Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat.

Leslie Rasmussen: Don’t just sit down and write a book. It’s just not going to work. The best thing to do is take the smallest steps and write a little scene about something. You don’t have to have the whole book. You don’t have to even know what it’s about. Just the way I did it. You just create a character and just write scenes with this character whether it shows up in the book or not, because it will get your creativity going.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden a podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Leslie A. Rasmussen, wrote TV comedies for folks like Gerald McCraney, Burt Reynolds, Roseanne Barr, Norm MacDonald and Drew Carey while working on popular sitcoms such as Major Dad, Roseanne, alf, the Wild Thornberries, Sweet Valley High, Evening Shade, Norm and the Good Life. After leaving the TV industry to raise her boys, Leslie obtained a master’s degree in nutrition and ran her own business for 10 years. She’s been published over 20 times in the Huffington Post and speaks on panels discussing female empowerment. Leslie’s debut novel, After Happily Ever after, has won over 15 awards and her second novel, The Stories We Cannot Tell, has won 11 awards. Leslie’s latest novel, When People Leave, was released in May 2025. I’ve read when People Leave and can tell you it’s a highly engaging, superbly crafted tale about death, grief and the unraveling of a family mystery that involves three sisters going on the road together, all told with a light touch and great heart. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a great honor for me to welcome the outstanding award winning writer Leslie Rasmussen to story BE today. Leslie, thanks so much for joining for having me. Oh, it’s a great pleasure, believe you. Uh, so how old were you going back in time when you first started thinking about words and writing and the entertainment industry? When did you start thinking about all this?

Leslie Rasmussen: From the time I was very young, living in Los Angeles. I loved the entertainment industry. I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do in it. So I started out acting for a little while and then I went to college and when I graduated, I got a job at what was MTM Productions. Mary Tyler Moore. I was an intern there. Then they hired me. I worked all over the studio before I got a job as an assistant on Hill Street Blues. And while I was there, I thought, oh, um, now I’m going to be a line producer. And there weren’t that many women line producers. And there were some great men there that took me around and let me learn all kinds of things. And. And during that time, I was also the second Newhart show, the one in

Steve Cuden: called Newhart.

Leslie Rasmussen: Newhart, right, exactly. Was being shot on the lot, and I had a lot of friends there, so I’d go hang out. And I found that comedy writers were just fun to be around. I loved the. The whole thing just. It just made me glow. So I started writing scripts at my job at Hill Street Blues. I was writing sitcoms, and during all the time I had off.

Steve Cuden: Okay, so you didn’t start writing till a little bit later in life. It wasn’t like you were writing when you were five years old.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes and no, I wasn’t. I, um, kept a journal. I wrote a lot of stories, but I wasn’t thinking about it as a job at all. Um, I used to love writing just sarcastic, humorous letters to my parents when I was away or whatever. So I wrote all the time. I just didn’t think of it as a career.

Steve Cuden: Well, so you alluded to comedy writers and how fun they are. They’re also usually a pretty crazy bunch at the same time. And I think that’s what makes them fun, is they don’t think like everybody else thinks.

Leslie Rasmussen: That’s really true. And when you’re in the room, stuff that’s said is just, you know, it would never go in a script. It’s so far off the wall. But that’s what makes it fun.

Steve Cuden: Well, uh, you know, and when you get a group of, you know, frequently, it was men in the old days. Of course, there are a lot more women now, but, uh, you’d get a group of people in a room together for 10 or 12 hours a day. Um, it’s going to get a little nutty after a while.

Leslie Rasmussen: It does. And I will say there were not a lot of women like you said, but the women were more competitive than the men were.

Steve Cuden: They had to be. And that’s been true in so many different kinds of professions, but particularly in the writing business in Hollywood, women have had to be super aggressive to get anywhere.

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: The truth is, the men have to be aggressive, too, but the women have to be extra aggressive.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah. Now there’s way more women running studios and networks, and so it’s a lot different than it was. But at the time, yeah, I mean, I had an. I was meeting with agents at one point, and I went into an agency and the agent said to me, I really like your writing, but I have too many people like you in my stable.

Steve Cuden: Too many people like you. What does that mean?

Leslie Rasmussen: I just walked out after a few minutes because I was like, what does that mean? And how insulting. And I think he just meant, I have too many women comedy writers and, you know, so I don’t need another one. I don’t know why he met with me in the first place.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s always been the puzzle for me about Hollywood. As, you know, as we’ve chatted a little bit ahead of the show, I also was out there for a long time, and I’ve never quite understood some of the attitudinal things that go on in Hollywood, especially with the representatives in the world, because some of them treat the, uh, their. Their clients like some form of, you know, product or cattle. It’s not like they’re dealing with humans. They’re dealing with some kind of object.

Leslie Rasmussen: Which is mostly because I think agents don’t. The writers, the creative part, and the agent is the business part. And they look at you like you are a product, and they just have to send you out and try to get you a job. So you really are a product to them. And they have a certain amount of products, and they try to get everybody jobs.

Steve Cuden: And really, quite too frequently, the artists, the writers and the producers and the directors, they don’t understand the business end of the business before they get in it. That’s not what they’re focused on. And so they’re at the mercy of those people who are the business heads.

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly. And you learn a lot over the years, though.

Steve Cuden: So as a kid, what were you watching? Were you watching comedies as a kid? Were you a funny kid?

Leslie Rasmussen: I, you know, I don’t consider myself funny except on paper. I’m not somebody who’s, like, really super outgoing and just like, can, um, off the cuff, say whatever. That’s just not who I am.

Steve Cuden: I can be quick.

Leslie Rasmussen: My father was very quick and had a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor. I’m the one in the family that always got his jokes. So he loved to kind of like, whisper things to me, and it was fun, but I just. That’s just not who I really am.

Steve Cuden: So you were his great audience?

Leslie Rasmussen: Oh, yeah, I was his great audience for sure.

Steve Cuden: It’s always, uh, in my life, I’ve always had people that I’ve glommed onto who were my great audience. So I understand that feeling. Because if you’re telling your best what you think are your best, cleverest, wittiest things to someone and they’re not getting it and they’re not laughing, you’re not gonna hang around them very long.

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly. And my father loved my humor too, so it was really fun.

Steve Cuden: So at what point, as you were writing scripts on Hill Street Blues that were comedy scripts, not dramas, at what point did you think to yourself, I think I am good enough to be produced?

Leslie Rasmussen: Honestly, I thought it pretty quick, which is just funny because, ah, I’m very hard on myself. But I wrote so many spec scripts. I mean, I wrote Seinfeld and Golden Girls and Newhart. I wrote a ton of spec scripts. And the more I wrote, the easier it got for me. And. And I also, when I was a kid, I loved tv and I loved, like, the Mary Tyler Moore show and all those shows. And at the time, you know, we didn’t have video, VCRs and all that kind of stuff, so I would audiotape them and I would listen to them over and over and over again just for fun, not thinking about that. So later, when I decided to go into tv, I did that. I taped all these shows and I just kept listening to the rhythms and how it worked. And I think that really helped me learn how to write screenplays.

