Doug Weissman • Storyteller

Zicasso

Content Manager

•	Establish hundreds of articles, sample travel itineraries, bulletins, emails, blogs, editorial calendar, and social media presence 
•	Create advertising themes, methods, and SEO strategies by keeping up to date on best practices across platforms such as Google.
•	Revitalize old copy into the newer voice specific to the created marketing niches to help create backlinks, tags, and blog pages.
•	Research and interview travel partners to determine which cities, countries, and events to feature.
•	Manage various writers engaged in research and content creation.
•	Optimize social media accounts to ensure brand messaging, engagement, and an information-focused approach. 
•	Build relationships with partners and in-house departments for better marketing channels and optimized initiatives.
•	Assist Marketing Manager in managing public relations partners to assist with growth

Senior Travel Writer • Content Marketer

Southern New Hampshire University

•	Facilitate original syllabus in collaboration with the department chair.
•	Use subject matter to impart knowledge on student writing techniques and facilitate discussions based on in-class texts.
•	Challenge and motivate students through in-depth lectures and discussions.
•	Conduct workshops through online discussions to ensure storytelling objectives are obtained while facilitating feedback.
•	Create a high-performance environment to motivate students of diverse backgrounds for success.
•	Showcase recognized authority and leadership in creative writing.

Creative Writing Instructor 

Creative Blue

•Demonstrated the value, inclusivity, and necessity of strategic storytelling for businesses. Assist in finding the core story and emotional resonance of a company's narrative to which investors, audiences, and customers can connect.

Content Strategist

Epic Press

•	Produce 7 novels appropriate for diverse range of Young Adult and New Adult audiences.
•	Outline projects and organize appropriate material to format for publication.
•	Develop themes, plots, characterizations, psychological analyses, historical environments, action, and dialogue, to create relatable, gripping events.	
•	Collaborate with editors and publishers to discuss changes or revisions to written material.
•	Conduct research to obtain factual information and authentic detail, using verifiable sources to texture content with life-like events and captivating detail. 
•	Create strong literary ties to editors and author relations teams. 
•	Design appropriate layout and formats for digital content

Independent Author

Bask Restaurant

•	Prepared and monitored restaurant during business hours. 
•	Helped develop daily/monthly food and drink specials. 
•	Ensured customer satisfaction and repeat customers through quality service 
and anticipation of guests’ needs.

Supervisor

University of San Francisco

•	Instructed students in fiction writing, public readings, writing applications and exercises, editing.
•	 Provided individual feedback and meetings to ensure understanding of course material.

Teaching Assistant

Counterpoint Press

•    Contacted venues and booked author reading events throughout the country. 
•	Facilitated relations between authors, bookstores, venues, and PR supervisor. 
•    Read and analyze manuscripts while keeping detailed notes on subject matter. 
•	Provide pros and cons of manuscript acquisition to the Editorial Director. 
•	Search manuscripts, text copy, PR flyers, etc. for grammatical, spelling, format errors and mark for correction. 
•	Write copy for texts soon-to-be-released.

Intern

As the Senior Travel Writer and Content Marketer at Zicasso, I leverage my MFA in Creative Writing and over 10 years of experience in the leisure, travel, and tourism industry to create engaging and informative content that connects travelers with authentic and personalized experiences. 

I have established hundreds of articles, sample itineraries, bulletins, emails, blogs, and social media posts that showcase the diversity and richness of global destinations and cultures, while also developing and implementing SEO and advertising strategies that drive traffic and conversions. I manage and mentor a team of writers, researchers, and editors, and collaborate with travel partners and stakeholders to ensure quality and consistency across all platforms and channels. My passion is to build connection and trust through storytelling, and to inspire others to explore the world with curiosity and wonder.

How do you build a fanbase? 

You may not know
but this
Isn't a rhetorical question
Nor is it a question I am going to answer,
Because it's a question I'm interested in learning about.

Have you built a fanbase 
a community
a gathering
a group
a team
a party
?

How have you gone about it? 
Have you built a solid base of 1000 fans? 

As I write my latest novel, 
After having written 9 that were warmly received 
But without a community or super fans behind them
I'm eager to find the best ways to share the work
and build the fanbase 
(Let's just assume the product is a good one 
so we can ignore responses saying "make a good product")

For that last part, 
here are the opening pages of the manuscript in progress...

