Revisiting: My Kingdom for Some Structure
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This is Sound School from PRX and Transom. I'm Rob Rosenthal.

I feel a little bit sorry for Bradley Campbell. Not a lot, just a little. Bradley's been a reporter for years and years. He's produced pieces for local radio stations, National Public Radio, the BBC, podcasts like Game Breaker and Sports Explains the World. He's done a lot of work. Yet despite all his good reporting, Bradley feels he's best known for a few drawings he made on cocktail napkins.

And to add insult to injury, these drawings on the napkins became really popular, but people don't know he's the guy who drew them. People will say to him, oh, you're the bar napkin guy? In fact, he recently told me about a time he was sitting in a story meeting at a podcast company and someone started talking about these cool drawings on bar napkins, not at all recognizing the fact that Bradley, the guy who drew them, was sitting right there in the room. ♪

What Bradley sketched out in these napkins were diagrams of story structure, little blueprints for how some stories are put together. I featured them on an episode of Sound School back in 2013, and that episode quickly became one of the most popular. I can't tell you how many times listeners have told me how helpful the napkins are. Just the other day, two professors pinged me to say I use those napkins in my journalism classes all the time.

Back in the day, I called the episode My Kingdom for Some Structure. And even though it was quite popular and the napkins have made the rounds, I'm guessing a lot of new Sound School listeners may not have heard it. It's been a decade or so, right? So I'm pulling this old episode out of the Sound School cave to shine some light on Bradley's Napkins. And for Bradley's sake, from now on, I think we should refer to them as Bradley's Napkins.

Plus, plus, plus, plus, if you've already listened to this episode, you have to listen again because Bradley sent me a brand new napkin sketch, something he's been playing around with lately in his stories. He talks about it a little later on. But before I press play on the old episode, I need to say two more quick things. First, the best way to experience this episode is to look at Bradley's napkins while you're listening. You can find them at the post for this episode at transom.org.

Second, the music in the show. Somehow, I must have been in a mood because somehow I thought it was a good idea to frame the episode using a ridiculously obscure record that I have in my record collection. I mean, talk about a bizarre deep cut.

I love the song, don't get me wrong, but I think the lyrics in this context are a chicken bomb. They're just really distracting. So much so that I thought about removing the song from this updated episode. But then I thought, no, no, no, no, I'm going to keep it in. Because you know what? Sometimes you just got to be weird.

So I left the song in, and that's where we'll pick up with My Kingdom for some structure. I explain the original impetus for the episode, starting with the music. ♪

One of my favorite records is by a band called They Must Be Russians. It's a 45, a little 7-inch record with a song on either side. And the song on the A side is called Don't Try to Cure Yourself. The most widespread venereal disease is gonorrhea. It's the only recording I can think of where the singer refers to pictures on the sleeve of the record. Four images of venereal diseases taken from a microscope. You know, gonorrhea, syphilis, that kind of thing.

You're supposed to listen to the song and look at the pictures.

Now enter the napkins. My friend and former student Bradley Campbell is now a fiend for story structure. But there was a time when, for Bradley, structure was a mystery. Bradley says he was in a bar one night with a reporter from the Village Voice, and he told the guy that he wanted to understand story structure. So the reporter just grabbed a napkin and a pen. He was like, dude, it's just this. And he just writes on a piece of paper, and he's like, that's structure.

And for some reason, for me, that just clicked. I'm like, oh, okay, I have a pathway. It's like he drew a pathway for me to follow for my story. And then I could just picture myself writing the words and writing the stories along this pathway. So it was like Google mapping me directions. When Bradley told me the napkin story, I thought, genius. So Bradley did me the favor of drawing his own napkin and pen versions of story structures for public radio programs.

This American Life, All Things Considered, Radiolab, and so on. And then I thought, well, why don't I scan the sketches, put them up on the web, and just like that song by They Must Be Russians, people could listen to the podcast and look at the drawings at the same time. If not, we'll do our best to describe the napkins for you here. They're bar napkins.

