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How To Tell A Story #1: The Foundations

How To Tell A Story #1: The Foundations

The Power of Stories: A Brief Recap


“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”

― Danny Kahneman

You can argue with this quote. Perhaps you think you decided to take a job because of a number: a comp package, or the price of a house, or a car. I’m going to bet that number was wrapped up in a story. A story about what could be, specifically who you could be.

Or maybe you were in a room where a decision was made about a number, a significant number: a quota or a revenue target. And I'm going to bet, again, that the number came wrapped in a story. A story about how the people in the room would be different because of the number: successful, industry-beating, part of a growing organization, maybe positioned for a round of funding, going public.

Stories are a tool that connect with forces deep in the human psyche. We pay attention to them. We are moved by them. To move people, you need to tell a story.

This post is about the foundations of a great story. Play with them to see how you will tell your own.

People and Transformation

Stories are about people and how they change. Here’s Henry V. He has 6,000 Englishmen and he’s facing 25,000 French, heavily armed, on horseback.

He could discuss tactics, make some comments about how an English bowman can down three or four French from distance, maybe point out how well dug in the English are, how much more nimble than the French.

He doesn’t. He first casts the situation as an opportunity: with so few Englishmen, each will share a greater part of the honor of the day (already the story is starting - the day will have honor). And then he looks forward:

"He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian…   But he'll remember with advantages What feats he did that day: then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words”

That is: yearly, when St. Crispin’s Day comes around, you who are here, will be feted, famous. Because you stayed here to fight, you will become someone new, someone who was there on that famous day. He creates the scene of the future: the neighbors, friends celebrating this man who was there.

And finally:

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

We will do this. We are this tribe, this group, this special group.

(Yes, I am not Shakespeare and neither are you, and it feels vaguely absurd to relate this famous speech to the world of companies, meetings, deadlines. But stories are fundamental and we can learn some powerful things)

People And Transformation

When you’re thinking about the story you want to be clear:

    1. Who is the story about? It might be a single person (“Imagine somebody who joins this company today") or a group, a team.
    2. What is the transformation? How are the people in the story different at the end of the story? How will they describe themselves then vs now?  (“Imagine that person who joins today a year from now, two years from now…”)

What To Notice

When you are watching a movie, or a TV show notice, or reading a novel, notice:

    1. Who is this about? (A scene, an episode, chapter or the whole story)
    2. What is their transformation? How are they different as a result of the scene, episode?

A Story Moves: There is Action

An statement is static. Once expressed, it’s done. “We will be at 102% of quota this quarter”, is a statement. This may be followed by an explanation: “We are improving GTM and increasing sales engineering hiring”: very reasonable, but dry. You can imagine the conversation that results. Q: “How are you increasing sales hiring?”   A: “we are adding recruiters and improving the quality of inbound filtering”.  Informative. Perhaps, depending on context, the right approach. But dry, palid. We are not moved by this conversation.

Compare it to this: “When we began this quarter, we know it would be hard to hit. We took a risk and promoted a young marketing director to VP GTM and she’s killing it. We challenged the recruiting team to grow by 50% and improve quality. By the end of this Q we will be at 102% of quota”

The story version moves as the people in the story act. It describes the changes dynamically and with emphasis on what the characters did to move the story forward. A listener is going to be absorbed. They may disagree (stories can be bullshit, after all), but they are going to pay attention.

Action Moves the Audience

    1. What moves in the story? What's the action?
    2. Note that the “action” can be internal: a character making a decision, or changing their mind can be a transformational action.
    3. What is the rate of change in the story? A gradual, powerful change can be as arresting as a rapid break. Your audience is listening to discover what pace of change you working with.

What To Notice

As you come across stories in your life, notice:

    1. What’s the action‘? Sometimes this is very clear: a journey, a car chase. Sometimes it’s internal. But if you are absorbed, the characters are acting, moving in some way.
    2. What’s the rate of change? How is it being managed?

The Higher the Stakes, The Better the Story (With One Caveat)

“I went to catch a bus this morning, and it was late, so I missed my morning coffee” is a story.

“I went to catch a bus this morning, and it was late, so I was late to work. It was the day we went live with the new site and my boss was calling me but he was in Japan and his calls kept dropping out so I had no idea what was going on - but I knew something was” is a better story (we'd like to hear more).

The consequences baked into a story make it compelling. We know a story should be about change and human transformation. The higher the stakes in that transformation, the more compelling the story. Missing coffee? Not interesting. Why the boss is frantically calling from Japan on a release day? More interesting.

Notice that the stakes are relative to the people in the story: we don’t all get to vanquish evil or destoy the Death Star (a coffee might be vitally important!). Getting to a release, even a minor one, may mean some hard work, tough decisions, difficult and risky moments. Overcoming these are the stakes and they can mean a great deal.

The stakes may be internal. Telling stories is a way of passing on wisdom. Telling a story of an early career moment where you stood up to a rude boss, overcoming your own life-long fear of confrontation, can change the perspective someone just starting beginning in their career.

What stakes do we pay attention to?

