Life Can Turn at Any Moment: Peter Orton on Story, Craft, and the Power of Turning Points

What story might you regret never trying to live?

In a recent episode of Leadership Story Talks, hosts Jerome Deroy and Julienne Ryan spoke with Peter Orton, whose career has moved through classrooms, Hollywood writers’ rooms, Stanford research, corporate leadership development, and public health communication.

Peter’s work sits at a fascinating intersection. He has been an elementary school teacher, a story editor for Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, the founder of IBM’s global storytelling practice, and a faculty member teaching storytelling in graduate programs. He is also the author of The Elements of Story: How to Craft Engaging Story for Effective Communication and Presentation.

But when Jerome asked the question at the heart of every Leadership Story Talks episode — what is an experience that shaped who you are today? — Peter began not with a famous name or a major career achievement.

He began with a conversation with his father.

The Question That Changed Everything

Peter was thirty years old and working as an elementary public school teacher just outside Boston. He had reached a milestone many people would have considered the beginning of lifelong security: tenure. When his parents visited from Florida, his father assumed Peter must be thrilled. He could now teach for the rest of his life. He had stability, a career, and a clear path.

But Peter’s answer was not exactly enthusiastic.

His father noticed. He asked why Peter did not sound more excited. Peter admitted that when he was in high school and college, he had written plays, and that he had always wanted to be a story writer in entertainment.

There was a long pause.

Then his father asked a series of practical questions. Was Peter married? Did he have children? Did he have a mortgage? When the answer to each was no, his father asked the question that became the turning point:

What’s stopping you?

Then came the advice Peter never forgot. His father told him he did not want to reach the end of his life and regret never having tried something he always wanted to do. Failure would be one thing. At least he would have tried. But regret over never trying at all was something different.

Within a week, Peter gave his resignation to the school. When the school year ended, he got into a people’s co-op van leaving Manhattan for Los Angeles, sharing the cross-country drive with nine other people for sixty-five dollars.

That decision changed not only his career, but his entire life.

Permission, Curiosity, and the Parent Who Opens the Door

Jerome reflected on how remarkable it was that Peter’s father did not respond with fear or dismissal. Many parents might have said, “What are you thinking?” or “That is not a real career.” After all, from a parent’s point of view, tenure might have looked like relief. His son had made it. He was secure.

But instead of closing the conversation down, Peter’s father became curious. He asked questions. He helped Peter see his own life more clearly. He did not give him a map. He gave him permission to notice that the obstacles were not as fixed as they seemed.

That is one of the quiet powers of a good question. It can reveal that the thing stopping us is not always circumstance. Sometimes it is fear, habit, or the story we have been telling ourselves about what is practical, responsible, or possible.

For listeners wondering about their own next step, Peter’s story offers a useful test: when you imagine yourself near the end of your life, which choice are you more likely to regret — trying and failing, or never trying at all?

The Ten-Year Education

Julienne asked what happened when Peter reached the other side of the country. The answer was not instant success. He stayed with his older brother in Seal Beach and began the long, unglamorous work of learning the craft.

It took a decade.

Peter took courses in scriptwriting, met with other writers, and spent time at the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he could read thousands of film and television scripts in exchange for leaving his driver’s license at the desk. It was, as he put it, a free education.

This part of the story matters because turning points can sometimes sound like magic when told in retrospect. The father’s advice, the van to Los Angeles, the dream of Hollywood — these details create the feeling of a cinematic leap. But what followed was years of apprenticeship.

Peter did not simply decide to become a writer and then become one. He studied. He practiced. He wrote. He learned how scripts worked by reading the work of people who had done it well.

A turning point may change the direction of a life, but craft is what carries that life forward.