Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back together with.

Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back together with.

The words you write, all the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start to.

The words you write, all the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start to.

Fun when you write your story. You get the words and said, don't you think it's time to let them out and write them down and cover what it's all about and write your story. Write you, write your story.

Fun when you write your story. You get the words and said, don't you think it's time to let them out and write them down and cover what it's all about and write your story. Write you, write your story.

Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. My name is Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on last week's episode, we wrapped up a long series on a framework I've been teaching you that you can use to take any story from your life and turn it into a piece of writing that you can feel really excited and proud to share. If you're just now tuning in, make sure that you go all the way back to the beginning and listen to each one of those episodes, because they really do work together as a cohesive whole. The way that I designed this first season was that you would listen to it all together so that you could learn the entirety of the framework that you could write those small pieces of your story. And in this episode, I'm going to teach you how to take each of those small pieces and put them into something that feels cohesive and whole. But if you're just tuning in now, you're going to feel pretty lost if you don't listen to the first nine episodes of the season. So go back and listen to those, and then listen to this one when you're done with that. I want to start off today's episode by telling you a quick story. Some of you know if you follow me on social media, that I've been taking improv classes this year. It was something that I've wanted to do for a really long time. I just had this intuition that it was going to be really good for me, even though it scared me half to death. And so I signed up for an intro level improv class at a comedy club here in Nashville, and I thought that was going to be it. It was an eight week class. It was going to push me out of my comfort zone. I about barfed everywhere on the first night of my class, but I forced myself to do it. I got through the first eight weeks, and somehow, for some reason that I don't totally understand yet, I keep moving on to the next level. I'm partly because I'm having fun, partly because the people that I'm connecting with in my class keep asking me to join them for the next level, and I just can't think of a reason not too So, now I'm taking level four of improv and each level gets a little bit more challenging, pushes me even further out of my comfort zone. And one of the things that we talk about is the rubber wall is what our instructor calls it, where the rubber wall is the wall that you bump up against when you have an opportunity to be vulnerable in front of your audience. So you have this opportunity to be vulnerable, and maybe you bump up against that and then you kind of bounce off the rubber wall and go back to the way things used to be. But she talks about having an experience where you get to push through the rubber wall, you feel yourself bumped up against it, and then you move through the rubber wall and you show yourself in some kind of vulnerability to your audience. And I thought that was such a helpful framework to understand what the writing process works like too. It's a little bit of a different medium because when you sit down to write your story, doing that very privately, you're not in front of other people. You're not doing it in the immediate. You get a lot of time to sort of sit with a thing, a story, a detail you want to tell about your life before you decide if and how you want to share that. But the concept is the same. I mean, you're writing a story and you might have an experience where you put something really vulnerable on the page and you kind of go like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just said that, or I can't believe I just put that there. But you have this opportunity to be vulnerable, even with yourself, even to say, oh wow, yeah that's true, even though that's a hard thing to say, that's really true. And there's something about that putting that truth on the page that really unlocks your story and allows you to tell an even more powerful version of your own story. So that's one thing I wanted to share with you about what I've been learning in improv. But this past week in level four of Improv, our instructor taught us a new framework through which to understand our scenes. And by level four of Improv, we've done I don't know, eight or ten weeks each level of improv, so you can imagine it's been like, I don't know, six or seven months of classes now starting to feel a little bit more comfortable doing this thing called improv. We understand how a scene works. You can, you know, just sort of be thrown into the scene at the last minute, say the first thing that comes to your mind. And I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable.

Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. My name is Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on last week's episode, we wrapped up a long series on a framework I've been teaching you that you can use to take any story from your life and turn it into a piece of writing that you can feel really excited and proud to share. If you're just now tuning in, make sure that you go all the way back to the beginning and listen to each one of those episodes, because they really do work together as a cohesive whole. The way that I designed this first season was that you would listen to it all together so that you could learn the entirety of the framework that you could write those small pieces of your story. And in this episode, I'm going to teach you how to take each of those small pieces and put them into something that feels cohesive and whole. But if you're just tuning in now, you're going to feel pretty lost if you don't listen to the first nine episodes of the season. So go back and listen to those, and then listen to this one when you're done with that. I want to start off today's episode by telling you a quick story. Some of you know if you follow me on social media, that I've been taking improv classes this year. It was something that I've wanted to do for a really long time. I just had this intuition that it was going to be really good for me, even though it scared me half to death. And so I signed up for an intro level improv class at a comedy club here in Nashville, and I thought that was going to be it. It was an eight week class. It was going to push me out of my comfort zone. I about barfed everywhere on the first night of my class, but I forced myself to do it. I got through the first eight weeks, and somehow, for some reason that I don't totally understand yet, I keep moving on to the next level. I'm partly because I'm having fun, partly because the people that I'm connecting with in my class keep asking me to join them for the next level, and I just can't think of a reason not too So, now I'm taking level four of improv and each level gets a little bit more challenging, pushes me even further out of my comfort zone. And one of the things that we talk about is the rubber wall is what our instructor calls it, where the rubber wall is the wall that you bump up against when you have an opportunity to be vulnerable in front of your audience. So you have this opportunity to be vulnerable, and maybe you bump up against that and then you kind of bounce off the rubber wall and go back to the way things used to be. But she talks about having an experience where you get to push through the rubber wall, you feel yourself bumped up against it, and then you move through the rubber wall and you show yourself in some kind of vulnerability to your audience. And I thought that was such a helpful framework to understand what the writing process works like too. It's a little bit of a different medium because when you sit down to write your story, doing that very privately, you're not in front of other people. You're not doing it in the immediate. You get a lot of time to sort of sit with a thing, a story, a detail you want to tell about your life before you decide if and how you want to share that. But the concept is the same. I mean, you're writing a story and you might have an experience where you put something really vulnerable on the page and you kind of go like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just said that, or I can't believe I just put that there. But you have this opportunity to be vulnerable, even with yourself, even to say, oh wow, yeah that's true, even though that's a hard thing to say, that's really true. And there's something about that putting that truth on the page that really unlocks your story and allows you to tell an even more powerful version of your own story. So that's one thing I wanted to share with you about what I've been learning in improv. But this past week in level four of Improv, our instructor taught us a new framework through which to understand our scenes. And by level four of Improv, we've done I don't know, eight or ten weeks each level of improv, so you can imagine it's been like, I don't know, six or seven months of classes now starting to feel a little bit more comfortable doing this thing called improv. We understand how a scene works. You can, you know, just sort of be thrown into the scene at the last minute, say the first thing that comes to your mind. And I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable.

With that act.

With that act.

Then this past week in our class, she taught us this new framework, a new thing that we're supposed to be looking for inside of scenes, a new way to see how a scene works. And what I found happening to me and to my classmates is it was really getting in our heads. It was like, Okay, I see that you're teaching us a thing that's going to eventually make us better at this, but for right now, it feels like it's kind of tripping me up. And we had that experience and I left class and I started thinking about how that can be true with any new thing that we learn, especially with learning a framework.

Then this past week in our class, she taught us this new framework, a new thing that we're supposed to be looking for inside of scenes, a new way to see how a scene works. And what I found happening to me and to my classmates is it was really getting in our heads. It was like, Okay, I see that you're teaching us a thing that's going to eventually make us better at this, but for right now, it feels like it's kind of tripping me up. And we had that experience and I left class and I started thinking about how that can be true with any new thing that we learn, especially with learning a framework.

A framework can be a really helpful way.

A framework can be a really helpful way.