Which bar? The GCB. That's the grad school bar at Brown. It's a bar that's in the bottom of a dorm room at Brown University. Bradley, by the way, is a reporter for Rhode Island Public Radio. The Natkins are like, okay, look at a house. Now take away all the siding. Take away all of the sheetrock. The floorboards. Take away all of the drywall. And take away all of everything. And you're just left with a skeleton. Right.

of a house, just the frame and on the napkins are just that framework of, of what I, in my head is how I visualize stories.

And it's for like, if I want to copy them, I'm like, how do I copy them? What would that look like if I were to strip it down to bare bones? And I just kind of draw them out. And that for me is super helpful. First up, the napkin for this American life. A line, a space, a line, a space, and another like flat line, and then an exclamation point. And it's from what Ira Glass talks about when he says, okay, what's the basic story structure and storytelling structure of this American life? Well, it's this happened, and then this happened, and then that happened.

Hi, Dad. How are you doing? I'm doing fine. When Eric was a kid, his dad would leave for six months at a time. He was in the Merchant Marines. He'd be in Guam or Scotland or God knows where. And Eric would record these cassettes and send them off to him. And then this happened. And then that happened. And then this happened. Yeah, send me a tape, Dad.

This request, that his father record a tape for him, is repeated over and over again on these tapes. Here's Eric probably four years later on another tape in seventh grade. His hope that his dad would respond was so great that every cassette that he sent, he would only record on one side. The other side was blank for his dad to fill in and send back. Never did, though. You can use this tape to send me... I want a tape back, Bubba.

And the exclamation point is the moment of reflection. Yep. The big takeaway from it. It's an exclamation point because I tried to draw a light bulb, but a light bulb, I'm not very good at drawing. So I just wanted an exclamation point because it was easier. Right. You're still mad at that young dad. But he's gone. And there's this sweet, kind of sad, loving older guy there now.

Well, how unsatisfying for you and for everyone who wants to confront their parents, given the fact that the people who they're mad at are sort of gone and have been replaced by these kinder, gentler, more sensitive people. Totally unsatisfying. I think probably then confronting your parents never works. Confronting your parents never works because by the time you get around to doing it, your parents are totally different people. Yeah. They're gone. And there are these different beings sitting in front of you when you confront them.

Next, from the collection of Bradley Campbell napkins, all things considered. It's one line, starts straight, then eventually slopes down and up to form a wide letter U, and then a straight line again.

So straight, a wide letter U, then straight. It's like an upside-down hat with a brim. That first part of the line, that's your opening scene. So a lot of stories on All Things Considered and stuff that I've done for All Things Considered, it starts out with a scene. A story that I did on a tick biologist. I started out with, I think, if you want to find Tom Mather. If you want to find Dr. Tom Mather in the fall, just pull over to the side of the road near some woods in Southern Rhode Island.

Now there's the guy in Carhartt overalls whistling to himself as he collects deer ticks off Greenbrier with his fingers.

And that's your opening scene. And then from there, it's just this trough. The trough, that's the letter U in the drawing. Because you have very little time to turn these things around. It's kind of like this throw everything you got into a big pile in this little U. Just throw whatever reporting you have into that middle section. He says ticks secrete a cement-like substance around their mouth parts when they bite. That's why they're so hard to remove.

Then they secrete this other liquid that dissolves... In the tick story, Bradley talked about tick research, tick biology, and Lyme disease. Like he said, it's a kind of trough for information that rounds out the story. And then at the end of it, you kind of want to, like, go back to where you started.

And that purpose is why Mather will venture back into the woods, whistling to himself as he collects more samples, one by one, for his research. He wants to make sure we're safe, and he's also just curious to see what makes the organisms tick.

And that's for like a three minute, 30 second story. You know, you're not going to have too epic of a narrative on there, although you can have narratives in that short, short time. But, you know, you have maybe a one day, two day turnaround on it or less. And so it's like a really basic kind of storyline that I hear a lot. Now let's look at picture number three. Okay, picture number three, please.

