This is the fifth and final blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days. Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all. But we do remember stories. That’s because they are how our brains work. For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite. We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats. Our brains are constructed that way.
Want to Tell a Memorable Story? Allow your Characters to Change.
At the heart of a great story is a hero that changes, that learns, that suffers, that grows, that changes. We love ‘coming of age’ stories for that reason, and of course love stories not just because there’s a ‘happily ever after’ but also because the hero or heroine has learned something, or grown in some way, and accepted a new reality in order to win the person of his or her dreams.
Stories about second chances, about comebacks, about sadder-but-wiser people – all of these compel our interest. Allowing your characters (or your company or your idea or your product) to change is hard because your instinct (and the advice of your legal department) is to protect your baby and keep it the same. But change wins us over. It’s so much a part of human experience, that to keep it out of your stories is to restrict them unnaturally and to deny them life.
Change is hard, in life and in stories, but it’s essential.
This is the fourth blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days. Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all. But we do remember stories. That’s because they are how our brains work. For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite. We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats. Our brains are constructed that way.
Great Stories Let their Audiences in on the Secret Before their Characters Know
This idea is a tough one for many storytellers to swallow. Instinctively, we want to surprise our audiences with startling revelations, to keep their interest and to impress them with our storytelling prowess. But in fact, there’s nothing more delicious for a reader, a moviegoer, or a listener than to be in on the secret. This concept works in a couple of ways.
First, as the director Alfred Hitchcock realized, there are 2 ways to reveal a scene to the audience. Let’s say two people are talking in a café, about nothing much. In fact, you risk audience boredom unless the conversation is very, very fascinating. After a while, a bomb goes off. You give the audience a moment of shock and surprise. Why did that happen? Then, the scene moves on. If, instead, you let the audience know beforehand that a bomb is going to go off at some point in the scene, suddenly that conversation about nothing much is exciting, suspenseful, poignant, and fascinating. When the bomb goes off, there’s an awful confirmation. The bomb did go off! Much more compelling. The audience is still shocked, but it’s not surprised. And it’s had 10 minutes of compelling moviemaking instead of 10 seconds. The difference is dramatic tension. Too many storytellers want to surprise their audiences.
Second, there’s a deeper kind of recognition. In the third segment of the first Star Wars saga, we learn that Darth Vader is Luke’s father. Only the dimmest members of the audience are both surprised and shocked. We’ve had many hints leading up to the moment that let us in on the secret. It’s still a shock when the revelation comes to Luke, but we’re not surprised. We’re in on the secret, and we get to watch with fascination how Luke responds.
Let your audience in on your secrets. You’ll create much better stories as a result.
This is the third blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days. Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all. But we do remember stories. That’s because they are how our brains work. For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite. We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats. Our brains are constructed that way.
Conflict Is at the Heart of Good Storytelling.
Without conflict, you don’t have a story. But it’s not just any conflict. It’s a struggle between a hero and a villain, to put it as simply as possible. The conflict can be as big as World War III or as small as who will win the flower show. The hero can be flawed, and the villain can – and should – have his good points. But it’s all about the struggle between the protagonist and antagonist. Without that, you have an anecdote: We were in New York City. We spotted Stanley Tucci coming out of a drugstore. We asked for his autograph. He obliged. That’s a fine celebrity-spotting anecdote, but it’s not a story.
And there’s more. For a story to be a good one, you have to put the hero in jeopardy. That turns out to be surprisingly hard for most people – and organizations – to do, because they don’t like to admit weakness, or uncertainty, or anything remotely associated with flaws. And yet, it’s how our hero responds to jeopardy that makes a story interesting, and great. In the recent enormously popular series of books, The Hunger Games (soon, as they say, to be a major motion picture), the heart – and strength – of that trilogy is that the heroine is in terrible jeopardy for most of the three books. We get to see how Kat struggles, fails, and deals with danger and tragedy, and her own flaws, and we’re mesmerized.
In the business world, telling good stories is difficult because you have to get past the unwillingness of the organization to contemplate struggle, failing, and flaws. The legal department doesn’t want to go there. The marketing department doesn’t want to go there. But the same rules apply. No conflict, no struggle, no jeopardy – no story.
This is the second blog in a series about storytelling – 5 in 5 days. Everyone seems to get it that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all. But we do remember stories. That’s because they are how our brains work. For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite. We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats. Our brains are constructed that way.
Great Stories Begin with a Meeting or a Journey.
Great stories are all about disruptions to the status quo. The classic ways that happens are either meeting someone new – Romeo and Juliet – or going on a journey – The Odyssey – or a combination of both – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. For these approaches to work, we need to establish at the beginning of the story a sense of what the status quo is. Harry is stuck in a miserable existence with the Dursley family, and we need to experience that for a few pages so that we can appreciate the contrast with the excitement and wonder of the new friends (and enemies) he makes and his trip to Hogwarts.
