I had the occasion to hear an interview with the great Carl Reiner over the weekend on NPR (my favorite radio station that has ALL the good stuff). For those who may be too young to remember, Reiner is a producer, writer, director, comedian and much more. He has won 20 Emmy awards for TV, and numerous other awards in the entertainment industry.

He created and produced the Dick Van Dyke Show, Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, partnered with Mel Brooks for the 2000 Year-Old Man, and many, many more legendary comedy enterprises. If you have never seen the Dick Van Dyke show, Google it and watch an episode on Youtube! It’s a classic!

“Alright, already, so what’s the tip?”, you ask. Wait for it… Wait for it…

Reiner talked about how he created the iconic, classic Dick Van Dyke Show. The era of “variety review” show on TV was at an end. A lot of Westerns were sprouting up. Reiner had read a lot of scripts submitted to him but didn’t like any of them. His wife told him, “YOU write something.” At first, he wasn’t sure he could do it, but then asked himself, (wait for it)

“What piece of ground do you stand on that nobody else stands on?”

His answer, “I live in New Rochelle with my family and I write in New York for TV.” So that’s what he wrote. Originally, he cast himself in the lead role, but it didn’t play. Eventually, he found Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Now, storytellers, when you must create a new story, whether personal or traditional, and you don’t think you have a story inside you, ask yourself:

“What piece of ground do you stand on that nobody else stands on?”

What is uniquely you or yours? What is it that says “You” and no one else? What do you know that no one else knows? Therein lies the beginning of the tale! The foundation, the essence that will point you in the right direction!