Steve Cuden: What a great lesson for those that are listening to this show. If you want to really learn how to get the rhythm and timing of comedy, it’s often better to listen to it unless it’s a, you know, unless it’s a slapstick movie or TV show. But if it’s something that’s verbal, a play or whatever, listening to it but not watching it can be very, very instructive as to how to write the thing that’s, you know, it’s hard enough to do. Um, do you prefer writing prose, which you’ve gotten into mostly over the last, as opposed to writing screenplays, or do you wish you were still writing screenplays?

Leslie Rasmussen: I wanted to go back into screenplays, but it just was not going to be possible. I’d been out for too many years and, you know, even getting an agent at that point. And every half the people I knew were out of the business by that point. By the time I would have gone back. But I love writing dialogue. So you read my book, it’s a lot of dialogue. The prose Part is the hard part for me, because when you’re in tv, you’re really not writing that. That’s the director or the prop master or whatever. And so I had to teach myself how to do that. And when I was. When I wrote. I wrote one of the Wild Thornberries, which was completely different than anything I’d ever written.

Steve Cuden: Yes. Because it’s animation.

Leslie Rasmussen: Uh, they also gave me notes to teach me how to write the animation. Because you’re telling the characters what to do and you’re describing scenes. So I think that helped a little bit.

Steve Cuden: To be clear for the listeners. When you write a screenplay, you’re not really filling in all of the blanks. You’re sort of indicating a little bit what happens. And then it’s left up to the craftsman people, the director of photography, the director, the art director, the makeup people, the costume people. It’s up to them to fill in those blanks. But what you’re saying, which is true as a novelist or prose writer, you have to provide all that. Which is interesting, because you got that lesson as you were talking about the Wild Thornberries. Uh, as you know, I’ve written close to 90 cartoons. And you are actually writing a storyboard, as opposed to not filling in the blanks. You have to fill in the blanks as a prose writer. It’s a. It is a little more daunting, I think, to be a writer, but I think it’s easier in a way, because it’s not. You don’t have to be as succinct.

Leslie Rasmussen: That’s true. And writing books, I mean, I read a ton of books, and the one thing that people have said about my books in reviews and things like that is that they love the dialogue. Because I’ve gotten to know the characters really well, which is what you have in television is you get to know. I mean, they have actors, so you kind of do that. But dialogue helps. You really get to know people.

Steve Cuden: And you clearly, in the book, uh, you clearly write funny dialogue. It’s funny.

Leslie Rasmussen: That’s what’s fun for me.

Steve Cuden: And so that takes you back to writing screenplays, and yet without having to write a screenplay.

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly. I can still use that.

Steve Cuden: And beautifully. You don’t have to go through the process that a screenwriter goes through of trying to sell it and pitch it to everybody and wait for people to give you notes and wait for them to rip it apart and rewrite it and all those things that happen on a TV show, right?

Leslie Rasmussen: Well, yes and no. I mean, I do give it to a professional Editor.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

Leslie Rasmussen: To let them give me whatever notes they give me. Um, but yes, that’s probably true. I mean, I’ve published in so many different ways, from hybrid to traditional to self publishing. And so you do get a different thing from each person that you publish with.

Steve Cuden: And you would. If you gave that. If you gave your book to 20 editors, you’d get 20 different edits.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, and that’s why I don’t. A lot of people will give it to beta readers and give a ton. With my first book, I gave it to two people that I trusted the most. One was an author and one was, uh, an executive at a company. And I knew that she read tons and tons of scripts, so I knew she knew how story worked, so I gave it to just them. But since my first book, I don’t do that anymore. I just give it to professional editors. Just because you can get too many people telling you one thing and then somebody else contradicts that and then you’re all confused.

Steve Cuden: Uh, that’s absolutely true. So you don’t work in a writer’s group or anything like that?

Leslie Rasmussen: I don’t. I don’t usually read my stuff to anybody except for myself. And my husband will read it most of the time too. And just. He’s really good at grammar and editing like that, like cutting things. He’s really good at cutting, you know, where he’ll say, you don’t need this, or you said this too many times or whatever. So I’ll give it to him first and then I’ll go to a professional editor.

Steve Cuden: Well, we should say that your husband is a professional writer as well.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, he’s an executive producer writer.

Steve Cuden: So he understands how to write and he understands story. And that would be very helpful to get his feedback.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: But correct me if I’m wrong, there’s a little bit of a quandary, uh, if it’s your spouse, because you are hopeful that they give you positive and decent criticism and they’re not holding back on it because they’re your spouse.

Leslie Rasmussen: He doesn’t. I mean, he’s really good. He likes my writing, you know, I mean, he’s seen it for many, many years. But, uh, he also is really good about saying, you know, if I say, but I like that part, he’ll say, well, you can keep it, but I’m just telling you why it doesn’t work. I’ll be like, okay, it’s my choice. But he’s, you know what? He’s usually right.

Steve Cuden: Oh, I love that line. Keep it if you want to, but, but. Okay, I’ll, uh, let you do it. You know, it’s like that, that kind of thing. All right, so let’s talk about when People Leave. Um, tell the listeners what People Leave is all about. I, uh, alluded to a little bit, but tell us more.

Leslie Rasmussen: So it’s about three sisters who find out that their mother took their single mother, took her own life. And it’s their journey to find out why she would do that. Because as far as they know, she’s been doing great and she’s happy and they have no clue. So they go on this journey and while they’re on this journey, they find out a lot of secrets that they had no idea and how these secrets affected them because they were very, very young when these secrets started. And so it just tells them how they made decisions in their lives that they probably would have made different decisions if they knew these secrets.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. What led you to write this? How did this come about?

Leslie Rasmussen: So I had been seeing articles, um, about teenagers who went off to college and they kept telling their parents they were happy and doing great, and then their parents found out that they killed themselves. And I thought, I don’t want to write about a teenager doing that because it’s so horrible. But I thought that’s really interesting because then the parents had to go to the school and all their friends and try to figure out what piece the whole thing together. So I thought that. And then we have a few friends who are comedy writers who took their own life. And we even saw one of them not much before, and he was his usual boisterous, wonderful self. And nobody in the outside world knew what was going on with these people. So I just thought that was like, sort of interesting, the idea behind it. So then I wanted to write something with three sisters, because I have two. And the sisters in this book are very, very different on purpose from all of us. But I wanted to, I always wanted to write a book about sisters. So that’s kind of how that started.

Steve Cuden: And to make it all together, it’s also this mystery. You’re solving a mystery throughout the whole book.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes. Which I had never really done before. And that sort of just kind of happened as I went along because I didn’t really know. I knew I had an outline, but I didn’t really know all the little breadcrumbs that were going to happen. I had to keep going back and place all the breadcrumbs once I figured out the end of the book.