If your story doesn’t begin with a meeting or a journey, then you need to look at it carefully to see if it has the necessary interest and contrast. Is there a status quo to disrupt? Has something new come along? Have things always been done in a certain way in your industry until a new product, market entrant, or idea comes along to disrupt it? Sounds like the beginning of a story to me.
Next time: the ugly truth about conflict.
I’m going to do a series of quick blogs about storytelling – 5 in 5 days. Everyone seems to get these days that storytelling is important, because we’re awash in data and information and can’t remember it all. But we do remember stories.
They’re even more important than that. They are how our brains work. For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite. We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes, and forget the stats. Our brains are constructed that way. So storytelling is essential if you want to use the brain the way it's meant to be used. We remember the emotional, the particular, and the violent especially.
OK. Let’s start with what storytelling is not. Let’s clear away the detritus and get to the core. 5 blogs, 5 days, 5 ideas on storytelling.
Storytelling is not about beginnings, middles, and ends.
My favorite wrong cliché about storytelling is the oft-cited, “it has a beginning, middle, and an end.” Well, yes. But so do pencils, as my good friend from the IBM learning world, Peter Orton, is fond of saying. As a definition, this one is not specific enough to be helpful. Airplane flights, dentist appointments, and pencils all have beginnings, middles, and ends, but they are not stories. They might become the fodder for stories, but stories in themselves they are not.
Forget this one. It’s not helpful. Tomorrow, what storytelling is.
Speakers do stupid things, like any other group of people. The problem is that they subject whole audiences to boredom and, yes, pain as a result. So it’s not only the speakers themselves who suffer. In an effort to mitigate the suffering, here are 5 of the most egregious stupid speaker moves. If you know someone who perpetrates these, tell them! Stop them! You’ll be doing the windowless meeting room world a huge favor.
1. You Can’t Read This, But…..
As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my particular pet peeves is badly done Power Point. Well, the worst offense is all too common. The speaker throws up a slide (I choose the phrase deliberately) and it contains a dozen lines of text, or a chart that has dozens of boxes, labels, and tiny data points. Then the speaker says, “You can’t read this, but what it’s saying is…..” If you know we can’t read it, why are you showing it to us?
2. ‘Guess What’s In My Head’ Questions
There’s a truism in the legal world that you should never ask a witness a question to which you don’t know the answer. I’m sure that’s good advice, but when you’re working with audiences, you should never ask a class of questions that involve haranguing the audience about things that you know better than they do. “Why isn’t it a good idea to choose the red ones over the green ones?” Questions of that sort are “gotcha” questions and they kill audience enthusiasm and participation. Instead, ask open-ended questions about the audience’s experience. “Which have you found work better in your life, the red ones or the green ones?”
3. ‘It’s All About Me’ Introductions
I have seen an astonishing number of speeches start with the speaker going into a 5 – 10 (15!) minute description of himself and his company. That’s not only boring, it’s rude. It’s bad enough in a conversation when someone you’ve just met insists on talking only about himself, but in front of an audience the offense is compounded because the audience has no escape options. If you’re not going to be introduced by someone else, then begin the talk with a brief frame for why the topic is important to the audience. Then, once you’ve established what’s in it for them, spend one or two minutes – no more – telling the audience very briefly why you’re passionate about the subject.
4. Sales Pitches Disguised as Presentations
I was at a conference recently where one of my competitors was presenting the afternoon before I had the keynote address. Naturally, I attended his talk, curious as to what he would talk about, and anxious not to repeat advice if he had already given it. I was appalled to discover that all he talked about was advertising his business and what clients would get out of working with him. “This is how our patented method for improving your company’s communications works….” Once again, this is a rude and thoughtless way to proceed with a captive audience.
5. Not Waiting for the Audience
How many times have you sat in an audience and watched a speaker ask a question, only to answer it himself after waiting a nanosecond or two for a response. Getting none, the speaker plows ahead, creating a perfect feedback loop that entirely eliminates the need for the audience. Why ask questions if you’re not interested in what the audience thinks? People often ask me how long they should wait, and the answer is 6 full seconds. If you count 6 seconds out in your head, by the time you get to the end of that seemingly interminable sequence, someone will speak. Promise. Don’t answer your own questions. You’re just telling the audience it doesn’t need to be there.
That’s my list for today. I confess to having committed one or two of these myself, partly why I know them so well. What stupid speaker tricks have you, ahem, witnessed? Friends don't let friends make these mistakes!
There are many ways to say the words “I love you,” but the way that counts is said without words. The body language of love begins, of course, with flirting: fleeting eye contact, longer eye contact, smiling, grooming, drawing nearer to each other, accidental touching, and finally close one-to-one communion that shuts out the rest of the world.