P.S. What do you think of the opening so far? Do you feel it's creating intrigue, laying down the ground rules for the world to come, establishing a different world, not succeeding at all, sounds too overwritten? Nows a good time to give your two cents.

LinkedIn

Amplifying Your Message Through Powerful Framing and Storytelling

How to Research and Write Using Generative AI Tools

Storytelling for Leaders

Become a Super-Collaborator

Critical Thinking for Better Judgment and Decision-Making

California State University, Northridge

Content Manager | Storytelling Expert

Road from Ruin Manuscript Chapter 1

Story Expert

Creatively building
Historical empathy? 

What is storytelling
If not a way 
To share an experience...

And the further we move
from an historical event
the more distant we become from that event. 

My grandfathers
Were stationed in the Pacific Theater
My grandmothers were typists for the army.
I grew up hearing stories from Holocaust survivors.

We share stories to feel connected. 
We feel connected by getting emotionally invested. 
When emotionally invested, we are willing to learn. 

Argue with this:
You can tell a lie to share an emotional truth. 
Or
You can interpret a story to share an emotional truth.

Academy Award®-nominated screenwriter of Braveheart and some other things you might have seen/read/heard.

A recurring challenge throughout filmmaking is bringing historical moments to life. In many cases, movies are an audience member's introduction to major events, which means we writers have a dual responsibility: stay true to the past, but craft a narrative that resonates with people. 

Recreating a historical moment is more than nailing the costumes or building a period set. Writers must capture the human experience: what was felt, feared, fought for, lost, etc. That blend of emotional truth and authenticity is where film can become a great "history" teacher. 

Many of you have asked me questions about this regarding Braveheart, but Pearl Harbor acts as another example (and it was Pearl Harbor Day last Sunday!). While I took creative liberties for dramatic effect, the idea was to reintroduce that chunk of history to a new generation, a new audience. Using meticulous production design and personal stories, I tried to honor the tragedy's impact while making the story accessible to a new generation. 

Although many people have a lot to say about this movie, my takeaway from the film was that we don't just retell the past; we interpret it. When done thoughtfully, a history film can spark curiosity, encourage deeper research, and keep the true stories of the real heroes alive. 

Respect the truth, illuminate the human experience, and create something that makes people want to learn more. 

As always, happy writing, everyone!

#Braveheart #PearlHarbor #WritingTips #WritingWednesday #History #historicalfiction #RandallWallace

“I want MTV to mean to me what it means to my mom.”

I loved MTV for a very specific window in time: 
when they still played music, and 
when they reflected culture back to itself in a way that felt collective.

What resonated with me in this post 
is the idea that MTV was never the product. 
Music videos were the delivery system for: 
shared reference points, 
emotional shorthand, 
a sense that other people were feeling at the same moment.

I think hat’s the part I mourn—
not the network, 
but the loss of the cultural tentpoles.
The places where character, identity, and story collided in public.

Storytelling used to have fewer doors in, 
which meant more people walked through the same one; 
a song broke, 
a show aired, 
a novel landed,
it found and created an audience. 
And I recognized myself inside the piece of art, 
and so did everyone else.

Of course, culture hasn’t disappeared. 
Identity-building still happens, 
And it’s been niched down into a million micro-rooms. 
Intimate, powerful, often beautiful...rarely shared at scale. 
That’s why when something does break through
Ala Stranger Things, 
Wicked for Good,
Fourth Wing—
it feels almost startling, 
proof we still crave a common language.

This shift changes how character works. 
Characters used to emerge from a recognizable cultural system. 
Are they now shaped by algorithmic currents
rather than mass ritual? 

So when I read
“...the kids didn’t want MTV anymore—they became it,” 
I hear the burden of meaning-making 
has shifted to individuals. 
And with great power 
comes great, blah blah blah blah.

MTV reflected us back to ourselves all at once.
Writers and creators are doing that work in fragments
building connection without the guarantee of a shared stage.

And I think that’s the real tension I sit with: 
not how culture gets made now, 
but how rarely we get to feel it together.

#writing #writingcommunity #writersonwriting #amwriting #communityculture #community #onwriting #onculture #millennialmtv

CEO @ Dhar Mann Studios | Former President @ MTV, Divisional CEO @ Bertelsmann, Chief Digital Officer @ Discovery, President @ Jellysmack | Managed $1B+ P&Ls and Launched 5 $100M+ Businesses

When I ran MTV, I realized something terrifying:

The audience didn’t want their MTV anymore. They wanted to be MTV.