Steve Cuden: Well, are you a. Are you a Plotter or do you tend to just go by the seat of your pants?

Leslie Rasmussen: I do a little of both. I do plot it. I do always have an outline, but a lot of times the outline will change. And as I’m writing it, you know, if I’m in a chapter and the chapter is changing, something in the character, something comes to me, then the outline’s going to change a little bit.

Steve Cuden: So other than the fact that it’s three sisters and you have two sisters, so there are three of you, this is not a personal book. This is not based on your life.

Leslie Rasmussen: There’s absolutely nothing based on my life.

Steve Cuden: It’s total fiction.

Leslie Rasmussen: It’s total fiction.

Steve Cuden: So. All right, so the subject matter, of course underneath is fairly dark. I mean, it’s about trying to figure out why mom killed herself. Um, did that make it in any way psychologically challenging for you to write about?

Leslie Rasmussen: Um, not really because my father passed away. Not from suicide, but my father passed away from medical stuff. Now it’s almost 10 years ago, but when he did, my whole family, we were all devastated. I was very close to my father, all of us were. And we all went to my mother’s. And, um, when we were there, we all sat down and we were crying, but we were laughing because my dad was so funny. So we were all talking about all these things and I realized, yes, the suicide starts the book, but it’s not really about suicide and it’s not really about death. It’s really about these sisters who come together and have their own issues with each other and then are figuring out this mystery. So it’s really not a depressing book and I could use a lot of humor in it.

Steve Cuden: It’s definitely, definitely not a depressing book. But the backdrop is dark. It’s not, uh, you know, it’s not about going to the circus and having a lovely day at the park. Um, so tell us about Carla, the mom. What is it about her that causes her. And don’t give anything away, obviously, but what causes her to, um, um, develop secrets? Why does she feel the need not to tell her daughters?

Leslie Rasmussen: She had a very difficult childhood. And as she went on and she got married, there were things that happened in her marriage and she had to leave. And she basically doesn’t ever want anybody to know where she is and she doesn’t want the kids to know anything about her previous life. So she’s told them certain things that are not true.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. And that then becomes the source of more and more of the unraveling mystery. Um, and Then. So you’ve got the three daughters, Morgan, Charlie and Abby, and they are very different, as you say. How do you develop characters? How did you develop these three? Since they’re not based on, uh, your life, Are they based on people, you know, in any way?

Leslie Rasmussen: Not really. I mean, Morgan is a alcoholic, she’s sober, and Charlie is in a relationship that she should not be in for a very long time. And, you know, I’ve been married for 36 years, so that’s not me.

Steve Cuden: And in Hollywood. Congratulations.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, thank you. And Abby sort of followed in her mother’s footsteps and she had her own dreams that she kind of gave up. So, no, they’re not really based on anybody I know. I just. As I went along, I started to develop more and more of each character and then went back and put more and more things in.

Steve Cuden: So when you first started to write way back when you were on Hill Street Blues, how did you develop characters back then? Is it similar to the way you do it now? How do you make characters work? How do you develop them?

Leslie Rasmussen: Well, back then I was writing a screenplay, I mean, a tv. So all the characters existed, they were all actors. So I was writing for them. Um, and then when I wrote for Huffington Post, those were all essays, personal, funny essays about my family and my parents and my kids. So those were based on real people. So I really didn’t start writing fiction until my first book, and that didn’t even start out as a book. That started out, I was in like a writing group because I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what I wanted to write. And I was in a group with just a writing coach and one other person, and she was just giving us prompts. And every time that I would write a prompt, it turned into this one character named Maggie. And as that happened and I started describing things and writing prompts for her, I saw a story for her. And that book, that’s my first book called After Happily Ever after. And that’s really based on my books have a lot to do with women’s issues over time. So that book is about a 46 year old whose kid is going off to college. She has one kid going off to college, her husband’s going through some stuff, and then she has the older parents who her father, who she’s very close to, starts to go downhill. And it’s about her trying to rediscover herself in the second part of her life after she’s given up everything for her family and, and trying to figure out what do I do when everything is kind of collapsing on me. And so she starts making these decisions that could blow up her life that she wouldn’t normally make. But she’s under a lot of pressure.

Steve Cuden: But the character development itself came to you. You didn’t sit down and draft out long, uh, prose versions, uh, of who this character was. It just kept coming to you?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, on that one, it did. On my other books, I. I did, like, a backstory.

Steve Cuden: You did do backstories.

Leslie Rasmussen: Even if I didn’t use everything, I did a backstory just to kind of develop who these characters would be and what. How the decisions they would make and things about their backstory.

Steve Cuden: Personally, I have a very hard time doing anything where I haven’t sat down and kind of worked it out in advance. And I’ve talked to many authors on this show who are what they call pantsers. They do it by the seat of their pants. I’m not good at it. I’m, uh. The seat of the pants is developing the development, not the actual script or the book, whatever it is that you’re working on. So most. I think most teleplays, most screenplays, for sure, have a single protagonist that the audience can follow. You’ve written a book here that have four. I guess you’d call them protagonists. Do you think one of them stands out among the others as the protagonist of the story, or do you think that they’re equal?

Leslie Rasmussen: I think to some degree they’re equal, but each chapter is from one of their points of view. And I think Morgan, for some reason, maybe because she’s the oldest, comes out the strongest to me. Um, but my first book was from one point of view. My second book was from two points of view, and my third book was from, uh, four points of view, so to speak.

Steve Cuden: And the next one will be 12.

Leslie Rasmussen: I hope not. No, the next one’s actually from one point of view.

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s interesting because, as you were saying, Morgan, I had already written my notes here that Morgan is the one who has the biggest arc. She’s the one that has the most change from beginning to end. So if I were teaching about this book, I would suggest that Morgan is the protagonist because she’s the one that goes through that big arc.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, it’s exactly right. And I just wrote, um, a small, very short kind of prequel to the book. And Morgan. It’s from Morgan’s point of view, the whole.

Steve Cuden: There you go. So that becomes. As you’re writing, that becomes your bias, even if it’s unconscious or subconscious. I should say exactly. Um. Uh, do you think that the fact that you deal with various things, substance abuse, alcoholism, psychotherapy, motherhood, uh, difficulty with parenting, changes in that kind of way? Uh, to be. And certainly what it means to be a sibling. Those are all sort of underlying themes that you have going on. Did you have to do any research on any of that, or did you already know about those things?

Leslie Rasmussen: The research I did was for the Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a friend who is in Alcoholics Anonymous, so that whole stuff I sent to her and said, is this accurate? Because I want to make sure that it is. And she read all of that, and she told me how it works, and because I’ve never been to a meeting, so my research was to go to her and have her read it and then talk me through it. That part of it. Um, but as far as, like, siblings. I have siblings. As far as, like, motherhood, I’m a mom. So all that stuff. Um, and then as far as the, like, suicide, because it’s just only at the beginning, and it’s not about suicide.

Steve Cuden: Right.

