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Topics/Storytelling

Storytelling

Your agent turns dry updates into stories people actually remember and repeat.

DisciplineComedyResilienceCourageCraftHumorUnfilteredPatienceHonestyDeadpan

Start with these three.

Blockbuster Storyteller2 credits
Steven Spielberg

When film school turned me down, I found my way onto the Universal lot anyway, because the pull was that strong.

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Cinema Obsessive Auteur2 credits
Quentin Tarantino

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I wrote my first scripts behind the counter of a video store making minimum wage, okay?

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Queen of All Media2 credits
Oprah Winfrey

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Baby, let me ask you the real question underneath this one: what's your intention?

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The rest of the shelf.

Storyteller1 credit
The Bard

Every tale you start opens the same way, a hero at full gallop, banners snapping, and by chapter two the horse is grazing and the…

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Fictional Heist Mastermind1 credit
The Heist Planner

Asked I keep starting things strong and fizzling out after two weeks. Fix me.

Every great crew has this problem: brilliant on the plan, gone before the vault.

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Visitor From Another Century1 credit
The Time Traveler

Asked I keep starting things strong and fizzling out after two weeks. Fix me.

Fascinating. In my century we called this the barn raising problem.

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Eleven Star Designer2 credits
Brian Chesky

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

We couldn't make rent, so we sold cereal boxes to keep the idea alive.

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Imagineer of Wonder2 credits
Walt Disney

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

They called Snow White Disney's Folly, and I mortgaged everything I owned to finish it.

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Working Class Poet2 credits
Bruce Springsteen

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I bet everything on a guitar because it was the only door out of Freehold I could see, and I'd do it again.

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Margaritaville Mogul2 credits
Jimmy Buffett

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I sailed to Key West flat broke with a busted career and one notion about selling paradise, and that boat trip bought me the…

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The Man in Black2 credits
Johnny Cash

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I've been broke and I've been famous, and broke never scared me half as much as dying with the song still in me.

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Practical Effects Auteur2 credits
Christopher Nolan

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I made my first feature for six thousand pounds, shooting on weekends with friends, because constraint sharpens everything.

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Voice of Nature2 credits
David Attenborough

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

In the natural world, the creatures that endure are rarely the boldest or the most cautious, but those who read their moment with…

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Hand-Drawn Worldbuilder2 credits
Hayao Miyazaki

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Safe is a word people use when they have stopped drawing. But listen, the idea is worthless until you have suffered over it.

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The Little Tramp2 credits
Charlie Chaplin

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I came up in the workhouse, so I know what an empty cupboard does to courage.

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Voice of Gravitas2 credits
Morgan Freeman

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I was forty-nine before the world took any notice of me, so understand, I do not think patience and betting on yourself are…

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America's Everyman2 credits
Tom Hanks

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Here's the thing about the box of chocolates, you don't get to peek.

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Storyteller Who Walked Away2 credits
Dave Chappelle

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I walked away from fifty million dollars because the check stopped making sense with the work.

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Shirtless Storyteller2 credits
Bert Kreischer

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Dude, say yes first and figure it out later, that's where every great story I have came from, including the train one.

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Clean Everyman Comedian2 credits
Nate Bargatze

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

So I'm probably not who you should ask, because I did the dumb thing.

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The Polished Storyteller2 credits
John Mulaney

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Here is the thing about playing it safe. Percentage-wise, it is one hundred percent easier not to do things than to do them, and…

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Storytelling Comedian2 credits
Theo Von

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Man, I knew a guy back home had one idea, a drive-thru daiquiri stand for horses or something, and he sat on it so long the horse…

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Unfiltered Comedian4 credits
Theo Von

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Brother, I knew a man in Covington who kept his one good idea in a coffee can behind the water heater like it was gonna hatch.

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Challenge Storyteller2 credits
Ryan Trahan

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Limited savings isn't the problem, it's the premise. I started with one penny and the constraint was the entire story.

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Spectacle Engineer2 credits
Mark Rober

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Okay, here's the fun part. This isn't a coin flip, it's an engineering problem.

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Relentless Filmmaker2 credits
Casey Neistat

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Ideas are worthless, everybody's got one. Execution is the whole game.

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Billion Dollar Brainstormer2 credits
Shaan Puri

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Here's the thing nobody tells you: playing it safe IS the risky move, it just fails slowly instead of fast.

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Dark Story Narrator2 credits
MrBallen

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

So there's this thing about stories like yours, and trust me, I've told hundreds of them.

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True Crime Storyteller & Victim Advocate2 credits
Ashley Flowers

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Full body chills, because this is the exact crossroads every story I love starts at.

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Hidden-Pattern Storyteller2 credits
Malcolm Gladwell

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Here's the interesting part: we tell the story of the bold founder wrong.

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Dear Sugar Trail Sage2 credits
Cheryl Strayed

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Sweet pea, I started the PCT with a pack I could not lift and boots a size too small, and I still walked to Oregon.

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One True Sentence2 credits
Ernest Hemingway

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Bet on it. But bet the way you fish for marlin, not the way a drunk bets at the track.

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America's Storyteller2 credits
Mark Twain

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I sank a fortune into a typesetting machine that ate money like a hog eats corn, so take my advice with the seasoning it deserves.

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Daily Strip Cartoonist2 credits
Charles Schulz

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I'm probably the wrong fellow to ask. My own high school yearbook rejected my drawings, and I mailed the strip out anyway.

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Poet of Rising2 credits
Maya Angelou

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

My darling, there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you, and an idea you never dare is exactly that kind of…

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Master Storyteller2 credits
Stephen King

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I wrote Carrie in a trailer laundry room while teaching high school English, so here's the secret nobody wants: it isn't safe…

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No-Reservations Storyteller2 credits
Anthony Bourdain

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I wrote Kitchen Confidential broke, at forty-four, still working the line.

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Madison Avenue Closer2 credits
Don Draper

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Safe is what people say when they're afraid to want something.

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Columnist of the Heart2 credits
Carrie Bradshaw

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

I couldn't help but wonder: is playing it safe just another way of breaking up with yourself slowly?

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Gold Dust Storyteller2 credits
Stevie Nicks

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

My darling, I have to tell you a little story. When Lindsey and I moved to Los Angeles we had nothing, and I was cleaning houses…

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Everything Is Copy2 credits
Nora Ephron

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Here is what I know, and I know it because I was once a woman who had been left, pregnant, with a very small amount of money and…

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Glad We Had This Time2 credits
Carol Burnett

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Oh, honey. I got to New York on a thousand dollars from a man I was not allowed to name, with a five-year deadline to pay it back.

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Year of Yes Showrunner2 credits
Shonda Rhimes

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Here is what I know about dreaming. It is lovely, and it does nothing.

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Poetic Culinaria2 credits
Dominique Crenn

Asked I have one big idea and limited savings. Play it safe or bet on it?

Safe. You know, that word, I have never trusted it. My menu was written as a poem.

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Capital Raise Strategist1 credit
The Fundraiser

Asked My launch slipped a week and the team is deflated. What do I do?

Handle it like a bad month in an investor update: lead with it, plainly, no spin.

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