Between the Lines: In Storytelling, Simplify to Amplify - Premium Sampler
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The joyce in vows of the holiday season, IT can be so much funder, reconnect, rest and reflect. But for many of us, the holidays also bring communication chAllenges in conflict. To help you through the holidays, we're releasing several episodes, design to assist you and maximize the fun and minimize the frustration.

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The podcast being consistent, clear is critical in a world where our attention is constantly being tugging and pulled. When I thought about communicators I know who had to deal with this chAllenge of being clear and conscious on a daily basis, I was reminded of a former college classmate who for decades has written a daily one panel comic strip called ryme with orange as part of A A recent think fast, talk smart mini series on non traditional storytellers. I interviewed Hillary Price.

Her complete episode, along with those of others who are in the mini series, can be found in our premium library. But since Hillary insights into communication are so useful and applicable to all of, I wanted to share the full interview here outside of premium as a bonus episode. I hope you enjoy learning from Hillary as much as I did.

I am super excited to speak with hillery Price. We went to college together, and Hillary helps me start every day as a cartoon st. And the author of ryans with orange, I get a little chuckle, and sometimes a big gotha every morning by reading hillers, where kilary, thanks for being here with us, and i'd love for you just to take .

a moment to introduce yourself. OK think that. So I have been creating the comic step runs with orange, which peers in newspapers daily, and also on line for the last, gosh, almost three decades. For the last seven years, I collaborate on that with a toronto based cartoonist. And we go back in forth, generating dogs for the strip.

I truly enjoy your work. And what I find so fascinating about a hillery is you do at all in one panel.

lazy cartoons.

I want to hear more about that. But what makes a good story?

There has to be change, and there has to be surprised, and there also has to be sticks. I'm going to a reference. A story teller.

Rule is one of my favorites. His name is Matthew dicks, and he does a lot of mock story telling. And his definition of a story is, I used to think one thing, then some stuff happened and I think another.

So I think that when you're doing that in a cartoon in terms of before you rely on cultural history. So if you're at a thanksgiving table, you don't have to have a banner that says thanksgiving over the top right, and then you're going to have a twist. If every bit of cultural history is a common knowledge, then a cartoon or a good story that has surprised, disrupt that we say IT seems .

to me that something you're bringing to the table that we have yet to talk about is how we use the reader or the story experienced past experience to help us tell our stories. So you're relying on cliche or common experiences that are culturally shared and bring that literally in the example you use to the table to help us be part of the story. And then this notion of surprising change is critical as well.

And one of the things that I enjoy so much, the cartoon that you draw and write, is that the fact that there is surprise and change and IT IT makes you think, first, I D, oh, that's really clever. And that's part of the shared experience that you bring through the story telling you to. Are there other aspects of story telling you using your job? Can you share a little bit, perhaps, how you go through your process of actually crafting the story?

So for my creative process, I tend to come up with the joke first, and then I addition the characters. Is this most effectively done by having two dogs talking to each other? By having a dog talk to a person, a person talk to a dog?

What is the best way to get the gag across? And in my business, it's called gig cartooning. And gag means the joke. Just like for musicians, gig means the the act.

So IT sounds like you start with the end in mind, the result. You want the gag. And I love this notion of auditioning the character.

So can you walk us through what is IT you're looking for? IT is IT what's most appropriate? What would be most silly? What would be most counterintuitive?

What's the audition about? Walk you through what's going to be my easter gag? So I started out and I was talking with a friend, and we were brainstorming ideas, or what are the kind of cliches of easter, the bunny? right? And then we were thinking, where does this bunny exist outside of easter? And we came up with the idea of the magician.

So what if you took the concept of you've got a magician and you've got a bunny, and the bunny is turning to the magician and saying, I told you I needed this sunday off. You need to have some clues that this is a easter. You don't want to to say it's easter because anybody reading the newspaper on that day is going to know easter, right? And so I had the bunny the proper, and was the bunny holding a basket.

That's all I needed to say easter. And then IT never says majestic, the magnificent in the drawing, because if you see a man and a cape and a musters ash, and there's like a dove and some rings or something of a magic rings, they knew the reader R T. Bring to the experience where we are.

I ended up with, I told you I needed this sunday off, but I started with before that, I told you this was my side hostile. The goal in cartooning is you wanna simplify and amplify. Those are the two things. And also not spoon feed your reader, because the joy of a cartoon, it's interactive. It's going from not getting IT to getting IT.

I love this notion of simplify and amplify. And I think a lot of our communication would benefit if we thought about how can we make our messages as simple as possible and really amplify the meaning. And also, in what you said in your brain storming about this idea, you are really thinking about what's appropriate for a reader of a new paper on easter sunday. And it's not just hears a gag, it's how do I make the gag play for the audience. And I think those are really critical skills for anybody in communicating and story writing.

There is something interesting in terms of back end is that when my syndicate receives my comic strip, they trying to do tag words. And one of the first things they do is they just record what is said. But that doesn't make for an effective tag because you need to bring also what is the cultural things that aren't being said.

IT doesn't stay easter. IT doesn't state bunny IT doesn't state magician is a chAllenge then for like an A I S O to properly mark the strip because you're trying to take out those markers because the readers bringing them so left turn. But it's just an interesting way that IT doesn't help in this modern world.

I think what's fascinating is we finally found something that A I can't do well and what humans need to do well, which is to bring in all the employ information that isn't just over. So this notion of in many ways, it's a partnership with your reader to cocreate the meaning that you're talking about many times in the type of story telling that people do. They are literally bringing your audience through the story.

You're telling them everything. And in your case, you're actually leaving out critical information that the audience brings to the stories you're telling the comics that you draw and write. And that's the magic.