Leslie Rasmussen: Didn’t really do any research for that.

Steve Cuden: And you don’t really. You don’t really dig into the suicide itself at all. It’s a backstory of what happens. Um, do you find that when you’re doing. Are you a researcher in general, or is this something that just happened in this book?

Leslie Rasmussen: I do sometimes do a lot of research. My first book, um, had some medical stuff in it, so I did a lot of research, and I was on a lot of Facebook groups with caregivers and things like that to get their point of view. So I did do a lot of research for my first book and some for my second book, too. But my third book, I didn’t really do that much.

Steve Cuden: So I found that, though you have these four really different characters, that the book overall feels like you’ve written a memoir. Even though it’s not at all a memoir, it just has that feeling to it, which is the intimacy of it. And I assume that was not your intention.

Leslie Rasmussen: No, I never even. I’ve never heard that. So thank you. That’s great.

Steve Cuden: Well, it felt that way to me all the way through. It was like four different little memoirs that you were getting, because, as you say, you keep writing individual chapters, coming from each individual point of view. And that certainly felt memoir like. To me. And so I didn’t know if that was intentional or not. Obviously it was not.

Leslie Rasmussen: It wasn’t, but I like that. Uh, I purposely, though, did make sure that you Got into everybody’s backstory?

Steve Cuden: Oh, yes.

Leslie Rasmussen: Each chapter, when you listen from their point of view, you’re hearing what’s going on with them. So in that sense, I see what you’re saying.

Steve Cuden: Did you set out to have it, have a, uh, comedic feel to it in many places. Was that your intent when you started to write?

Leslie Rasmussen: It’s always my intent, no matter what. All my books have some. They call them heartbreaking comedies because there’s some heartbreaking scenes in all the books. But I always have a lot of lightness and a lot of comedy because I don’t want somebody to read my books and then it’d be down.

Steve Cuden: Would you say that that is your, um, main tone when you’re writing, is that you want to have a light tone to it?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, I always want to have a light tone to it. I never write anything that’s really, really down.

Steve Cuden: Is that because, uh, you just don’t want it in your life as a writer?

Leslie Rasmussen: I think it’s because it’s more fun for me, like, not to be just like, ugh. Um, because that’s like, you know, when you hear about actors that are in a part and they bring it home and it’s so depressing. It’s sort of the same thing when you’re writing, you’re in with all these characters. And I don’t want to be depressed.

Steve Cuden: Obviously there are writers that write very deep, dark, depressing books and I have a feeling that they are deep, dark and depressed. But also the infamous story, uh, about the sad clown, the person that’s writing comedy, playing comedy and so on, they’re actually behind the scenes, quite dark. You already alluded to having writers that you know who killed themselves. Uh, that says something about what’s going on with that individual. Uh, in your case, you don’t want it in your life as a writer, so you don’t go there.

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly. Yeah. Because a lot of comedy writers are known to be depressives.

Steve Cuden: Oh, sure.

Leslie Rasmussen: And stand ups and all the rest of it. I’m not. But I just don’t want to have that in my life if I don’t have to.

Steve Cuden: And I think that shows in the writing. I mean it’s. I think it would be very difficult for you to write the way that you write with the tone that you write if you in fact were not, ah, a more positive, upbeat person. Um, you write many scenes in this book that are quite vivid. Do you think that comes from your screen work, from being a screenwriter?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, I do. I think when I write Anything. I kind of think. I don’t write for actors. Like, I’m not writing the book and saying, oh, she could play this and she could play that. But I think of these people as real people. So I try to make it as vivid as possible so somebody can kind of, in their own mind, imagine whoever these people are.

Steve Cuden: And you’re. So that’s why I, uh, guess that’s what I’m asking. Are you then using your skill sets as a screenwriter to make it vivid, even though, as we’ve already talked about in a screenplay, you don’t write all of that. You don’t write every bit of it. Your writing is very, um, visual. I can see it vividly when I’m reading it.

Leslie Rasmussen: I took a lot of classes, and one of the things they said, and I do this in, like, a different draft usually, because when I’m writing, I don’t really think about this that much. But they said, look at all the senses. So if somebody gets out of a car, is it hot out? Um, do they smell anything? So I’ll go back and in, like, my second draft of the book, I’ll start over and I’ll start looking at each scene and going, okay, what in this scene am I missing as far as, like, whether it’s their hand movements, you know, their expressions, if I’m missing something or in what the world is like outside or inside. And I’ll do that a lot of times I’ll keep adding that.

Steve Cuden: So I found that you have a wonderful catharsis at the end of this book, and I think that that’s helpful. And I think great stories are cathartic in some way. And I think that’s what I consider to be the storytelling drug. That’s what brings readers and viewers back over and over again. Is that notion of catharsis. Do you, as you’re writing and finish a book, do you find it cathartic?

Leslie Rasmussen: I do. As soon as I’m done with the book, if it gives me my. I have, um, two books that have happy endings. And my first book has a hopeful ending, but it’s not necessarily. You don’t know what’s going to happen. And, uh, I did that because my first book is very real to life. And I did not want to tie it up in this little bow. So everybody goes, oh, okay. Of course I knew that was going to happen. So it’s hopeful and it was interesting because the reviews people said they were. Most people were happy that I didn’t tie it up. There were a few people at book clubs that were like, I wanted a happy ending. So I did go back and write an epilogue, but I only put it out if somebody asked me for it, like, what happened in this book? Then I’ll send them the epilogue.

Steve Cuden: The thing is that, you know, we get to the catharsis of we know where they are in the world and they can move on from there, because for a while in the book, they’re kind of trapped in the notion of, we’ve got to figure this out, and they can get past that, which is a cathartic moment, at least was for me. Um, let’s talk about how you actually developed the book itself. Where did you begin? Do you begin with characters or do you begin with plot?

Leslie Rasmussen: In this one, I kind of began with both. Um, I started with knowing that there were going to be three sisters. I had an editor that I was working with because I had written the outline, but I wanted an editor to read the outline. So her and I kind of went back and forth about, like, sort of, you know, going through the basics of the outline. It changed a lot just because then I put in more and more of the mystery and came up with different things, the clues and things like that. But I, uh, would say I probably started with the three sisters and then sort of knew that I wanted to do that and then knew the basic story idea and then just started going through it to figure out, okay, well, where can I go from here?

Steve Cuden: You already knew about mom before you started?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes. I knew she was going to be a single mom. I knew she was the one that was going to pass away. Um, and I knew that the sisters were going to have to figure out why.

Steve Cuden: So you knew it was going to be an uncovering of one bit of their lives after another?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, I just didn’t know how I was going to uncover it.

Steve Cuden: You say that you’re a reviser. Does that mean are you a quick first drafter?

