Hey friends, welcome back to Create Connected.

This drop’s guest is Justice Parman. He’s a prolific writer, director, world builder, USC film school graduate, and the Founder of Rebel Kids Entertainment. If you’re a fan of baseball, you’ve probably seen one of his numerous San Diego Padres hype videos (the best ones online).

Beyond his many well-honed crafts, he’s a connoisseur of good games, builds and runs captivating TTRPG campaigns, and shares his kind and creative soul with the world regularly.

Most importantly, this conversation gives you great insights into how a multi-talented visual storyteller writes deeply, organizes seed ideas, stays curious while building new worlds, and so much more.

Find Justice Parman on:

Whenever and wherever you're reading this, thank you for coming along for the ride. This drop has 2 pieces. This post and the podcast below:

Ready to level up? Read on to...

  • 🚀 Get an even better experience with Create Connected
  • 🎤 Learn how Justice guides and directs great stories across media
  • 🧰 Capture your ideas daily and never come up short on an outline again
  • 💭 Consider the art and craft of making great conversation
  • 👁‍🗨 Use this phrase to help you recall this drop’s big lessons

🎤 Podcast Peeks

For this drop, I connected with writer, director, world-builder and USC Film School grad Justice Parman. In the podcast, we discussed how curiosity drives creativity, how to capture and connect great but disparate ideas, and so much more.

Here are some of the highlights.

Grow your Idea Wall and capture the “why”

There’s an essence to be captured from the creative ideas your brain generates day-to-day. Justice shared how he builds an “Idea Wall” and uses it to seed the stories that become full scripts.

Present yourself as a good guide

Before subverting your audience’s expectations, it helps to show them that you know what you’re doing. Justice and I explored how this affirms to your audience that the payoff will be worth it, while sharing some hilarious imagery to drive it home.

Build creative collaboration using TTRPGs

Tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons provide an intimate, deeply collaborative space to create and build stories with others. Justice shared how directing characters around a collectively imagined scene is a lot like a film set, and drew some other parallels between D&D and creative collaboration.

🧰 Toolkit Tune-up

The problem: You watch good ideas come and go throughout the day, but when you sit down to actually start creating something your mind goes blank.

The solution: (c/o Justice Parman) Start an Idea Wall and capture the “why”

How to do it:

  1. Pick a place to write the ideas that you have throughout your day (phone, notebook, …)
  2. Whenever you have an idea, quickly jot it down
  3. Then flip to the “back” of the note (or mark a separate section on the page)
  4. Write down what you were feeling and doing when the idea came to you
  5. Daily to weekly, post those ideas up into a central place (a wall, a main notebook, …)
  6. Once this Idea Wall becomes overwhelmingly full, allocate some time to…
  7. Start connecting the ideas and using them to build a story
  8. If you think an idea is silly or stale, review the “why” on the back of the note
  9. Use these connected ideas to form an outline of a story

💭 Discussion Driver

This month I’ve been building a system that helps anyone learn how to start and have good conversations with friends they haven’t met yet (strangers).

As I’ve captured some of my knowledge on the topic, I’ve been finding even deeper enjoyment in talking to others. It’s given me even more enthusiasm and curiosity to learn more about the incredible people that surround us each and every day.

Conversation is something you create with other people, and I don’t think it gets enough credit as an art form. But if I hear a great conversationalist dance through discourse, it’s hard to ignore the artistry in using chat to build connection with others.

Once a chat has gone beyond its opening phrases, here are 3 questions that usually jog through my mind. I find they spark deeper curiosity about the person I’m speaking with:

  1. What’s this person’s story, and how do they see themselves in it?
  2. What are some things they currently can’t get enough of?
  3. What is this person’s superpower? Do they know it?

👁️‍🗨️ Mental Mantra

A phrase to help you explore, reorient, and deepen thoughts on this drop's topics.

"Show your audience you know the rules before breaking them."

🗞️
This post was republished from the Create Connected project.