How to construct powerful stories to engage, inform and influence
How
to construct powerful stories to engage, inform and influence
When
we use stories to communicate … it’s incredibly effective
I
was 11 years old and, over the course of a term, our teacher read us a story.
We hung on every word, savoured each moment, and couldn’t wait for the next
chapter. The story was The
Phantom Tollbooth, a multi-layered quirky children’s adventure
story that’s now recognised as a classic of children's literature.
What
I didn’t realise at the time was the amazing ability of a story, to not only
captivate, but to influence and motivate action. And I also didn’t realise at
that time that The Phantom
Tollbooth had cracked open a curiosity door in my mind to the power
of story.
It
wasn’t until years later that the door was swung wide open when I read an
article by Steve Denning, the former Director of Knowledge Management at the
World Bank. He’d spent years trying to convince the senior exec team at the
World Bank using rational argument and PowerPoint presentations. In
desperation, Denning tried a new approach, and finally persuaded exec team to
take action … with a story.
What
this revealed for me is stories have a tsunami-like power to, both, connect
people with something at a deep level, and motivate them to act. I now had a
glimpse into the power of a story but was struggling with the way to construct
one.
So
how do you develop a story that motivates people like Denning’s story did?
It
was far from clear to me where to find the answer, and while I never actively
pursued it, I was alert for any clues on ‘how’. I wish I could say it was a
short journey. But it wasn’t. I was a little like Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz,
finding herself at the other end of the rainbow, knowing she needed to get
home. However, while I knew there was
a pot of storytelling gold somewhere – I couldn’t even find the rainbow.
The
pot of gold I was looking for was the essence of a story
Was
there such a thing? How do you construct one? Was there a straightforward
approach you could use in the intro to an article, the kick off to a
presentation, a 30 second elevator pitch, a report, a blog post or a
promotional piece? What about an essay, a book or a screenplay? What about
relating something to your friends at a BBQ? Or was it really just that some
people are great storytellers?
There
are any number of books and courses on storytelling. But most left me with more
questions than answers. Plenty of advice, over a long period of time – but
nothing that jelled. Too many options, too much complexity.
But
then a podcast from Park Howell, piqued my curiosity, and led me to Randy
Olson. Olson is a
scientist, turned Hollywood filmmaker. He’d spent years
searching for the keys to storytelling, and then teaching scientists how to use
stories to engage and motivate their audiences. But he’d never found a simple
rule for the structure of a story. That all changed when Olson saw a
documentary on the making of a South Park show. In it, Trey Parker, the South
Park writer/creator, explained what he does to rescue South Park first-draft
scripts floundering in the swamp of ‘not funny’.
Like
being struck by a giant wave at Waimea Bay, Olson was bowled over by the
elegant, powerful and simple rule Parker was using for storytelling.
Olson’s pivotal contribution to the art and science of storytelling, was
to take Parker’s rule and develop it into a straightforward “fill-in-the-blanks
template”.
When
I saw the template, the door in my mind wasn’t just opened – it was ripped off
its hinges. The essence of story hit me in the face like standing on the rake
on the lawn. Parker had captured it in three words: And, But, Therefore. Here’s
how to use Olson’s ‘And, But, Therefore’ (ABT) as a framework to make any
story clear, captivating and compelling.
But
first, let’s answer the question: Why use stories?
Stories
are how we’ve communicated from person to person, tribe to tribe, generation to
generation for over a million years. And our brains evolved to support that.
It’s baked into our DNA. It’s some of the most fundamental software we run.
It’s so fundamental we’re not even aware of it. Like a fish unaware of the
water it swims in, or as humans, oblivious to the air around us – until we
think about it.
While
we’d like to think our brain has kept up – it can’t, and hasn’t, changed that
quickly. Million year old software is what still really runs it … no matter how
much we’d like to think otherwise. Stories go straight to our emotional
(limbic) brain and affect us, often deeply, before our neo-cortex (conscious
brain) even gets a chance to run across the top of it. Which all means, no
matter what we think objectively, logically and consciously, stories affect us
all on non-conscious levels we mostly don’t even recognise or comprehend.
Those
that ramble on and on and you can’t wait for the other person to finish. Those
that are so confusing you give up and change the TV channel, or flick to the
next YouTube video. And those that draw you in and take you on a journey.
Kendall
Haven in Story Smart
defines effective stories as those that:
1.Successfully engage and hold that
engagement.
2.Accomplish the communications purpose
(your influence or teaching) for which they were created.
The
challenge most of us have is how to create interesting, engaging and
influential stories. We never got taught it at school, and almost certainly
didn’t learn how in any kind of tertiary training.
So
what’s the key to an effective story?
It’s
one we can use immediately, that engages and motivates the audience to take
action? A story has three parts:
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