​The Impostor Syndrome is a very really thing, in fact I bet you have experienced it at some point in your life, even for a brief moment, or if you’re a recovering perfectionist like me you deal with it most days. According to Wikipedia, the Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a concept describing individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a "fraud".
 
The impostor experience for me shows up in my art, it’s that constant nagging feeling it could be better, it’s definitely not perfect… in fact it probably just sucks. So, this is when I usually stop the pursuit of whatever I was making, because it just wasn’t that good. The inner critic gets really loud and usually says something like, “there are more talented writers and artists out there so don’t worry about finishing.”

Am I alone? The nagging is so intense somedays it’s like my two-year-old screaming at me when she wants carrot cake. I usually given in, but for all those recovering perfectionist, we don’t have to give in, we don't have live under this constant fear of being an impostor. Sometimes FINISHED is better than perfect, ok really almost always finished is better than perfect. 
 
When I was making the film JuneBug, a somewhat autobiographical story about a young girl’s journey with grief, I suffered severally from the imposter syndrome. You see, I wrote the film at the age of twenty-six in about three days, shot the film at age twenty-eight in four days, and I’m just now completing the film six years after that. 

Why did it take me almost a decade to make a short film? I will give myself one excuse, which is sometimes your side hustle can take a VERY long time, especially when you are a full-time creative director and mom, but if I'm really honest it was the imposter syndrome that prolonged this process by at least three years . 
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During the post-production process there were a few cringe worthy moments. I’d evolved as an artist and I felt like I could have made different creative choices. I let this nagging feeling haunt me for years, until one day a fellow artist told me, “done is better than perfect,” and that was the permission I needed to just FINISH.

Sometimes just finishing is the most important thing, so you can give birth to your next creative baby. For me this was the case, I realized my voice did matter, yeah there are always going be more talented filmmakers than me, but they aren’t necessarily going to tell the same stories. We as artist all have a unique viewpoint, it’s the sum total of our experiences that make us who we are – share them even if they aren’t perfect, you never know who just might need to hear you story that day.
 
I like to think of our collective creative has a woven tapestry made to inspire, encourage and make the world just a little more beautiful for others. So, get your butt in the chair if you are a writer, pickup a camera and start filming, record music in your garage- just create without expectations and then share it for others. You are not an impostor, you are an artist on a creative journey, own it and embrace it.  ​

For a long time the idea of a three-act structure was thought of as the gold standard of storytelling even in marketing. But now with the rise in digital stories and multichannel marketing, we have to ask ourselves should this change the way we structure our stories? 

Often, I find clients want to cram all five pillar messages into a short social asset and wrap it all up in a three-act structure bow, but let’s stop for a moment and unpack this idea. Why are we trying to apply a three-act structure to every marketing asset or to an entire campaign in that matter? What if we thought of story differently? What if we thought of story in terms of network television. Yes, I’m suggesting digital marketing could learn a lesson or two from how network television structures and breaks story. Typically, you have a teaser, which is your hook followed by 4 or 5 acts. This type of structure forces you to create almost mini stories or segments that end on a cliffhanger or a call to action adding up to an entire episode.
 
Okay, so this is where it gets interesting for marketers. Think about your favorite network show, the intercity of specific storylines and how they are woven throughout an episode, a season or beyond. Now, what if you created marketing stories using this format? What if you took a page right out of a Hollywood writers' room and used their method of breaking story to create compelling, narrative driven storylines that keep your audiences engaged in your campaigns and ultimately coming back for more.
 
When writing for TV, before a word is ever written on the page, you must first break the story. Breaking a story is where all the staff writers and their assistants get into a room and take an episode or sometimes an entire season and literally pick the story apart beat by beat asking themselves if this…then what? Uncovering character arcs and sometimes even key pieces of dialogue and at the end of this grueling process they have constructed a story blueprint or an outline of sorts.

Honestly, most writers will tell you this is the hardest part of the process because you have to take all the elements of a story - stakes, voice, character, structure and start to craft believable, intricate, and compelling storylines that will resonate with your audience.
 
Let’s look at this idea in action. I’m obsessed with NBC’s hit show THIS IS US! These masterful storytellers have created a really interesting parallel story structure where they follow one family in the 1970’s-80’s and also in present day; skillfully cutting back and forth in time, to reveal each character’s backstory, incredibly without losing the audience. 
 
Can you imagine sitting in that writers' room? You have to track two parallel stories in time and figure out what to reveal when. How many episodes should it take for Randall’s fathers' storyline to end? Does Kevin’s love interest resolve in an episode or do they carry it through multiple seasons? Does Kate ever overcome her struggle with weight? Oh, the drama it’s so good because of the pace - the story structure.
 
They don’t cram everything into one episode, it’s more like each episode is strategically peppered with little breadcrumbs leaving a trail behind and the viewer wanting more. Isn’t that exactly how we want to structure our marketing campaigns? Imagine, your audience so engaged in your story they want more regardless of what channel they are on or what medium they are experiencing your story through – video, infographics etc.
 
Here is where my notion gets a little wild. What if you created a writers’ room with your marketing team or agency partner and broke a story. Start by putting your key marketing messages or “storylines” up on a white board or on index cards and talk through which ones need a single “asset” or episode to resolve and which ones need to carry throughout an entire campaign or two. What is your hook or your teaser and what does each mini story look like? Would your audience want to click your CTA? Your campaign should just feel like one connected story that spans across the buyer’s journey regardless of asset type or channel.
 
Remember, your story is not positioning, messaging or value props. You can weave all of that into your stories, but don’t try to cram it into one asset or for that matter every asset! Think about messaging as your foundation or compass, not your story.
 
Once you’ve created your writers' room and produced a story blueprint for your campaign you can easily map out which tactics and channels to use to tell your story in the most effective way. I love this approach because it fosters thoughtful holistic storytelling and campaign planning, but most importantly it gives teams permission to be creative and collaborative in their own writers' room where the sentiment is, yes and…
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"The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic 'right-brain' thinkers.”
- DANIEL PINK
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I come from the land of classic film and television directing where the lesson on day one is the “rules of cinema,” and you spend years studying how the greats like Spielberg and Scorsese either created those rules or used them to craft visually and emotionally compelling stories.

Now, imagine as a director if suddenly the rules of cinema no longer apply – the rule of thirds, basic camera movement techniques, three point lighting, and, in fact STORY is no longer king, but LOCATION is king. My cinematic world was flipped upside down as I started preproduction on my first virtual reality project. I felt just like Alice plummeting out of control through a dark hole and landing new a world – the Wonderland of immersive technology. Only in this Wonderland there were no tea parties and frankly, I was lost searching for my directing bearings.