Once two people are acknowledged lovers, something quite wonderful happens. Watch their body language in a restaurant, or strolling down the street, or at a party, and you’ll see something the non-verbal experts call synchronicity. That’s a mouthful that simply means that the two move together, gesture together, and react together, anticipating each other’s thoughts, intents, and desires. To experience that kind of harmony with another human being is the cure for loneliness, the antidote for despair, and the hope of the planet. We humans are hard-wired for empathy, and love is its culmination. On Valentine’s Day I wish you the happiness of another human being to dance with in perfect harmony, beyond words, and as close as the beating of your own heart.
For my blog today, I'm pointing to a podcast I did with digital marketing guru Mitch Joel. He's always interesting to talk to -- you can check out the results here. Enjoy!
It’s the season for State of the State addresses. They get less attention than the President’s State of the Union address, but they’re arguably more important to the legislators and citizens of the states in question. I got my start in the public speaking world writing speeches for the Governor of Virginia, and my first big test was the State of the Commonwealth address there.
Each year, it was a down-to-the-wire, nail-biter speech. Because it was always a policy and initiative list, there were many government officials involved, each with a policy axe to grind, weighing in, and the speechwriter was caught in the middle trying to make the words cover everything and still transmit a good speech. We usually started about 3 weeks before the date, and worked pretty much around the clock until the moment itself. In fact, one year I remember editing directly on the teleprompter a few minutes before the Governor was due to start.
It was all about control – control of message, control of initiative, control of the political agenda.
Governor John Kasich has a better way, sparing the sanity and the work hours of his staff. He apparently ad libs most of the speech. The result? The staff gets a break, but not the audience. Kasich rambles on for nearly an hour and a half, far longer than the President, and he discusses every imaginable topic, and a few you never would imagine. He mentions his “hot” wife, God as the lobbyist for handicapped people, and low weight babies, he imitates someone with Parkinson’s disease, he ‘shouts out’ to half the audience, he admonishes winners of his new Governor’s Courage Awards not to sell their medals on eBay, he argues that ex-cons should be able to drive trucks and cut hair, while mentioning that hugs from a woman he names “made him believe in God,” he condemns the slave trade, he describes himself as “a little boy in a Congressman’s body” – and he cries.
This is an hilarious, heartfelt, mortifying, embarrassing speech, at least for the first hour or so. It’s the puppet master’s nightmare, the speechwriter’s joke, and the audience’s torment. In the end, it is the best argument for a teleprompter and a script I’ve ever witnessed. Kasich just goes on and on, enthusiastic to the end, fired up on adrenaline and self-absorption. Meanwhile, the audience grows old, becomes grandparents, and finds religion, praying for release.
In the end, it's audience abuse, pure and simple.
Stick to the written speech, Governor Kasich! Your state needs to get to work!
Here’s a link to the speech. If you have lots of time on your hands, you’re a bored bureaucrat in some other state, or perhaps you’re retired and don’t like golf, then this is the video for you.
Charles Dickens is 200 today, and in his honor, this blog will explore a little-known side of the great novelist: his public speaking, and in particular 2 lessons the great Boz still can teach us today.
Dickens, a keen amateur actor, carried out several speaking tours of England and the United States during his later life, partly to indulge his love of theatrics, partly to raise money, and partly because he had more energy than a half-dozen ordinary people. In addition, he gave many speeches at the meetings and dinners a popular public figure of the day was expected to attend.
He was phenomenally successful at his public readings, though some say the stresses of his last speaking tour hastened his death at 58. Tickets for his American performances were set at $2.00, but sold on the black market for as much as $26.00 each, a large sum in those days.
One of his most popular readings was a shortened version of A Christmas Carol, and I’m looking at a facsimile of the prompt copy now that he used for these performances. It yields some interesting Dickensian secrets.
First of all, he cut ruthlessly. What’s left is the bones of the narrative, with the occasional bit kept in because it was pure fun. At the same time, Dickens adds direction to himself, to remind him of the emotional note he’s supposed to be striking at each point in the story. So, he starts out “cheerful” when Scrooge’s nephew enters the scene, transitioning to “mystery” for Marley’s Ghost, and “melted” when Scrooge begins his transformation to kindly old man. And he gives himself stage directions too, noting when he’s supposed to sit, stand, and move.
This shows Dickens’ keen understanding of the importance of conveying not just the words, but also the emotion, of the story he is performing – while concentrating on the essentials of the narrative. The same advice holds for speakers today, and raises the question, why don’t more speakers imitate Dickens and put directions for their performances in the margins of their speeches, as well as keeping ruthlessly focused on the point they’re trying to make?
The second Dickensian tip comes from his after-dinner speeches. Attendees often marveled at his prodigious memory, as he always spoke without notes, sometimes for an hour or more. How did he do it?
Dickens broke his speeches down into sections, and then used an Ancient Greek trick to remember the sections. He would associate a section with a room in his house, linking them in his mind, so that all he had to do was “walk” through the house room by room to remember what he was supposed to say.
At 200, Dickens can still teach us a thing or two about speaking, performance, and memory.