To understand a new thing, a new art form that you're learning, Like, for example, you're learning how to write your story, and I'm teaching you this framework, and also as you're learning the framework, it can feel a little bit like the framework is tripping you up because you've got your instinctive or intuitive way that you would do a thing, and then you're learning this framework that's not as intuitive because it's brand new. And as you practice with the two of those things, you try to follow your intuition, but you are also learning this framework, it can feel a little bit like those two things are arguing with each other. And her encouragement to us was just to allow that to be okay, that in class, this is your opportunity to try things, to fail big, to just give ourselves some space and time to learn this new way of thinking about a scene. And it made me think I wanted to pass that advice onto you as well. As you learn this framework that I've been teaching inside of these episodes, maybe some of you have taken a stab at writing your story in the past, and you have your intuitive way that you've done it, and maybe as you learned some of the elements of the framework, sometimes there'll be moments where you feel like, oh, yeah, that really opens up this option for me, or that really helps to make my story make more sense. Or that really makes things click, and then there's going to be other moments where you're like, uh, I cannot figure this out. If this is the framework that I'm supposed to be operating inside of, then that goes against everything that I intuitively knew to be true about my story or the way that I wanted to tell it. And I just want to give you permission for that to be okay for a little bit that as you work to put together your story in your way, this framework is designed to be helpful and to lift you from where you are to the next level of storytelling. And also there may be some tension inside of that for some time, and that's fine. Some of you, in order to get your story on the page, may need to forget about the framework for a little bit of time and just literally write what happened. Sometimes in order to get to where we're trying to go, we just have to get the details on the page. Maybe it's not grammatically correct, maybe it's bullet points, maybe it's just kind of brain dump, Maybe it doesn't make any sense, maybe it's not in chronological order.

To understand a new thing, a new art form that you're learning, Like, for example, you're learning how to write your story, and I'm teaching you this framework, and also as you're learning the framework, it can feel a little bit like the framework is tripping you up because you've got your instinctive or intuitive way that you would do a thing, and then you're learning this framework that's not as intuitive because it's brand new. And as you practice with the two of those things, you try to follow your intuition, but you are also learning this framework, it can feel a little bit like those two things are arguing with each other. And her encouragement to us was just to allow that to be okay, that in class, this is your opportunity to try things, to fail big, to just give ourselves some space and time to learn this new way of thinking about a scene. And it made me think I wanted to pass that advice onto you as well. As you learn this framework that I've been teaching inside of these episodes, maybe some of you have taken a stab at writing your story in the past, and you have your intuitive way that you've done it, and maybe as you learned some of the elements of the framework, sometimes there'll be moments where you feel like, oh, yeah, that really opens up this option for me, or that really helps to make my story make more sense. Or that really makes things click, and then there's going to be other moments where you're like, uh, I cannot figure this out. If this is the framework that I'm supposed to be operating inside of, then that goes against everything that I intuitively knew to be true about my story or the way that I wanted to tell it. And I just want to give you permission for that to be okay for a little bit that as you work to put together your story in your way, this framework is designed to be helpful and to lift you from where you are to the next level of storytelling. And also there may be some tension inside of that for some time, and that's fine. Some of you, in order to get your story on the page, may need to forget about the framework for a little bit of time and just literally write what happened. Sometimes in order to get to where we're trying to go, we just have to get the details on the page. Maybe it's not grammatically correct, maybe it's bullet points, maybe it's just kind of brain dump, Maybe it doesn't make any sense, maybe it's not in chronological order.

That's fine.

That's fine.

