This last lesson is one of the most fundamental of the three lessons in storytelling. And it came by way of an old boss I used to have. His name is Brad Simpson. He's an Emmy winning producer, and he's brilliant. But one of the best pieces of advice he ever told me is that your taste is the most important asset you have. Think about that, again, your taste is the most important asset you have, especially if you're working in a creative medium, you need to have taste and your taste is demonstrated all the time.

It's demonstrated in the work that you pass along to another it demonstrated in the movies that you recommend to someone else, the music you recommend to someone else. Now, it doesn't matter what your taste is, it literally doesn't. If you're in a Scandinavian horror, or you're in a British sink, documentary and realism, it doesn't matter. What matters is your ability to justify why it matters to you. People that don't have taste, unfortunately, are probably never going to learn these lessons. You've got to start with a solid foundation of what you like what's meaningful to you, and it's actually kind of a liberating thought.

It's not about your ability right away. Your ability will evolve and develop and improve over time. But your taste, which will also do the same is really where your foundation starts. I don't want to waste ability on someone who has no taste, taste has to be there. And it has to be something that you strive to improve all the time. So whether you're writing or directing, you can still have excellent taste, it doesn't matter, but know the landscape and even if you like that Scandinavian horror film, maybe learn about Japanese horror as well and the differences between them and why you don't necessarily like Japanese horror film, but you like Scandinavian really understand why, Brad, actually the guy who taught me this, he actually interviewed me with one of the best interview questions I've ever gotten, and I still use it to this day, it was named one movie that you love that everyone hates.

What a great question. And it didn't matter what I said it didn't matter what the movie was that I love that everyone seems to hate. And I'm not going to tell you what that is because that would kill tension. Right to me if you'd like to know. But what it really made me do is force me to tell him why. When I explain why I like something that someone didn't fundamentally causes me to have.

To explain what makes people happy or sad about something, and I have to have an awareness about why someone may have thought it was sucked. But then I have to justify why I disagree and why I think regardless, and taking all that into consideration, I still have this taste that says, I liked it. This is a really revealing question. And it really shows exactly what you know about your landscape or your industry. And it's a really good way to test how you can justify your own taste. So just because you asked a question at the beginning of your presentation, and it created a big question in your audience's mind.

It doesn't mean that was a good question. Not all questions are created equally. And not all questions apply to the audience you're speaking to. So you have to be able to understand your audience again, but more so you have to have taste that question has to be meaningful to the people you're talking to. Or you have to make a way very quickly where you suddenly make it meaningful. Remember, at the very beginning, I said even if you don't like storytelling, you don't think you can be a good storyteller.

I believe it will contribute to your success. So again, I've just made it I've tried to make it at least more relevant to you and I've also shown my taste that I understand it may frustrate people To Be A Better storyteller, or you may not think it's valuable to you. But I'm going to make my case for why I think this is showing my taste. And I may not have great taste. But I know that I love stories. And I love teaching storytelling, and I love getting better at telling stories all the time, which is why I'm doing this now.

Now, everything reveals your taste, the style, the syntax, the pace that you're using the clothes you wear on the day of your presentation, the font that you use in your presentation. Now, just a side note, if you're ever using that Calibri font that comes standard on Microsoft Office, just kill it immediately. Never ever use the default font in MS Word, I don't know why it does that. It's the worst font ever and shows me you're busy. And it shows me You may not have wanted to present something that actually showed your style or your taste as you go through your life, developing your taste all the time. The way you do that is by questioning why every time you consume something, watch something, listen to something.

You might be enjoying it you might not really be that into it. Ask yourself why the more you can ask yourself, why and to talk about it out loud. The more you can do that, the more you start to really identify what you gravitate towards what's meaningful to you. And you start making comparisons that say, well, this made this good because they had a great opening scene. This one kind of dragged on and they didn't introduce the main character till act five. Whatever it is, you're now suddenly getting really well versed in being able to identify the mechanisms people are using and why something is working.

And you're probably gonna notice a ton of tension is built into the things that you actually love.