Leslie Rasmussen: No. I mean, I’m not. My first book took me four and a half years because I had no clue what I was doing. My second book took me about nine months, and I think this book took me probably, like, six, seven or eight months. But I do. I write it through, and then I go back and I do it again. And then I go back and I keep checking it to make sure there’s a lot of stuff that I want it to say or delete. Stuff that I think, you know, I might have written twice, because I’ve done that before where I write, you know, something in one section. And then, like, three sections later, I wrote the same exact kind of dialogue. So I have to get rid of it. It’s funny. So I do it again.

Steve Cuden: Do you figure that out, or does it require somebody else telling you?

Leslie Rasmussen: Usually I’ll see it, but sometimes my husband will see it before I send it to the editor. He’ll say, oh, wait a minute. You said this exact thing over here.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s what I think of as, uh, you get lost in the forest for the trees. You stop seeing certain things after a while. When you’re working on something for a really long time. The structure of the book with the various chapters for each individual character, was that something you decided on before you began to write?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes. Um, because I. First I was going to write from one point of view, but then I thought, no, I think it’s better if we see everybody’s point of view, because then you can get to know who everybody is. If you do just one point of view, that person pretty much. If you. Especially if you do it from first person, they have to be in every single scene because they have to see what’s happening or overhear it. So I didn’t want to do that because that’s really hard. And I did that in my first book. But then in my first book, I went in, because there’s two other characters that are really important in my first book. One is her husband and one is her father. So there are chapters from their point of view so the reader can see what they’re really going through, but most of it is from Maggie’s point of view.

Steve Cuden: Ah. And that’s, uh, easier in a way, because when you have a singular protagonist, you don’t need to worry about whether you’re capturing all these different things.

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly. And my next book that I just finished also is from singular point of view.

Steve Cuden: And. And how many drafts do you think you ultimately did on this book?

Leslie Rasmussen: Probably three.

Steve Cuden: Three. Is that, uh, typical for you, is two to three or four drafts?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, probably three. And then I gave it to. That was after, like, the first two, and then my husband looked at it, and then it went to the editor. So maybe four total by the time I got the notes and then finished the notes.

Steve Cuden: So did you know as you were writing that this was going to work? Could you tell? Did it feel like it was working or did you. Did it require other people giving you feedback first?

Leslie Rasmussen: I always think my books don’t work.

Steve Cuden: You and everybody else.

Leslie Rasmussen: I always assume everybody’s going to hate the book until I start getting feedback. And like, the editors will say, no, this is really good, or they don’t have a lot of notes. Then I’ll be like, oh, maybe it’s okay. But until the book is out there and I start getting reviews, I never really know.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that’s true for everyone. We don’t really know. We do what we do because we want to do it. We feel like we have to get it out of our system one way or another. But we don’t know whether other people are going to be attracted to it or find it interesting or fun or whatever. Uh, until you get that feedback. I have a friend of mine who’s no longer with us who used to say, uh, there’s nothing like the unmistakable sledgehammer of the marketplace. And that’s true. When you put a movie out into the world or a TV series, it’s either going to catch on or it’s not, and the market is going to tell you everything. And that’s really true for books as well. And you did work with an editor at various steps through this whole thing? Yeah.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes. Oh, I had a professional editor at the very beginning just to kind of go over the outline. I wrote the outline, and then I sent it to her, and she kind of went over with me to make sure it kind of worked.

Steve Cuden: So this is not a language editor. This editor in the beginning is not concerned about.

Leslie Rasmussen: About your developmental editor.

Steve Cuden: Developmental editor. Not a grammar editor, not spelling and that kind of thing. This is someone who’s telling you your story is working or it doesn’t work, your characters work or they don’t work. And here’s what. Their feelings about it are kind of like in the theater, like a dramaturg, but that’s not what we would call it in novels.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, I always use a developmental editor. Um, I used her at the beginning, and then I had a different editor, actually for the actual book. And she was also developmental editor, but she. Because my husband did all the grammar stuff. Oh, yeah, he’s very good at that. So he kind of fixed all of that. And then I sent it to her for developmental editing just to make sure the whole story worked and that she didn’t find something that didn’t work.

Steve Cuden: So I’m curious. You’re the first person I’m going to ask this question of. I have found myself, over time, as, uh, for lack of a better way to say it, AI or whatever is out there, as that has become more and more and more prominent in our various programs, our writing programs. Are you finding that if the computer is telling you that a sentence is not right, that you’re using that to help guide you to what you want to revise it to be.

Leslie Rasmussen: I’ll look at it, but a lot of times with AI, it can correct your grammar. But like if you’re writing dialogue, it doesn’t know that you really want to place the emphasis on a certain word or anything else. So the only time I really look at it mostly is for like commas or semicolons, which, which I’m really bad at, um, that kind of thing. But I don’t use it. It might suggest a word and that every once in a while I’ll be like, oh yeah, that is a better word. But I don’t like rewrite with it. I just sort of use it just for that, like basic, basic stuff that I don’t know.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. I think that a, uh, lot of writers are starting to adopt that, that it you. I think as we write. I don’t know about you, but when I write, and I’ve been writing a long time, I still, still will write the structure of a sentence and not sure I got it right. And I think a lot of writers go through that. And so if there’s some kind of, for lack of a better term, a program that says to you this is your sentence structure is poor, I might at least let it. Humor me. Um, but like you say, when you’re writing dialogue, that’s not going to be grammatical at all. Frequently, no.

Leslie Rasmussen: And I mean sometimes it’ll put a comma after, let’s say so. But you might not want that comma there because you’re trying to have it say so blah or whatever it is. And so. And it will throw. Like when I, um, one of the publishers I went to at the beginning, their person put in all these weird commas in all my dialog and I was like, that doesn’t make sense because that’s not what they’re trying to say and they’re putting emphasis on the wrong part of the sentence. So I took them all out. Whatever I got rid of.

Steve Cuden: Well, if I’ve told many people many times, if you want to see how people actually talk, which is not true dialogue, just read a deposition. If you read a deposition, they’re literally typing down exactly word for word with all the ums and ers and the stops and the starts that a person is saying while they’re being deposed. It’s almost impossible to read. It doesn’t read well at all. So when you write dialogue you have to have whatever you’re putting into it, which is, uh, sort of a kind of poetic way that you’re writing dialogue. Uh, it’s an elevated way to write it. Most dialogue is. And yet it can be very street. It can be very ordinary, but it has a kind of a rhythm to it. And you have to put the rhythm in as the writer.

Leslie Rasmussen: Right, exactly. And I also read all of it out loud. If you don’t. For me, this is just for me. But I read it out loud because I can hear then, oh, no, you know what? There needs to be an extra word here or that doesn’t sound right. Or instead of, you are your. Or whatever it is. I read it all out loud.

Steve Cuden: You started very, very young in life. You did a little acting. You’ve probably not been an actress for quite some time, right?

Leslie Rasmussen: No, very, very long time ago.

Steve Cuden: Do you still use that when you’re reading it out loud?