People still ask me, “If you rebuilt MTV today, what would it look like?” (Lord knows there are way smarter people than I to ask this question of.)

I tell them to look around. Creators already built it in spirit. Everyone else is trying to resurrect a consumption era that isn’t coming back.

Here’s the part I think people get wrong: MTV was never just about music videos. It was about belonging. Music was just the delivery system. It was the universal connector that made strangers feel understood.

For example, just ask someone what song was playing during their first heartbreak. Different decade, different genre, and yet both of you are instantly transported recalling how that song chased you around the radio dial.

MTV didn’t manufacture cool. It was simply the best concentrated distribution point culture had. People confuse that monopoly power with MTVs brand magic.  And the OG's at MTVs origins would be creators today.

Today that distribution monopoly is gone.  But music didn’t disappear. Its all  over TV:
• The Masked Singer is a hit show.
• Love Island is essentially a sync-licensing engine with indie songs during every emotional scene transition.
• American Idol, AGT, The Voice - music everywhere, all the time.

The real shift? We no longer have cultural center poles. No TRL. No shared countdown. No place where everyone looks at the same thing at the same time.

Your parents had Carson. You had Carson Daly. Today’s kids have a million creators, each their own TRL.

I’ll never forget a 15-year-old in our MTV focus group who said: “I want MTV to mean to me what it means to my mom.”

That’s when it hit me. She didn’t want our channel. She wanted our feeling.  A place where identity, discovery, and community collided.

You can’t rebuild MTV "the network" as it was. The monoculture is gone.

But that teenager? She didn’t wait for us to bring it back. She's probably built it herself. One post. One stream. One community at a time.

The kids don’t want their MTV anymore. They became it.  And while my Gen X heart misses the MTV brand of yesteryear, it's also proud of what the kids have done to take its rebel spirit everywhere.

Storytelling Trainer (virtual and in-person) | Workshops, courses, and keynotes

In this afternoon’s storytelling workshop, I got a question about “relatability.”

What does it mean to make your stories relatable, and how do you do it?

Relatability is super important in storytelling, but you need to make sure you’re thinking about it the right way.

Most people think of a “relatable” character as one we can relate to because of that character’s particular circumstances. 

So if you’re trying to reach urban teenagers, you might think they’ll relate to stories about urban teenagers and the things they like (TikTok, Harry Styles).

Or if you’re trying to catch the attention of young parents, you hope they’ll relate to stories about parenthood and small children (Similac, Huggies).
 
But what really needs to be relatable isn’t the identity of the characters with the identity of the audience.

What needs to be relatable is the emotional reality—a shared human experience that feels true regardless of an individual’s particular circumstance.

If you’ve never cooked meth or been diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer, you can still relate to Walter White—because you know what it’s like to be sick, and broke, and wanting to support your loved ones.

If you’ve never been a desperate housewife in 19th-century France, you can still relate to Madame Bovary—feeling unsatisfied in a relationship and wanting a better life.

If you’ve never grown up in Colombia, or lifted weights competitively, or undergone hernia surgery, or won a gold medal at the Olympics, you can still relate to Óscar Figueroa and his sacrifice, and struggle, and winning when the odds are against you.

So what does it really mean when we say a story or a character isn’t relatable?

Most of the time, it means we don’t believe it.

The reactions don’t seem true.

We get to the end and say, “Um, not quite.”

Like that story about the time your best friend called you from the hospital—she’d just been in a car accident—and in the middle of the conversation you said you’d call her back later because you needed to go buy pants and The Gap was closing soon.

This story isn’t relatable—not because you couldn’t go buy pants, but because you love your friend. The response we expect (shock, concern, distress, dropping everything to rush out the door and drive immediately to the hospital) is so far from the realm of pants-buying that we don’t relate.

But if we learn that your best friend had betrayed you—stolen your spouse and your life savings—then suddenly it seems cruelly relatable to brush off your friend’s phone call. Everyone can relate to being mean, to wanting revenge, to knowing there’s a conflict between doing the right thing and doing the thing that we actually do.

Remember: when people say they want a relatable story, what they mean is they want an emotionally relatable story.

#storytelling #relatable #spousaltheft

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