This is the napkin with the letter E. Bradley labeled it Transom for the Transom Story Workshop where I teach. And it's true, I talk a lot about the E in class because it's probably my favorite structure. You can hear that reflected in the student's work. Well, anyway, the E is shaped like a small cursive E, not a capital E. And I learned about it from Bradley when he was a student of mine a bunch of years ago.

One day we were in class and I was talking about structure and I suggested the students should consider A, B, D, C, E as a structure. No drawings. I was just talking about letters. I'll repeat that. A, B, D, C, E. The letters stand for action, background, development, climax, ending. You start a story with a character in a scene in action. That's A.

Then you leave the character and you give some background to the story. That's B, background. Then you return to the narrative of the story and move it forward. That's D, development. If your story has conflict, which I hope it does, then it reaches C, the climax, and that's followed by your ending, E. So A, B, D, C, E, action, background, development, climax, ending. Well, Bradley's there in class and he says, oh, you're talking about the E.

I was like, what? And he says, yeah, the E. And so he goes up to the whiteboard and draws it. He makes a small letter E in cursive. And it looks like a loop on a kid's plastic race car track or something. So you start at the start of the E on the far left side.

And then you start to go forward and that's kind of your opening scene as the E is just going forward from left to right. And then when you start to hit that point where you start to arc up to create the loop. Bradley says right at that moment, right when you start to arc up, you want to leave listeners hanging. You want them to say to themselves, what happens next?

So you're looping up in the E. And that's when you start to go back and you can kind of tell their history. Bradley's talking about background, exposition about where someone grew up. Or instead, maybe it's the origins of the situation that you introduced in the opening scene. So the line swoops up. And then you start coming down the timeline all the way up to the point that you left the reader at.

He meant listener, but I forgive him. Which is where you intersect back with the E. And that's where you pick up from the cliffhanger. You come back with your narrative and

And then your narrative keeps on going forward in a chronological order. A line continues after the loop. That's where you move the story forward to the climax. Then the denouement or the letdown after the climax. And lastly, the ending. Here, if this isn't making sense, I actually have a two-minute example of what we're talking about. It's a story I produced about kayaking around some icebergs in Newfoundland.

Now, I used this story as an example for something else on a podcast years ago, but today I'm going to quickly dissect it for structure. I'm heading straight for a couple of icebergs. Here's the action, the beginning of the letter E.

Introduction of the main character, some action, I'm kayaking, and my incredibly minute cliffhanger. There's nothing predictable about the icebergs. Now scene two, background, the upward and downward swoop of the E. I talk about the dangers of kayaking around icebergs. So at several wharfs that I've been at, I stop and talk to fishermen. I say, I'm going out kayaking, and how close to the iceberg should I get? They just kind of shake their head no.

Next, the swoop of the E reconnects with my narrative, and I pick up after the cliffhanger and approach the icebergs. So I approach these with caution. On an iceberg, there's overhangs. You can hear the water that laps underneath the ice. The wind is blowing me toward the iceberg. Not something I want to have happen.

Arguably, that's the climax. And I know it's not much of one, but it's there. Then I come around the backside of the iceberg. This is the denouement, the letdown after the climax. Hey, here's a little piece of iceberg. It's a little ice cube. What do you think these taste like? Here we go. And now the ending, a moment of reflection. I suppose it's a kind of exclamation point, like Bradley used for his This American Life structure. Well, I think I'm going to head in.

I have to be one of the more privileged individuals on the planet right this minute. Fresh air, warm sunshine at pretty much the most northern point in Newfoundland and I'm surrounded by icebergs and gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

That is the end of this Sound School episode from 2013 with Bradley and his bar napkins. And now I get to say, but wait, there's more. Bradley has a new napkin sketch. The callback. Latest edition of the bar napkin series. I still can't believe. Thing just keeps going, man. Now look at the final picture, please.

