A "LinkedIn Thing" and an End to the Suspense

Curious thing happened a couple days ago--as usual, when I logged on to LinkedIn I was confronted with a short list of "People You May Know."

Normally, I recognize most of the people that LinkedIn proffers, though my desire to click on the "Invite" button varies. This time, however, one of the names was an Assistant Production Manager (at the time) with whom I'd worked some years ago on the four MCA/Universal productions of William Shatner's "TekWar" telefilms.

The two things I've always remembered about Deb Patz was (1) that she is one of the flat-out nicest people I had ever worked with, and (2) that she is one of the most professional, most flat-out competent Production Managers with whom I have ever worked.

Talk about a narrative--try combining "nicest" and "most competent" in a business context without crashing your hard drive.

On top of that, she's a competitive sailor and has written an important industry book, FILM PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT 101. (Learn more about it at www.debpatz.com.)

I immediately invited Deb to link up and tonight she did. Then, in a quick, brief email exchange we began to catch up about the years we've not been in touch. Communication has been restored.

We're both at that point where we measure the passage of time by comparing our children's ages, but still it feels good. We're back in touch--no small thing in this hurry-up world.

And now, an end to the suspense.

My son's team did indeed win the finals of this year's Mock Trial competition put on by the Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) and, out of a field of more than 40 area middle schools, has been named the County Champion.

The finals were tense, with the large courtroom in the Los Angeles Superior Court building overflowing, but the defense team came through in the end. After the trial was over (and the judge had pronounced the fictional suspect "not guilty"), the nail biting began as we had to wait nearly an hour before we were readmitted to the room, desperate to hear which team had won the last round of competition.

But first, about an hour of awards presentations--at least my son's teacher/mentor was honored with the Teacher of the Year commendation--before the CRF spokesman announced the middle school and high school countywide champions.

As you might expect, when my son's school was named the middle school champ, we all went crazy.

After a frenzied moment of howls and hugs, though, I noticed that the kids on his team were as dignified in victory as they'd been through the whole series of court cases--they each made a point of approaching the defeated team's members and offering their hands in congratulation.

Nice.

GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT

I'm happy to say that my son's prosecution team won three Mock Trial competitions in a row over the past month, sending the school into the final round. The original field of about 40 schools has been winnowed down to two, with the final contest to take place this Monday. The semifinals took place in one of the larger L.A. Superior Court courtrooms, as will the final round, so we know there will be no shortage of space to accommodate what we expect to be a big turnout of support for both schools.

The semifinal contest was, of course, close, but I believe what enabled our team to prevail was a solid week of practicing both objections and redirects. Objections can be voiced to probe the consistency of a witness' story, and redirects are an opportunity to repair your witness's credibility after the opposing side has tried their best to undermine it.

As such, objections and redirects are two of the most difficult weapons in a trial attorney's arsenal. They both demand an ability to react in the moment and instantly form--and articulate--a logical reaction to what has just been said. One must be able to nail the inconsistencies and immediately point them out to the judge.

Watching both sides verbally joust over the fate of the suspect in a fictional murder case, it was easily apparent that, on one level, that's what the legal system boils down to--keeping your story straight. The attorneys on both sides construct a narrative to explain a suspect's innocence (or guilt) with relation to a criminal act, and do their best to undermine the story offered by the other side.

And that is the essence of many forms of writing, as well, whether it's persuasive writing (like Op Ed pieces), traditional journalism, magazine feature articles, industry white papers, whatever.

Telling a story remains the best way to illustrate your point, report the news, explain an industry trend, or argue the need for a particular service or product.

Pardon my Shakespeare, but, "What can saying make them believe when seeing fails to persuade them?"

THE POWER OF NARRATIVE

Last evening found me in the L.A. Superior Court Building to watch my son's prosecution team in their debut effort at trying to nail a suspect accused of murder in this year's Mock Trial competition -- GO LIONS!

Mock Trial provides the opportunity for high school and middle school legal teams to both prosecute and, separately, defend a fictional suspect accused of a fictional crime. Each team goes up against another school, citing evidence, grilling witnesses on the stand, voicing objections and delivering final arguments. Ever since 1980 the Constitutional Rights Foundation has sponsored these yearly competitions, wherein students of opposing schools portray prosecutors, defense attorneys, suspects, witnesses and even bailiffs in the proceedings. Thousands of judges and attorneys volunteer their time to give students a direct lesson in our legal system.

Students prepare for weeks with teachers and volunteer attorneys, but in the courtroom they're on their own. The case is decided by the real judge sitting before them and, separately, their performances are graded by a small team of lawyers who score the individual participants. The total scores of each team determines who wins that evening's trial.

My son's team did well and won a guilty verdict, and today we learned that they had also won the evening's competition by outscoring the other team. Next week, on to the quarter-finals.

An impressive performance by all, and what I remember particularly well is that, in his closing remarks, one of the scoring attorneys complimented both teams on their ability to create and convey compelling narratives, noting that the ability to tell a convincing story is what a trial is, in essence, all about.

That was another reminder that the narrative is one of the writer's most powerful tools, and that a good writer always looks for ways to use it.

Even in many forms of business writing, narrative is useful.

For example, when I first began researching and writing industry white papers I quickly developed what I call a straightforward "challenge/solution" narrative structure.

By that I mean simply describing the issue to be addressed in a narrative form, then proposing the solution as a possible "ending" to the story. The deficiencies of inadequate solutions, or failing to address the challenge in the first place, can also be spelled out as alternate--and less satisfying--conclusions. The "moral" is simply contrasting the benefits of a satisfactory solution with the price of not dealing with the challenge successfully.

Before I sign off, I'd like to draw your attention to a great Profile of legendary (and award-winning) storyteller Horton Foote, who passed away in March of this year. It's in the October 26th issue of THE NEW YORKER, and it's by John Lahr, who at one point describes Foote's writing style when he was starting out in the 1940s:

"In Foote's plays, the big dramatic events happen offstage. Foote examined the ripple, not the wave. He was a quiet voice in noisy times."

I also particularly enjoyed a quote that Foote gave in an interview just this past January: "If I ever teach writing again, I guess the first lesson is to listen."