Leslie Rasmussen: I do. I mean, I sort of act the parts, you know, not to anybody. There’s nobody in the room. But I do because I. That’s how I can tell if the humor works or, you know, I mean, with comedy, there’s certain, you know, kind of rules. So I want to make sure that is in there, that I didn’t, you know, the rule of three or whatever those rules are. And so, yeah, I do kind of act it out.

Steve Cuden: Do you actually think about that as you’re writing about the comedy rules, the rules of three, and other things?

Leslie Rasmussen: Sometimes, yeah.

Steve Cuden: So you’re very intentional about it.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Do you ever write something and go back after a bit of time has passed and read it and you’re surprised by what you wrote?

Leslie Rasmussen: Oh, yeah. There are times I used to say that I would go to sleep and then some little elf would come out and write, like, a whole bunch of stuff. And I’d read it and go, I didn’t write this. I don’t remember writing this. Because you’re in the zone. And so you just have no idea. And sometimes you don’t like it, and sometimes you’re really excited and you’re, like, impressed with yourself.

Steve Cuden: Well, I’ve had more than a few experiences after many years of doing this, where I’ll go back and read something from 30 years ago and go, I wrote this. I don’t remember writing it. I don’t remember. It’s like, how did I really. You’ve had that experience as well?

Leslie Rasmussen: Oh, yeah, many times.

Steve Cuden: And when you say, I love the zone, I love getting in the zone. Are you able to get in the Zone pretty easily, or is it something that takes you time to do?

Leslie Rasmussen: It’s very easy. If I’m in the middle of a book, the first chapter is not easy because that’s just starting everything. But once I’m in it, it’s very easy. I actually work in my main family room because I like to just be around people. I don’t like to be, like, in a room by myself, but I can tune out anything happening. They can watch TV in the room. It makes no difference. I don’t hear or I don’t pay attention to anything else.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, now I’m guessing you don’t, but could you go work in a coffee shop like many writers do?

Leslie Rasmussen: Nope. I’d be so distracted listening to people. If it’s people that I don’t know, I’ll just start over, hearing their conversations. No, I wouldn’t. I cannot do that.

Steve Cuden: But in your own home, where you know pretty much who’s gonna say what, then you can zone it out, and

Leslie Rasmussen: it doesn’t matter what’s on tv, it doesn’t matter anything going on, and you

Steve Cuden: can drop into that zone pretty simply then.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, I can. Like I said, if I’m right in the middle of a book, I absolutely can.

Steve Cuden: M. Let’s talk for a moment about some of the articles you’ve written for Huffington Post. Any other publications aside from the Huffington Post?

Leslie Rasmussen: I mean, I’ve done things like Medium. A long time ago, I did. Maria Shriver used to have her own website site, and I used to do stuff for her, but mostly Huffington Post.

Steve Cuden: And what do you mostly focus on in your article writing?

Leslie Rasmussen: I haven’t written one lately, but when I was writing them, they would be, like I said before, like, my kids going off to camp for the first time, my kid going off to college. Um, I wrote a funny article on menopause. I wrote, um. You know, I’ve written articles on nutrition. When I was a nutritionist and how the scale would bully me, I would write all kinds of different things about. Mostly about my life and my family, but other things, too.

Steve Cuden: And do you find that you get most of your ideas for articles that they come from your life, or did you have to sit down and conjure them up?

Leslie Rasmussen: No, they all came from my life. That’s why I don’t write them as much anymore because I’m so busy writing books. Um, but they’ve all come from my life pretty much.

Steve Cuden: Are there areas that you definitely avoided?

Leslie Rasmussen: I think everybody in my family. I’ve never hurt anybody in my family. I Wouldn’t write anything that was hurtful. But they were all up for grabs, everybody. Anything funny somebody did was up for grabs.

Steve Cuden: Did you tick anybody off?

Leslie Rasmussen: Nope.

Steve Cuden: No.

Leslie Rasmussen: Or at least they didn’t read it. So I don’t think my kids have ever read the ones I wrote about them.

Steve Cuden: Oh, they’ve never read it?

Leslie Rasmussen: I don’t think so.

Steve Cuden: Have they read your books?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes. My oldest son has this thing about, um, buying my books in a bookstore. So he always has to buy. Even though I’m like, I’ll give it to you. He always goes to a bookstore and buys them.

Steve Cuden: That’s adorable. If he’s, I’ve got to buy mom’s book because he’s supporting you.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, I guess I was like, I’ll give you the money. He’s like, no, no, no. I need to buy it.

Steve Cuden: Okay, that’s. That’s great. I mean, that must make you feel good.

Leslie Rasmussen: It does. Uh, it makes me feel good. And my mother tells everybody in the entire world about my book. She goes on vacation. She takes a. My bookmarks. M. She gets people to buy my books, goes on Amazon and shows them. I think she sold more of my books than anybody else. Well.

Steve Cuden: Well, what good would your mom be if she didn’t do that?

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly. She’s 89 years old, so.

Steve Cuden: Wow. That’s. That’s the best. By the way, that’s the best publicity you can get. Anyway. Word of mouth is better than, you know, any kind of advertising word of mouth. Is it? Uh, so if you have somebody that’s out there selling your book for you, that’s. That’s really great. So when you’re writing articles, do you structure them or outline them the way that you would do it with a novel or you come at it differently.

Leslie Rasmussen: I come at it differently. Um, I usually just, like, stream of consciousness. Write the whole thing, and then I’ll go back and I’ll look at it and see, you know, do I need to change this or that or move things around? That kind of thing? But I usually do those. Stream of consciousness. Because they’re not that long either.

Steve Cuden: So how often when you get to the end of an article or get to the end of any of your books, did you realize I have to go back and change the whole beginning?

Leslie Rasmussen: Um, I’ve done it many times. This book that you just read, it actually started out originally with each sister. And I thought, uh, and in the middle of the night, I started going, I need this to start with a bang. So I moved that scene. That’s the first scene in the book to the beginning. And so once I did that, I was like, okay, that’s much better. So, yeah, I have done that before and started. Gotten rid of a first chapter and started the next and, um, the second chapter.

Steve Cuden: So you needed to get through it to have the epiphany about the way that it really needed to open?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, because I just. I couldn’t see it until I realized and I read a lot, so I know that you’re supposed to open with something that just happens. So I knew that that was going to be better than somebody just reading about each character when they don’t, you know, know what’s going on and why it’s going that way.

Steve Cuden: All right, so this is important for me because I have, uh, my own issues with notes. Note giving, note taking. You, uh, clearly have gone through in your career, uh, receiving many notes from people. My assumption is you’ve given notes to people, editors, or whether it’s from your husband or whoever it is, you’re going to get these notes, especially in tv. Um, what is your technique for handling notes that you find challenging, and how do you make that helpful to you?

Leslie Rasmussen: Are you saying if somebody gives me notes?

Steve Cuden: Yes, if somebody gives you notes and you think to yourself, this note doesn’t make sense. I don’t like this note. It’s not really helping me, but I know I need to address it because I’m on, you know, I’m working for someone else. How do you address notes?