If you're looking at Transom and the collection of napkins there, you'll find the callback down at the bottom. It's the one that has a series of waves drawn across it. Looks like how a kid would draw the ocean.

Bradley says those waves represent the story, the narrative. And then on the far left side, peeking out of the water, almost like a periscope, is kind of your beacon of light. He told me you can think of this beacon of light above the waves as a little something you place in the story that at first probably doesn't seem important to a listener. It's something memorable, but not necessarily essential. Might be an object or a way of describing someone or just a word.

Here's an example. These days, Bradley works for Meadowlark Media, reporting long-form narrative sports stories.

Here he is on an episode of the show Pablo Torre Finds Out. Bradley Campbell, thank you for taking on this assignment and drinking what you just confessed off microphone to be dandelion tea. Thanks, Pablo. No, I appreciate the embrace. That word, embrace. Bradley says it's an unusual thing to say, but he said it purposefully. That's his beacon of light.

After he says embrace, what follows is Bradley's story, the waves in the drawing. In the picture, you'll notice that the beacon of light goes down under the water.

It vanishes completely from the story, but not from the memory, which is kind of cool. He says a listener will carry it with them as he tells the story. Your little callback guy is underwater and it's swimming underwater this whole time. In this case, Bradley was reporting on the term alpha male.

Initially, the phrase was used by scientists to describe the behavior of male wolves in captivity. In competitive situations, dominance takes the form of privilege. The dominant animals showing the initiative and claiming whatever is desired. There it is. Yeah. The term made its way out of the science community and became widely used in popular culture. You know, in some cases, alpha male is used to justify male aggression and dominance.

Andrew Tate is just one example. He turned this into like a quasi-religion. Yes. Called Tateism. These are the 41 tenets I believe in. I believe that men have the divine imperative to become as capable, powerful, and competent as possible in this life. I believe that a man's life is difficult and he has a sacred duty to become strong to handle such difficulty. I believe that men have the sacred duty to approach everything in life from a position of strength.

Well, it turns out alpha male isn't a thing. He said it was faulty because it was based on the behavior of captive wolves. In the wild, wolves behave differently, less alpha. I began to realize that rather than strange wolves coming together and fighting and one becomes the alpha and all that, that's not the way it works.

Eventually, Bradley makes his way to the final moments of his story. That means it's time for the callback. On the right-hand side of his picture on the napkin, the beacon returns. Boop! It goes right through the surface of the water and it reappears at the end of your story. That leads to possibly the coolest thing that I learned on this whole wolf tale, if you will, I-L or L-E. Yes. That is...

That wolves hug. Wait, so you mean they physically, literally hug each other? Yep. Actually putting their arms around each other's neck. I published a whole paper on wolves hugging each other. Sometimes lie side by side where one will put its...

its front paws along around the neck of the other and I've seen them doing it this way as well where they actually hug. I don't see that a lot or haven't seen it a lot but seen it enough to know that it does exist, yeah.

I love this so much, man. It's great, right? I feel like the only thing, what I found out today, okay, is that there is only one more thing left for clearly two alphas as properly defined to do. I think so. Yeah. Here, wait. I mean, Bud Light on the table. Oh, that's some good. Oh, yeah. Oh, bring it in, man. Yeah. Let's do this. That's awesome.

Oh, keeping the cans on. That's an example of Bradley's callback structure from the show Pablo Torre Finds Out. There are two more of Bradley's napkin sketches at the post for this episode at transom.org. One for NPR's morning edition and another for Radiolab.

Music on this episode of Sound School comes from They Must Be Russians, a single they put out in 1980. Don't try to cure yourself. Thanks to Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, and Jen Jarrett. And if we ever start a cover band, I will be sure that we put that song on our set list. I'm Rob Rosenthal in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the radio center of the universe. Don't try to cure yourself.

From P.S. and Transom.org.