Maybe the first thing that you need to do is just get the story on the page. I think of this part of the process as kind of dumping the box of puzzle pieces onto the table. You know, there's that beginning part in working on a jigsaw puzzle where you just sort of spread out the pieces and you make sure that they're all flipped up right side up and that you can kind of see everything so you know what you're working with. And then the next step is creating the frame, the out outer part of the jig sat puzzle, and then maybe like working on one little piece at a time. That analogy works really well for this process too, that the first step is just dumping the box upside down, getting everything that's in your brain down on the paper. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be in any kind of order, it doesn't have to match the framework. It just needs to be there that you have something to work with, and then we'll start organizing and strategizing and hopefully making things fit inside of this rectangular square box. So the outer most pieces of the puzzle, the edge pieces, you know, when you first put that together. The connection to the analogy I would make is the entire framework itself. So as you listen to these ten episodes, and as you begin to understand how this framework operates. I would think of that like understanding those outer most edge pieces of the puzzle. Now you kind of know the parameters that you're operating inside of. And then as you begin to think about each element of the framework by itself, that's like honing in on one part of the puzzle. And maybe let's say, first you're gonna look for all the tree pieces and make the tree. And then you're going to look for all the boat pieces. They're all red and you're gonna make the boat. Next. That's working on each element of the framework. So you might zoom in first on the hero who wants something and think about, Okay, how am I going to think about the hero in my story? I'm the hero, but what did I want at the beginning of the story? How am I going to transform? And that's kind of working on that boat or working on that tree. And then the next thing we need to do is start to think about how all of these pieces connect. And that's what I want to help you do in this episode. How do all the pieces of your story connect? If I were you, the first thing I would do is work on each element by itself. Identify your hero who wants something, Identify the backstory of the hero. Identify how the hero is going to transform. Identify your one big problem, Identify your controlling idea, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then I would almost lay those pieces out in order on the page so that you can see them all together. By the time you have these pieces laid out on the page so that you can see them all together, you're going to start to feel a lot of momentum to bring this story together. The thing I don't want you to focus on is getting the grammar or the sentence structure perfect. Just know that that's a stage of editing that comes next. The first stage of editing in any piece of writing is content editing. It's getting the structure of the story right. You want to make sure that the elements of the story are in order, that everything you need is there, that nothing is missing, and that it's all flowing. After that, then you can go back in and make sure the sentence structure is varied. You know that the turn of phrase works. That maybe you go back in and check grammar and all of that stuff, but don't worry about that. Piece right now, just worry about getting the story on the page and getting it to flow in the way that feels right for you. A couple of really practical pieces to help you with this. The first thing is to schedule your writing time ahead of time. So up until now, as you've been listening to these episodes, I don't know if you've been doing any actual writing while you've been listening. It might have been more of a thought experiment. But now, if you're wanting to get any writing on the page, you're going to have to schedule some writing time into your life. And don't let this intimidate you. It can be something as simple as ten minutes or fifteen minutes or thirty minutes maybe that you schedule somewhere into your day that you're going to spend specifically thinking about this project and getting the words down on the page. Number two, if you're able, see if you can make this writing time in the morning. I'm going to use this as a really generalized piece of advice, because in general, the morning time is an easier time to get more writing done.

Maybe the first thing that you need to do is just get the story on the page. I think of this part of the process as kind of dumping the box of puzzle pieces onto the table. You know, there's that beginning part in working on a jigsaw puzzle where you just sort of spread out the pieces and you make sure that they're all flipped up right side up and that you can kind of see everything so you know what you're working with. And then the next step is creating the frame, the out outer part of the jig sat puzzle, and then maybe like working on one little piece at a time. That analogy works really well for this process too, that the first step is just dumping the box upside down, getting everything that's in your brain down on the paper. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be in any kind of order, it doesn't have to match the framework. It just needs to be there that you have something to work with, and then we'll start organizing and strategizing and hopefully making things fit inside of this rectangular square box. So the outer most pieces of the puzzle, the edge pieces, you know, when you first put that together. The connection to the analogy I would make is the entire framework itself. So as you listen to these ten episodes, and as you begin to understand how this framework operates. I would think of that like understanding those outer most edge pieces of the puzzle. Now you kind of know the parameters that you're operating inside of. And then as you begin to think about each element of the framework by itself, that's like honing in on one part of the puzzle. And maybe let's say, first you're gonna look for all the tree pieces and make the tree. And then you're going to look for all the boat pieces. They're all red and you're gonna make the boat. Next. That's working on each element of the framework. So you might zoom in first on the hero who wants something and think about, Okay, how am I going to think about the hero in my story? I'm the hero, but what did I want at the beginning of the story? How am I going to transform? And that's kind of working on that boat or working on that tree. And then the next thing we need to do is start to think about how all of these pieces connect. And that's what I want to help you do in this episode. How do all the pieces of your story connect? If I were you, the first thing I would do is work on each element by itself. Identify your hero who wants something, Identify the backstory of the hero. Identify how the hero is going to transform. Identify your one big problem, Identify your controlling idea, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then I would almost lay those pieces out in order on the page so that you can see them all together. By the time you have these pieces laid out on the page so that you can see them all together, you're going to start to feel a lot of momentum to bring this story together. The thing I don't want you to focus on is getting the grammar or the sentence structure perfect. Just know that that's a stage of editing that comes next. The first stage of editing in any piece of writing is content editing. It's getting the structure of the story right. You want to make sure that the elements of the story are in order, that everything you need is there, that nothing is missing, and that it's all flowing. After that, then you can go back in and make sure the sentence structure is varied. You know that the turn of phrase works. That maybe you go back in and check grammar and all of that stuff, but don't worry about that. Piece right now, just worry about getting the story on the page and getting it to flow in the way that feels right for you. A couple of really practical pieces to help you with this. The first thing is to schedule your writing time ahead of time. So up until now, as you've been listening to these episodes, I don't know if you've been doing any actual writing while you've been listening. It might have been more of a thought experiment. But now, if you're wanting to get any writing on the page, you're going to have to schedule some writing time into your life. And don't let this intimidate you. It can be something as simple as ten minutes or fifteen minutes or thirty minutes maybe that you schedule somewhere into your day that you're going to spend specifically thinking about this project and getting the words down on the page. Number two, if you're able, see if you can make this writing time in the morning. I'm going to use this as a really generalized piece of advice, because in general, the morning time is an easier time to get more writing done.

