One of the most effective ways to hook a listener is to drop them right into the middle of the action, a storytelling technique known as in media res. You don’t need to explain the entire history of the subject before you start the story.
In improv, a scene might begin by referencing a “kitty litter explosion” that just happened. The audience doesn’t need to know when the factory was built; they are immediately engaged by the stakes of the current moment. By starting in the middle and filling in the context later, you respect your listener’s intelligence and create immediate curiosity.
In this micro-episode:
- Why you should skip the backstory and start with the “explosion”
- How referencing past episodes builds a cohesive body of work
- The benefit of letting your audience catch up midstream
Resources: Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforest.com/minute.
Transcript
WEBVTT
::One way to get someone interested in your episode is to reference something that happened right before
things started up. Sometimes in improv, for example, an initiation that's the very top beginning of a
scene might reference something that just happened, even if it's not quite concrete yet what that thing
was. And this might be something like, wow, that kitty litter explosion could have been so much worse. Am I
right? Or I might start an episode with, I can barely read it.
::what I said last night, but your listener wasn't at that dinner, but they have some context and probably
want those details filled in. The audience of that improv scene feel like that event actually existed and
they know that it raises some stakes on whatever is happening right now in that scene. So if you're
delivering solo episodes, you don't have to start right at the beginning. You don't have to give the setup
that there was a kitty litter
::road that was established in:the litter brand you can drop your listener right into the action right into the middle of the subject in
storytelling this is called in media res you don't need to build up or structure your episode from the start
your listener can catch up you can explain why or the details after that opening section like i might say
last week i said that dogs can host
::and I realized this week that I was full of crap. Maybe you never listened to me last week because you heard I
was going off on dog topics, but you know that I'll catch you up with what I missed in a beat or two. Your
listener is curious and they care and that's a good thing. So using that history can help build your show up.
You can create that body of work that you can reference. People can return and they can listen to other
episodes and it brings a sense of cohesion.
::to your overall series. So when you make a note about how you're going to start your episode, reference
something else that happened as the core idea that you're going to build on, and then let your listener join
you kind of midstream and catch up. I'm Jen DeHaan. This is a Credibility Minute. Find more episodes and get
in touch with me at stereoforest.com slash minute.