In community and corporate settings, Patrick Horton consistently has set new and innovative standards in using the power of story for effective needs assessment, strategic planning, conflict resolution, and market/mission/team building time after time. He is a repeated star speaker of Screenwriting Expo, and is currently working on multiple film, documentary, and television projects, while also returning to the long delayed book version of his seminars. 

Along with developing the then landmark Alcohol/Drug Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Dr. Horton effectively worked with, trained, or supervised myriad professionals, from health care and academia to business and government - with additional overlapping experience in judicial-correctional systems. He is an effective guide for dealing with the real world in many diverse arenas and settings, and equally effective in drawing from the real world with authenticity and power for great resonant storytelling and presentations that capture and make sense of the stuff of life. 

The Story Coach - Practical Magic presentations and services themselves begin with a focus on creative and commercial steps normally skipped in other books and courses - not just to be studied or explained, but to be mastered in the doing of them. These crucial first steps and the grounding they give are the generally missing sources of story and bedrock of success upon which everything else rests - rarely hinted at let alone covered by most related books, courses, and industry paradigms. Fact, not hype.

With this foundation in place, we walk participants through a series of questions and steps that powerfully guide them to accessing and expressing their own stories in their own voice, with power, depth, and compelling vision to give vibrant and resonant birth to stories from the bottom up and characters from the inside out.  It looks like magic.  It redefines practical.  It raises the bar on success. 

Combine this with an effective exploration of how transformation shows up or fails to in real life, and how THAT shows up or fails to in story, and you have the most powerful and intuitive approach to story possible. Stories worth telling and well told are never solely about overcoming conflict and achieving some goal. They invariably are about achieving, resisting, or failing to achieve some sort of change.