    1. Our survival, of course. Life and death. (Despite what we’d like to believe at times, very litte in business is life or death).
    2. The elements of the extremely useful SCARF model: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness. Will this story greatly increase our status in some way? How will it change our relatedness to those around us? To our friends and family? The industry?

A caveat: the use of disaster as a motivator. "If we don't make the quarter, we're finished” is structurally a pretty good story: the stakes are high, it's clear who we are, and it's clear what our transformation will be (and it's not good). But this is a story that instills fear, and fear as a motivator has a limited lifespan: if you're always threatening disaster, your audience will learn that the story is, well, bullshit. And when fear does work, it closes off our thinking, shuts down our creativity. Fear is good for short-term focus. But it's blunt, limited. Use it carefully.

The Stakes Make the Story Powerful

    1. The higher the stakes, the better the story.
    2. The value of the stakes is relative to the actors in the story: missing a bus may feel like life and death. To another character, it’s just another day.
    3. Be careful with disaster stories and instilling fear. Fear is a short-term, limiting motivator. (And people don’t like being scared. Eventually they’ll leave).

What To Notice

When you get sucked into a story, or scene, notice:

    1. What are the stakes? Survival? Status? What is at risk in the scene?
    2. Who are the stakes relevant to?

Specifics Make It Sing


“We closed the deal early on a Monday morning in San Francisco” is better than “we closed the deal”.

“We closed the deal in our tiny office off Folsom Street in San Francisco at 8am. We only moved in Sunday at 4pm and Julia had to sit on the floor to get the demo going and she fixed the last crash about five minutes before the customer showed up”. Is better. It would be even better with a sketch of the office (what did it smell like? was it hot or cold? what was the lighting like?), and a bit about Julia (was she loud, dead quiet, tense, did she need Red Bull? nothing?). 

The specifics of place, feel, smell, sounds make the story sing. We are programmed to see and feel the place and the people.

Henry V, getting specific:

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'

We can see the old boy pulling down his sleeve every year and pointing to his scars: I was there, he is saying. I was there, St Crispins day, when we defeated the French!

The Specifics

So when you’re projecting forward, or recounting an event:

    1. What was the place like? Warm, cold, open, restricted, welcoming?
    2. What was the time of day?
    3. Who was there? What were they like? Interested, bored, listening?
    4. What smells, colors, sounds appeared (or should appear?)

What To Notice

    1. Obviously in TV and movies specifics are easier, but still: location and feel matter. Taylor Sheridon is something of a master at this (not a huge fan of his worldview, but his storytelling is pretty great).
    2. If you’re absorbed in a book, or a blog post, or listening to somebody tell a story in the bar, notice the little details that are dropped in. Or notice where they are missing.

Tone


Finally, what kind of story is it that you are telling? We’ve already noticed that “disaster stories” (we’re all doomed) can be effective, but have their limits. Their tone is serious, anxious, determined typically.

What tone/mood are you looking to communicate here (and you will communicate a mood, whether you want to or not)?

Hopeful, happy, relaxed, angry, bemused (the “WTF story” is always available), energized - your palette of choice is very wide. We are curious, when we listen for a story, to find out what kind of story it is. Oh good, we think, this one's a cliff-hanger, I'm going to be anxious. Or: great! Feels like a happy story, I'll go along with it.

We want to be absorbed, to have our emotional systems moved without. A story is a way of experimenting with reality, trying on a set of feelings. We don’t actually want to be attacked by zombies (a rare subject in corporate story-telling anyway), but we don’t mind getting the thrill of imagining what it might be like.

So maybe maybe the thrill is hiring a great team, or getting a difficult thing built, or finally opening a San Francisco office. These things have emotional content, and we want to know what it is.

Lastly, we as an audience, are alert to tone shifts. If they make sense, we're all ears (maybe a romcom becomes a thriller, but there was danger there all along), if they shift for no reason - a comedy suddenly becomes serious for not apparent reason - we're confused, and taken out of the story. Choose your tone and stick with it.

Tone

    1. When you have your story, think about what kind of story it is: sad, exciting, wonderful?
    2. What do you think the audience will feel when you tell it? What mood will they have absorbed at the end?

What To Notice

    1. What’s your mood during a scene, or chapter? One or two words.
    2. Why? What did the storyteller do to get you there?
    3. Look for unusual or surprising moods that play against cliche (the puppy gets rescued, the lovers make up. Again Taylor Sheridon is good at pulling the rug out. What did the storyteller do?

Some Further Reading and a Workshop


To go further. These two books take the fundamentals further from a couple of different perspectives.

StoryWorthy, Matthew Dicks. Winner of many Moth competitions, this is direct, practical stuff.

Wired for Story, Lisa Cron. How story elements hook our responses. More technical, very complete.

In Person Workshop

I will be leading an in-person workshop on storytelling for Founders, CEOs and execs at Shack15 in San Francisco in Q1. Come and refine your own stories, and hang out, get a drink with a view of the Bay afterwards.

Take a look, and use code EARLY to get 50% off!