If you consider yourself a part of the creator community, you likely pay attention to what’s happening around you, what’s said within earshot, what’s trending and creating talk, and think constantly about what interests your audience. You look to continually learn.
That’s what prompted me to take advantage of an introduction to five-time Emmy winner, three-time Gracie Award winner, and Prism Award recipient Nik Robinson. She was most recently the Co-Head Writer and Senior Supervising Producer of The Kelly Clarkson Show. She’s also written for The Steve Harvey Show and The Tyra Banks Show, as well as other programs and newspapers, and is working on a podcast launch.
Nik is also the Founder and Executive Producer of the Los Angeles-based creative production company Written By Ink. The experience she brings to the table as a part of the aforementioned programs, and how she shares, is an opportunity to be used as a learning moment. The tactics she uses, and the system she’s developed is applicable for talent to use, regardless of format or who you’re communicating to/with for a program. She uses the metaphor “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” to describe her approach.
Writing is a difficult task when it’s for oneself, but imagine writing for others and especially at such a high level. It’s that experience that I asked her to share. She established a framework for structuring interviews, which hit me as a valuable tool and a method for all hosts who engage in interviewing others, be those communicating with celebrities or show members, as a way to lean into telling a story.
That is, you create a conversation that has a clear path from start to finish while allowing for meaningful side-trips that still lead back to the main destination. Those topics are what you follow and where you go with your questions and the follow-ups. Which means “be prepared” and “listen.”
Mastering the art of storytelling is a critical part of the content creation process. Understanding the arc of a story, using tactics that use visualization, being relatable, and having a destination. Listening to how others tell stories is another way of learning.
The starting point is critical for every story, but when writing for interviews and working around a host that is not yourself, you have to think in the other person’s voice; you have to know who they are, their beliefs, and what they stand for as well as what motivates them. That’s where prep, homework, and discipline come into play. Researching the guest’s history, work, successes, and failures, and being aware of their personalities, is important.
Nik also stressed that it’s a must to write in the host’s natural way of speaking, including specific phrases they use. For instance, Kelly Clarkson uses “rad” as an emotional description, and that turned into a signature segment (Benchmark) which was “Rad Human.” Kelly also used “movie in my mind” as a way to describe what she envisions. Steve Harvey’s mantra was “trust and believe.” This also manifested itself in how guests were interviewed.
Ms. Robinson pointed out that while listening to the hosts, she always kept a notebook of their phrases that she could incorporate what it is that they say, but not the expressions they use habitually every day, rather the ones they’d use once a week. If you think about it, the magnification of frequent sayings that are almost used in a cadence is another way to establish the personality of the host. Repetition, especially when phrases are used naturally and appropriately, accelerates character development.
Nik Robinson on How to Follow The Yellow Brick Road:
- Focus on the “Why”: She emphasized moving beyond surface facts to uncover motivation and heart, such as asking why a guest is motivated to help others rather than just what their organization does. What’s at the core of the purpose of the guest’s appearance.
- Active listening: Nik noted that hosts sometimes struggle to listen because they are balancing scripts, the clock, and next questions; the key is to hear when a guest says something that connects emotionally and follow that thread. Be inquisitive. Remember that the reason to ask a question is to satisfy the audience’s curiosity.
- Grounding: Nik also recommended a grounding technique—such as paying attention to one’s toe—to slow down a conversation and avoid the urge to interject or blurt out thoughts, which allows the guest to speak. It’s natural to want to jump into a conversation and interrupt a guest, but that deprives the listener of what may be a gem that takes a good story to great.
- Emotional pacing: She described the importance of “holding back” information to create a more powerful reveal, using emotional pauses before delivering a key point. Silence is often the most dramatic attention-getting tactic, and that pause attracts attention.
- Pre-interviews: In talk shows, pre-interviews are used to gauge where a story will go, and as I’ve shared a friend’s words for decades now: if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Nik noted this is less common in podcasting, but that’s because (IMO) too many podcast hosts ramble aimlessly hoping to find something interesting in the conversation. I’m on the side of being prepared, knowing where you’re going, and being efficient in how you tell a story.
Listen to Nik Robinson in conversation with Alex Duda, Co-Founder and Executive Producer/Showrunner of Story Monster Entertainment and Emmy & Gracie Award recipient, on Wednesday, October 28th, for The Gracies Interview Series, presented by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation.
