One day a talented student arrived a little late for our writing & performance workshop. She apologized and said she was late because she had a 'hand job' that morning. What?!

It turned out she worked as a hand model and while she had been doing funny material about other things in the class, this was the first we'd heard about her day job. And everyone was fascinated.

Emily Aiken is a brilliant strategic consultant known as 'the Brand Dominatrix' who came up with a great phrase: Low-Hanging Content.

That perfectly describes a whole category of potential material that a lot of writers and comedians overlook because it just seems too obvious and too familiar (to them). Too easy.

Over the years we've worked with a lot of very talented people who kept searching farther and wider for material when they had a wealth of great stuff within easy reach. For the writer referred to above it was hand modelling, for another

"A plot is something you bury a body in. A story is like a level of a building. It's something that gets you closer to heaven." - Beth Lapides

Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl (or girl-boy, girl-girl, etc.). That's the classic 3-act structure; a linear chronological progression. And that's the way a lot of people try to tell their own story when they're developing a script, one-person show, personal essay or memoir. But there are other options.

Scott Brown makes some good points about the limitations of traditional linear structure and the need for modern storytelling in this month's Wired. But he doesn't offer any real solutions.

The most popular alternative to chronological structure is to use a voice-over from an omniscient (or at least more knowing) narrator who takes you through a (usually) chronological linear sequence in their past.