That's where IT really happens. What is IT in storytelling that you do is a cartoon st. Beyond what we've talked about in terms of simplify and amplify, consider the context. Think about the audience. Are there any other things that people who tells stories in their daily lives could benefit from what you do in your process?

Yes, you never want to start a story with. First I was born, and then too much introduction is not necessary. So you want to start at the action moment or right before the action moment.

The way that this translates for me is that I have a single panel to do this, so I can't puts around giving too much information that is unnecessary. And with humor, you either want to shown event right before that happens, or right after IT happens. If I were gona throw a glass of water at you, what is funnier? Me about to throw the glass of water? Or the act of IT. You want to give the audience the joy of imagining IT but is showing IT.

So what i'm here and you say, which is really important for, I think, all of us to think about is where do you start in? Some of us start too early in with too much, and we have to think I love this idea of what's the action moment. Even if you're writing technical documentation, there is an action moment there that you can think about.

I want to ask you, because of all the guests we're talking to for this many series are the only one that uses any visual elements at all. We're talking to a mine who uses only physical body. How important is the visual element and where does the visual element come in your process? So for many of us, we're not caron's, but we might create slides or powerpoint to help us get our message across in euro process.

Do you start with the visual elements? Or do you start just with the character or the gag? Where do you start? Where do visuals come into that process?

The first question in creating a joke is taking two desperate ideas in going, what if? What is the connection between these two things? But IT is a game that I often play in order to generate gags I call the justification game, trying to decide how two different things might make sense in a way that disrupts the cruise.

The visual is the last thing that happens, but even that is an iterative process. So I might draw something and then redraw and redraw time thing in order to cut elements out in the same way that i'm cutting words out of the speech bubble. I'm not overcomplicating the drawing because I only want to put the elements that are important if they're decorative. I don't want them there because i'm gonna a tell my audience if i've draw n IT, then my audience knows it's a clue.

What i'm hearing is that the drawing often comes last.

And that's the advice that those of us who do what I do suggest that you don't create the slides first, you create the story first, you create the reason first, and then applying similar rules to you, does that help simplify or amplify? And if IT does, maybe a visual make sense? And then the other thing I heard you say, which I think is so important for all of us, is the task is to figure out what is the least amount of information you can provide to accomplish IT.

What I hear you saying is exactly the opposite. What's the least amount of information I need to provide to make the joke lander to get the point across? And I think that's an interesting lesson for all of us, is less, is more.

It's called the punch line for a reason you want to end on the strongest world in a cartoon. So the reader have to get to IT and then there's the boom. And then your job is a cartoonist is not to have another character comment on the punch line.

That is the readers job. That's a listener's job. You don't say. And here you laugh. Your audience is gonna laugh or not laugh. But I have always found IT odd when a comedian makes a joke and no one's laughs, and then they comment on the fact that no one laughs. Just move on.

This notion of a punchline. I think all of us, in the stories we tell, the communication we do, we have punch lines. A punchline is what you build up to.

I've learned that invariably someone is going to ask me, where did you get the title rental range? What does that come from? As a general rule, I don't included in the talk because I know that your curiosity seed, that someone is gonna ise their hand, and then you've got that engagement going, and then you break the seal with the first question, then others will follow.

I think that is such good advice and advice that we often give to people during q na is have a question at the ready or set yourself up for a question to get the ball rolling. And that's exactly what you do. The last question I like to ask is, who is a story tell her that you admire and why you've already mentioned one, but I wondering if there's another that you admire.

Matthew ics is a award winning lock storyteller, and he is definition of three elements that a story has to have is stakes, suspense and surprise. And I figured that something that would be good for folks listening to. Just keep that in mind if your story is that you went to the drive through in order to a grill chicken, and there are no stakes involved there, so you're gone to lose your audience, there's nothing in peril.

There is nothing that you could lose or win as a result. That's not a story because you didn't change from the fact that you are hungry and you're no longer hungry. That's not enough of mistake. If the stake is that the principal wanted the chicken sandwich and if I didn't get IT for him in time for her lunch, I would lose my job. That's mistake.

So there's consequence and significance. And we as story tellers, need to make sure that is clear. And what i'm hearing in the work you do is that because you rely on cliche or commonly known knowledge, you will let the reader create mistakes in their own mind. They understand mistakes that are involved.

Here's my other story teller, elena Baker. I heard a story SHE told about how in her life at that time, because he was a religiously observed ed person, SHE had to say no to a lot of things. And he was a Young woman living in new york.

So her crato was that he had to say yes to everything else. And so IT takes her on all these adventures, the saying yes to things. And the name of her story is called black dress. I think that you know at the outset that he is going to get in trouble because she's gone to say yes to everything. And IT takes her on these adventures that you just would not expect.

Okay, last question, how did you come up with? And why did you name your comic trip ryans with orange?

So there are a couple different answers to this. First is that there is no real word that rims of the word orange. The other piece is that when the strip again, I was a twenty five year old woman living in apartment with three other roommates.

And I date women, right? So that was an experience that was absolutely not my dating life, but just my entire world view was very different than the ones found on the traditional comics page. And so I felt like the title reflected that the reader was going to get a different take on the world.

right? So the titles of a story can set expectations for the experience. So IT signal two things, one, that this is going to be different than all the other titles, which many of them are named for their characters or something.

I think there's A A lesson there. Many of us have to title our presentations, our meetings, our stories, and think of a title that builds curiosity and insight, somebody to want to learn more, and perhaps the title that shares what's to come in. In your case, that was, this comics gona have a slightly different perspective, maybe the others. So hilly IT is always a pleasure to chat with you. Your insights into story telling are really cool.

Thank you so much. Thank you for everything. And he thought, that matter.

Hillary. Insights can be used by all of us to be more clear and conscious in our communication. I tried to employ her ideas in the work that I do.

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