Leslie Rasmussen: As an author, the editor hands you the notes and goes away. So you can just say, I’m not. I’m going to ignore it. In television, you have to take the note because it’s from somebody higher up than you. And usually they will tell you basically how to take the note. They don’t just say, we don’t like this. Change it. They usually won’t do that. At least I haven’t experienced that. They’ll usually say, this doesn’t work. You know, can you. Blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, you know, can you just change this around? Or can you, you know, take the note differently? You know that you did this section. So I found that not to be that hard to take somebody’s notes. The hardest part for me, and again, I had an executive producer above me, was when the network would give a note and they had no idea what they wanted. So then I had no idea what they wanted. So I would go to the exec producer and say, okay, they’re saying this. And sometimes they would say, ignore the note. They would just say, oh, uh, ignore it. It’s a bad note. Sometimes they would say, okay. I think what they’re trying to get you to do is this. So those were the hardest notes to take, was just when I had no idea what they wanted.

Steve Cuden: Did you find many notes helpful in, uh, books?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, I found a lot of notes helpful, but sometimes I would be like, I got a note once that my books. Two of them take place in Los Angeles. And one of the notes was, um, these people went to a bowling alley. And the note from the editor was, oh, nobody in Los Angeles was. Would go to a bowling alley. It’s too touristy. And I’m like, what? Yeah.

Steve Cuden: What?

Leslie Rasmussen: I go to bowling alleys. I thought that was, like, a crazy note that she was giving me, that it was too touristy to do Los Angeles stuff because I go to museums. I do things all the time. So that note I just ignored.

Steve Cuden: And this was in the book. Not in a screenplay.

Leslie Rasmussen: It was in the book.

Steve Cuden: In a book. I mean, obviously, executives in Hollywood are notorious for giving notes that people do not know what they’re talking about. Or they just go, they didn’t read this, so they don’t understand what we’re doing here. They’re notorious for that. I always found it. It took a long time for me to understand how to do it, but I always found it helpful to just take the note and go off and think about it and not immediately reject it or get defensive about it.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yes, exactly. I never rejected a note immediately. I would just go off and try to, like, try to understand what they wanted before I would say no. But sometimes, like you said, a lot of people give you notes and they don’t either. They read it too quickly and they’re not seeing that you. They. That that question is answered five pages later, they miss that. So you’re, like, thinking. But that’s answered like, what do you want? And also in network tv, sometimes they want you to hit people over the head because people are not really paying as much attention. So, uh, which I hated. I hated all the pipe that you had to put in and then always ended up getting cut anyway.

Steve Cuden: Oh, tell the listeners what laying pipe is.

Leslie Rasmussen: Oh, laying pipe means that, like, if somebody does something and it’s gonna, like, um, that you basically have to keep telling them exactly what’s going on. That’s really what laying pipe is, is that you tell somebody this is what’s happening, and then you tell them again, and you tell them again like they’re stupid.

Steve Cuden: Well, and you’re and you’re. And the. The term laying pipe, of course, is the one thing. Is it connected to the next thing? And is connected to the next thing, like you’re laying pipe, and that’s what you’re talking about. Uh, and. And when you first sit down to work on a story and you’re setting that story up, well, how did we get from here to there? You know, can we jump from there here to there, or do we have to show how we get from here to there?

Leslie Rasmussen: Well, that’s the thing, especially in books. I mean, also in tv. But in books, you want to show. They say show, don’t tell. So you want to maybe leave a breadcrumb about something that somebody goes, oh, hmm. And then they realize later, oh, that’s what that meant, you know, five pages ago. Which I like to do. I don’t like to hit people over the head. And when you read books, most people are paying attention, they’re not on their phone, you know, unless they’re listening to it. I guess they could be on their phone.

Steve Cuden: As you said, you are dialogue driven. When you’re writing, you like to write dialogue. Uh, do you find that that makes it harder to show and not tell?

Leslie Rasmussen: Um, no, I don’t. Um. Because the only thing you have to do, and I had to learn this too, is you have to learn that when somebody’s describing something or talking about something, how their body is or how their faces or if they’re frowning or they’re happy, that’s the stuff that’s a little bit harder that I have to really think about, like, what would I do? That’s why I sometimes read it out loud. Because then I know, like, oh, I would be like, grabbing my face, or I would be like, you know, rolling my eyes or whatever those things are. And so those are the things that. That I really have to think about.

Steve Cuden: I’m curious. Once you’ve got a book published and it’s out in the world, have you ever gone back and thought to yourself, why did I write that?

Leslie Rasmussen: Oh, yeah. Well, not why did I write it, it’s more about, should I fix it? Oh, gosh, should I go back and re edit it?

Steve Cuden: Which you really can’t do, can you?

Leslie Rasmussen: Well, you can. And then you could put it in as a second revision, I guess.

Steve Cuden: But that’s true. I suppose that’s true. Are, uh, all three of your books through a publishing house?

Leslie Rasmussen: No, the first one is through Hybrid.

Steve Cuden: Okay.

Leslie Rasmussen: The second one was through a small publisher who. It’s a long story, but Basically she stole all my money, didn’t give me anything and uh, I had to take the book back and self publish it because she just all the money I made at the beginning for the first five months which is the most money you make right away.

Steve Cuden: Right.

Leslie Rasmussen: All my friends and family basically paid her and she stole all the author’s money. So she shut down now but that doesn’t help. So I took that book back and self published it. And I love self publishing so I self published my next book.

Steve Cuden: M. So when people leave is self

Leslie Rasmussen: published then and it’s great because you get to control everything.

Steve Cuden: I understand. I’ve got two books out there that are self published so I get it. Unless you are like a huge name, a ah, Stephen King or something like that. Um, self publishing is a fine way to go today.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah. And you make more money.

Steve Cuden: You do.

Leslie Rasmussen: And nobody really even asks you if you’re self published or they don’t care, they don’t know, they just want to read the book book and huh. Publishers honestly take money from you and if you aren’t famous, most of those people do not make much money off of those books that are through traditional unless they’re famous. And I’ve actually even noticed I’ve been reading people’s bios at the end of their book. Some people that are with like Simon and Schuster or Random House and now a lot of those people actually work for that company. They’re like vice presidents of those companies and so their debut novels come out crazy and do great and get on the New York Times list but they work for that company. So I mean it kind of makes it so unfair for a lot of people.

Steve Cuden: Well yeah, that’s true. To me there was a time not all that long ago where it was frowned on. But not anymore?

Leslie Rasmussen: No, not at all anymore.

Steve Cuden: I just think it’s for a lot of authors it is the way to go. Um, and by the way, you know if you’re self published that your book is not going to be on the remainder table. Uh, at any point you can leave it out there for as long as you want to leave it out there. But a publishing house, if it’s not selling, they’re going to pull it out of their catalog.

Leslie Rasmussen: They do. And you know you can get it into your neighborhood bookstores. They always want local authors. So my books are in stores all over Los Angeles. It’s harder to get them somewhere else but you know most books are sold anyway online.