Part of this is just because of how the brain works.

Part of this is just because of how the brain works.

Your brain is a muscle just like any other muscle in your body, it's going to get tired as you use it throughout the day. So by the time the night time rolls around and you've responded to one hundred emails and you've been at work all day and you've been managing the kids or running pickups and drop offs or whatever, by the time you get to the end of the day, your brain is exhausted and you just don't have a lot of juice left to give.

Your brain is a muscle just like any other muscle in your body, it's going to get tired as you use it throughout the day. So by the time the night time rolls around and you've responded to one hundred emails and you've been at work all day and you've been managing the kids or running pickups and drop offs or whatever, by the time you get to the end of the day, your brain is exhausted and you just don't have a lot of juice left to give.

I will say that with the.

I will say that with the.

One caveat that sometimes people have an experience where late at night they get a sort of second wind of creativity. Sometimes after everyone is in bed. The night time hours from like ten pm to two am can be really productive for certain people, but I find that eighty percent of people really operate better in those early morning hours. And then sometimes people get that creative extra wind at night. So if that's you and you feel yourself get that second wind at night, and you want to capitalize on that wave of creativity, then please feel free to do that. But as a general rule, I find those morning hours to be much more effective. Okay, third piece of advice is as it relates to breaking through that rubber wall. One way to help yourself do this. Just a hack to help you do it is to get your heart rate up. I don't know what it is about getting your heart rate up. It's something physically that helps you sort of drop into your body or something. But taking a yoga class or going for a brisk walk around the block, or even literally this sounds stupid, but just doing jumping jacks right next to your computer before you sit down to do it. There's something about getting your heart rate up that makes it much easier for you to break through that rubber wall when you sit down to the page. The only person who you're being vulnerable with is yourself. But obviously still that's very hard sometimes, and so see if getting your heart rate up can help you to do that. And finally, my last piece of advice to you is as you're putting the pieces of the puzzle together. This is going to sound very counterintuitive with what I told you at the beginning of this podcast, but I want you to write where the wind blows. I want you to write where the writing takes you. There's a time to use the framework to craft something that fits inside of the framework, and then there's a time to dance with the piece of writing that you're working with. And I think the difficult thing about writing a story is finding the balance between those two things.

