank you for writing it.

And we're also colleagues in both improv. We do professional improv at the same theater here in Seattle at Unexpected Productions, as well as he is one of our coaches. So when we are working with executives and we are trying to find their stories for their story library, be it for podcasts or for a presentation that they're working on, Jeremy is one of my coaches that helps those people find their stories and crafts them so that they are beautiful and balanced with advancing and expanding.

Yes. Okay.

So the way we're going to work with this today is Jeremy, I'm going to bring you right back for just a second. Okay, so hang on. I want to start with this chart.

The hero's journey.

Okay, so as you look at this, it's throughout the book and we've also had a module on this, but what we're going to be watching in this story that we're going to do together is we're going to see how it starts off with life being normal. And then suddenly something happens.

And because that something happens, another thing happens and another thing happens. And then finally you get to an aha. There might even be another inciting event, we'll find out, but you get to the aha where you realize like, wow, I'm different because of that adventure.

And so in this story that we're gonna do with Jeremy, this story is called The Breakfast of Unchampions. And it's a story from an executive named Tom Spann, and it's absolutely one of my favorite stories.

And so what we're gonna see is Jeremy's gonna play the part of the storyteller, and then I'm going to stop every now and then and let you know that, okay, now we're advancing, now we're expanding.

So I'm gonna walk us through it, okay?

So I'm not being rude to Jeremy. We're co-teaching.

Okay, so are you ready? We're going to do this story now. It's called Breakfast of Unchampions.

Jeremy Richards
I am 17 years old and sitting at the dining room table with my father, finishing up our scrambled egg breakfast.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Okay, now we're gonna expand. He's gonna introduce the characters and how their life is currently.

Jeremy Richards
My dad is a proud military man who held decent jobs in sales and marketing roles in the industrial oil business sector. My mother, his wife of 20 years, is an elementary school teacher whose wages all went to pay for the school supplies for their four kids, me and my three younger sisters.

And like a lot of people, my parents fell prey to the keeping up with the Joneses syndrome. We live in a nice house next to a golf course, eat nice restaurants and drive decent cars.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Okay, that was a lot of mind movie making. He said golf courses and nice cars and we know the relationships. So that was expansion.

Now we're going to advance and we're going to see the inciting event.

Jeremy Richards
As I'm eating eggs and reading the newspaper, Dad unexpectedly pulls out a folder and pushes a few pieces of paper across the table towards me and says, these are my financials. You figure out how you can go to college and how I could pay for it.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Okay, that's a bomb that just went off there. So that's the inciting event.

And now we're gonna expand and he's gonna show the relationship and the reaction to the inciting event, which will really show us his character.

Jeremy Richards
As I look at his bills, I see we are drowning in debt. And adding college tuition to this didn't appear to be in the cards. I had never imagined not going to college. So this was a shock.

But somehow in that moment, I felt empathy for my dad and just said, I'll take a look at this and get back to you.

Yes, I was equally surprised at how adult I sounded. The truth was, I didn't know how the hell I'd make this work.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Hmm. So he's on his adventure. So we're going to advance. Because of that, what happens?

Jeremy Richards
So I researched. I learned about colleges and states to keep tuition down. Once I had my plan, I cut a deal with my dad. If I get tuition covered, could you please cover my food costs?

He smiled and exhaled and said, yes.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Yeah, nice dialogue between these characters and you can really feel the relationship. So Crow is active and alive right now.

Okay, so now we're going to advance. Because of that, what happens?

Jeremy Richards
I was off enrolling, but still not sure how to make it all work. I applied for financial aid. I got two jobs while I went to school.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Okay, now let's expand a little bit. He's in school. What's it like?

Jeremy Richards
One was a work-study program in finance. The other was managing the faculty club banquets, which is where I learned how to manage people and lots of moving parts.

As a perk, I also got free dinners, so that saved my struggling parents more on food money.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Again shows his character and how he cares about his family.

We're going to advance and there's another inciting event in this story.

Jeremy Richards
This worked well until my senior year when my dad had to have an emergency root canal and my little sister wrecked the car. She was fine, but these two bills were devastating to us.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Okay, so let's expand a little bit more on that.

Jeremy Richards
I feared that I wouldn't be able to finish my senior year, but I decided to take a risk. I wrote the university a letter and shared what was happening and that I needed a $1,500 loan to finish my senior year or I'd have to leave.

They looked at my grades and record and had seen me busting tables at their banquets. They wrote back and said, here, we'll just give you the $1,500.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
Aha moment!

Jeremy Richards
It blew me away to get help without any expectation of repayment. I have repaid them as an alumni with interest and proud to have been able to do so.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
And now we're going to advance because of that change in him. He's now a different person.

Jeremy Richards
I graduated with about $45,000 in debt. Today, that's about $100,000. But I figured it out in life and paid it off. And even better, so did my dad with his own debt.

I suppose we both grew up together.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
And now the story is starting to come down. He's had his change. He's had his aha. And now we're in the reflection point where you go back to your audience and you share what you learned, the wisdom that you learned.

Jeremy Richards
This is why I understand the people we help at Brightside. Sometimes life just tosses things at us and we need help, but we don't know how to navigate through it by ourselves.

That's the secret. You don't have to do it alone.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
There we go. Well done. It's just such a beautiful story.

So thank you. Well done.

Melissa Reaves, Story Fruition
So there you go. I hope that you enjoyed this module and that you can really think about how to keep balancing your stories so that they advance and expand and that those juicy details are shared with your audience and that you feel confident when you're telling the story that you know where you're going and that the audience will be on the edge of their seats listening to you.

Okay, so I will see you at the next video and thanks so much again for joining us.