Steve Cuden: Well very few books, very few books. So sell more than four or five thousand copies in their whole life. Uh, and so if you’re going to, if you’re a self publisher, you may as well take as much of that as you can.

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, exactly.

Steve Cuden: So I have to ask you. The old line is that dying is easy, but comedy is hard. I know it’s almost impossible to define, but can you, from your perspective, comment on what you think makes comedy so difficult to do?

Leslie Rasmussen: Well, I think it’s either in you or it isn’t in you, for whatever reason. And like I said, I’m not like, at a party, you know, saying all these funny things. That’s not who I am. But when I sit down, the words just come out of me in a more humorous way. So I think it’s really hard for some people because it’s just not the way they think. There’s also people out there that are so funny at parties, but if you handed them, um, you know, a computer, they would not know how to write whatever they’re saying down because they’re just quick.

Steve Cuden: Well, you’re obviously good at taking what’s in your head and defining it in a structural way, in a sentence or in several sentences in order to do a joke or to have a humorous line, however, that is. But many people who are just naturally gifted at being funny don’t know how to write it into a structured way.

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that’s to your advantage, obviously, as a writer. Tell us a little bit about your nutrition business. How did that happen?

Leslie Rasmussen: So my son, my youngest, was going to go off to kindergarten. I knew I was going to have a lot of time. I couldn’t go back into the business. So I, uh, hired a life coach to just talk me through what I could do. And I was always interested in working out and health. And so I decided to go back to school and get a master’s and open my own business. I trained with a, uh, celebrity, um, nutritionist for a while, and then I started getting my own clients. So I started seeing my own, um, clients and I left there and I did it for 10 years. But towards the end of the 10 years is when I started writing for Huffington Post, because I just missed the writing. And so I just started doing that. And then when I decided to write a book, I just thought, I’m just going to close my practice. I just, I really just didn’t want to do it anymore. I had lost the passion for it.

Steve Cuden: Do you think that doing the business required you to have great creativity?

Leslie Rasmussen: Not in the same way, no. It was more meal plans and things like that. So no, it did not feel creative in that way.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

Leslie Rasmussen: And working with people who you’re giving meal plans to, they’re not thrilled, even though they come to you and they’re paying you. So that’s not really fun either because

Steve Cuden: you’re giving them food that they don’t want to eat. Right?

Leslie Rasmussen: Exactly. And then they get mad at you when it doesn’t work because they didn’t do what you asked them to do. So it just became kind of frustrating for me.

Steve Cuden: Well, anybody that’s, uh, thinking about changing their diet for whatever reason is probably unhappy with the way they look or something like that. Right?

Leslie Rasmussen: Yeah, usually some people came to me that were thin but just wanted to be healthier.

Steve Cuden: Healthier. Yeah. Well, uh, were you writing all along as you were doing it, or did you completely stop writing? Totally.

Leslie Rasmussen: I completely stopped because, um, I was busy until maybe two. Two years before I stopped the business.

Steve Cuden: I see. And that got you back into it. Um, I’ve been having just the most fascinating conversation with, uh, Leslie Rasmussen, and we’re going to wind the show down a little bit. And, uh, Leslie, in all of your experiences in show business or in publishing books, um, can you share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny?

Leslie Rasmussen: So I worked on Elf, um, all those years ago, and when there was alf, but there was also Ralph, and Ralph was rehearsal Alf, and Ralph was always drunk. So they would come in, we’d go down to stage to watch the show, and Ralph would always be falling off things and be saying things he shouldn’t be saying. It was really funny and fun.

Steve Cuden: That was. You worked on that show with, uh, David Silverman and Steve Sstarsik. Um, um, both good friends of mine. Steve Hyde knew forever. Steve, unfortunately, is no longer with us. But, um, David Silverman’s been on this show and he’s going to be on it again in the not too distant future. So it’s great that we have that connection for people that we’ve known from our past. All right, so last question for you today, Leslie. Um, you’ve shared with us throughout this whole show a huge amount of really helpful information and advice. And I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice or a tip that you like to give to those who are starting out in the business or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to that next level.

Leslie Rasmussen: I have two little pieces of advice. One is if you haven’t started, don’t Just sit down and write a book. It’s just not going to work. The best thing to do is take the smallest steps and write a little scene about something. You don’t have to have the whole book. You don’t have to even know what it’s about. Just the way I did it. You just create a character and just write scenes with this character, whether it shows up in the book or not, because it will get your creativity going. And the second thing is, I was given this advice, but I didn’t really need it because I already knew how to write dialogue from tv. But I was told, go to Starbucks, sit in Starbucks and listen. Because men and women talk very differently. Men are much quicker in whatever they say, and women can go on and on and on as I’m doing. So. So. But if you listen to the way people talk, like you had said about the, um, deposition, taking out the. You know, and, um, and all that stuff, just listen to how people talk to each other. Listen to two women, listen to a man and a woman, listen to two men, and you’ll start to hear the way people talk.

Steve Cuden: So when I was in school, they actually assigned us to do what they called an eavesdropper. And they would send us. They would say, go find a place that’s busy, like a restaurant, like a Starbucks, like a park or something like that, where there are a lot of people and turn your back to people so they don’t see you and write down the dialogue that you’re hearing.

Leslie Rasmussen: Ah, uh, that’s good too. I like that.

Steve Cuden: And so then you’d come in and you’d have one or two pages of dialogue that was literally what you were, uh, writing down as fast as you could. But you didn’t want to do it where they were watching. You didn’t want the people watching you writing. You turn your back to them and just listen. So I think that’s a very effective piece of advice, and I’m glad you said it, because for people that are starting out in the business who need to learn how to write dialogue that sounds like people talking, that is a great way to do it.

Leslie Rasmussen: And if you’re going to do TV tape, audio tape, everything you like, every kind of show you like, and just listen to them.

Steve Cuden: Uh, the other thing that I have done in my past, I think that’s absolutely accurate, is you need to listen to the way people are talking. Especially in comedies. Particularly in comedies, when I get on an airplane, if there’s a movie. Well, it’s less likely today because most of the time, the movies are in the back of the seats. But in the old days when the movies were up above, I used to never take the headphones. I used to watch the movie with no sound. I could see if I understood the story from the pictures.

Leslie Rasmussen: Uh, that’s interesting.

Steve Cuden: When you can’t understand the story from the pictures, clearly, that’s a dialogue driven story. And it’s like, I don’t know what’s going on, but they’re talking a lot. But if you can tell what’s going on, that’s pure cinema. So that’s why I used to do that as an exemplar. Leslie Rasmussen, this has been absolutely a blast for me, and I can’t thank you enough for being with me today on the show. And I especially thank you for your time, your energy, and for all this great wizard that you’ve shared.

Leslie Rasmussen: Oh, uh, thank you.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, I radio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden. Uh, and may all your stories be unforgettable.