One caveat that sometimes people have an experience where late at night they get a sort of second wind of creativity. Sometimes after everyone is in bed. The night time hours from like ten pm to two am can be really productive for certain people, but I find that eighty percent of people really operate better in those early morning hours. And then sometimes people get that creative extra wind at night. So if that's you and you feel yourself get that second wind at night, and you want to capitalize on that wave of creativity, then please feel free to do that. But as a general rule, I find those morning hours to be much more effective. Okay, third piece of advice is as it relates to breaking through that rubber wall. One way to help yourself do this. Just a hack to help you do it is to get your heart rate up. I don't know what it is about getting your heart rate up. It's something physically that helps you sort of drop into your body or something. But taking a yoga class or going for a brisk walk around the block, or even literally this sounds stupid, but just doing jumping jacks right next to your computer before you sit down to do it. There's something about getting your heart rate up that makes it much easier for you to break through that rubber wall when you sit down to the page. The only person who you're being vulnerable with is yourself. But obviously still that's very hard sometimes, and so see if getting your heart rate up can help you to do that. And finally, my last piece of advice to you is as you're putting the pieces of the puzzle together. This is going to sound very counterintuitive with what I told you at the beginning of this podcast, but I want you to write where the wind blows. I want you to write where the writing takes you. There's a time to use the framework to craft something that fits inside of the framework, and then there's a time to dance with the piece of writing that you're working with. And I think the difficult thing about writing a story is finding the balance between those two things.

You need both.

You need both.

Just think about me in the improv class, like I need to learn this new framework because it's going to make me better at improv. It's going to make it easier for me eventually to do the thing that I do, but in the short run, it might make things feel a little harder. So do both practice with the framework and also right where the windblows, right where the story takes you, right where your intuition is taking you, follow the story where it's trying to go, and then come back to the framework and see if you can find a healthy balance between the two. Season one of the podcast is not over yet. I have a couple more episodes coming up for you and a couple of really fun surprises that I know you're going to love. But as we're thinking towards season two of the podcast, I want you to know that I am going to be sharing some of your stories here on the podcast and talking specifically to people who are working to craft their stories and who are bumping into problems along the way. I want you to hear me coach someone else through the process of writing their story so that you can continue to think about how to get yours down on paper. So as you think about that, know that I would love to hear the story you're working on, and know that I'm going to be pulling listeners onto the show to coach them on the places where they're stuck. If you have a story that you feel ready to share, or if you have a big question that's getting in your way, that's something that's keeping you stuck, keeping you from writing your story, I really want to hear it. You can email me at mystory at writeourstory dot com that comes directly to me. I'm going to be reading through stories that come through, and also reading your questions and reading the problems that you're bumping into, and pulling some listeners onto the podcast. So please email me, Please share your story with me. I can't wait to read what you're working on, and I'm so excited for next week's episode. I'm going to talk specifically about sharing your story, what that looks like, what it means to share your story, and why sharing your story is so important.

Just think about me in the improv class, like I need to learn this new framework because it's going to make me better at improv. It's going to make it easier for me eventually to do the thing that I do, but in the short run, it might make things feel a little harder. So do both practice with the framework and also right where the windblows, right where the story takes you, right where your intuition is taking you, follow the story where it's trying to go, and then come back to the framework and see if you can find a healthy balance between the two. Season one of the podcast is not over yet. I have a couple more episodes coming up for you and a couple of really fun surprises that I know you're going to love. But as we're thinking towards season two of the podcast, I want you to know that I am going to be sharing some of your stories here on the podcast and talking specifically to people who are working to craft their stories and who are bumping into problems along the way. I want you to hear me coach someone else through the process of writing their story so that you can continue to think about how to get yours down on paper. So as you think about that, know that I would love to hear the story you're working on, and know that I'm going to be pulling listeners onto the show to coach them on the places where they're stuck. If you have a story that you feel ready to share, or if you have a big question that's getting in your way, that's something that's keeping you stuck, keeping you from writing your story, I really want to hear it. You can email me at mystory at writeourstory dot com that comes directly to me. I'm going to be reading through stories that come through, and also reading your questions and reading the problems that you're bumping into, and pulling some listeners onto the podcast. So please email me, Please share your story with me. I can't wait to read what you're working on, and I'm so excited for next week's episode. I'm going to talk specifically about sharing your story, what that looks like, what it means to share your story, and why sharing your story is so important.

Until next week, i'd be writing

Until next week, i'd be writing