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Story or Die

How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life

Lisa Cron

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language-arts

Chapter 2

  • The ferocity of political debate makes it abundantly clear that each of us sees a very different so-called objective reality. But since our biology blinds us to our own subjectivity—it’s the water we swim in—when we smack up against someone who disagrees with our interpretation of the facts, we sagely think: If only I could get them to understand what’s really happening here, we’d all agree. So I’ll just explain it to them one more time.Aug 31 2023 2:56PM
  • The Facts About Facts Our brain has neatly categorized facts into four distinct groups: NEUTRAL FACTS: These are facts that, as far as we can see, have no current relevance to us, which we are wired to deftly ignore. (Bubble gum contains rubber; Howdy Doody had forty-eight freckles.) WARNING FACTS: These facts represent something that’s clearly about to harm us, whether literally (Lion—run!), or socially (If mom finds out you wrecked the car, you’ll be grounded for life!). VALIDATING FACTS: These facts support something we already believe (I knew chocolate is actually good for you). CONFLICTING FACTS: These facts directly oppose what we know to be true (What do you mean the Earth is round? Whose Kool-Aid have you been drinking?).Aug 31 2023 2:56PM
  • Using facts to try to change someone’s mind about something they fervently believe at best leads to misunderstandings, at worst to fisticuffs—because as we’ll see in the next chapter, facts that counter our most deeply held beliefs instantly trigger anger, hence the phrase “those are fighting words.”Aug 31 2023 2:57PM
  • Neutral facts don’t fare much better. They might be completely, objectively, no-doubt-about-it true, but they will have no actual effect on us. Consider the fact that it’s 238,900 miles from the Earth to the moon, or that the first recorded use of amber as a color name in English was in 1500, or…Hey, wake up! I’m talking to you! If you dozed off, it’s because your brain put its foot down and asked a very logical question: Why should I care? And it isn’t a flip question. As neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga says, “Every decision is funneled through the approach-or-withdraw mode in the brain: Is it safe or not?” And here’s the fine print: not just safe in general but safe given our specific agenda.Aug 31 2023 2:58PM
  • And as neuroscientist Paul Zak points out in Cerebrum, “Attention is a scarce neural resource because it is metabolically costly to a brain that needs to conserve resources.” Our attention is reserved for things that do matter to us, and we’d be fools to waste it on anything else.Aug 31 2023 2:58PM
  • How could they be so wrong? What the tappers had failed to consider is that when they tapped out the song, they were expertly performing “Happy Birthday” in their head. Says Newton, “The tapping does not interfere with the melody; the tapping, rather, complements the melody and becomes an integral part of the performance. “Your audience, meanwhile, is not privy to your mental performance and must focus exclusively on your tapping. What you imagine to be a meaningfully held note is, to your audience, merely an absence of tapping. A tap, outside of the vivid musical context into which you have incorporated it, is just a tap.”Aug 31 2023 3:01PM
  • That is what you risk when you lead with facts, like those NOAA scientists. I’m sure they thought those stats would instantly conjure up images of melting ice caps, food shortages, mass migrations—an uninhabitable Earth, basically. However, all the audience heard were a bunch of seemingly random numbers and measurements and percentages—neutral facts that told no story at all and so had no discernible meaning.Aug 31 2023 3:01PM
  • The entire point of your pitch, your ad campaign, your donor ask, is to persuade your audience to do something they’re not already doing. In other words, to change. Which, as we’ll see in the next chapter, is definitely possible, but not easy. Not because we’re thick-headed or ornery but, rather, because eons of experience taught our biology that changing the status quo can be quite deadly.Aug 31 2023 3:02PM
  • As neuroscientist Tali Sharot points out in The Influential Mind, “As it turns out, while we adore data, the currency by which our brains access said data and make decisions is very different from the currency many of us believe our brains should use [italics mine].Aug 31 2023 3:05PM
  • The problem with an approach that prioritizes information and logic is that it ignores the core of what makes you and me human: our motives, our fears, our hopes and desires.” It’s that “should use” that’s so damning—so many of us have been led to believe that using nothing but pure data to make decisions is not only possible, but preferable, giving rise to the notion that making a decision based on anything but objective logic is a character flaw, a weakness.Aug 31 2023 3:05PM
  • So it’s not surprising that, as Belgian cyberneticist Francis Heylighen notes in the journal, The Information Society, today “individuals are forced to consider more information and opportunities than they can effectively process. This information overload is made worse by ‘data smog,’ the proliferation of low-quality information because of easy publication.”Aug 31 2023 3:07PM
  • Once we believe something—down to the belief that my toothpaste is better than yours (and it is)—it becomes part of our identity, so to challenge it is to challenge both us and our tribe. In other words, it registers as a threat.Aug 31 2023 3:08PM
  • It all comes down to a phenomena called homeostasis that works like this: once a system’s in balance, its goal isn’t merely to stay balanced, but to stay in that particular balance, because past experience has proven it safe—after all, we’re still standing. So when a biological organism (that’s all living creatures, including us) finds an ecosystem that assures its physical survival, it’s wired to stay put.Aug 31 2023 3:08PM
  • To our brain, a physical threat and a challenge to our belief system register as one and the same. Both travel the same neural pathways, signaling an imminent attack, and our body responds accordingly, saving us the trouble of having to figure out what the heck is going on before it’s too late. We don’t decide to get mad. We don’t decide to fight. Our brain, fearing for our survival, takes the decision out of our hands.Aug 31 2023 3:11PM
  • Again, neuroscientist Tali Sharot: “In fact, presenting people with information that contradicts their opinion can cause them to come up with altogether new counterarguments that further strengthen their original view; this is known as the ‘boomerang effect’.”Aug 31 2023 3:11PM
  • As Chip and Dan Heath point out in Made to Stick, “The problem is that when you hit listeners between the eyes, they respond by fighting back. The way you deliver a message to them is a cue to how they should react. If you make an argument you’re implicitly asking them to evaluate your argument—judge it, debate it, criticize it—and then argue back, at least in their minds.”Aug 31 2023 3:14PM
  • Numerous fMRI studies have shown that when you’re lost in a story the same areas of your brain light up as would activate if you were doing what the protagonist is doing. You really are there, experiencing it as if it were happening to you. By allowing you to vicariously live through the actual boots-on-the-ground effect facts have in real life, stories inspire change in a way that the facts alone cannot.Aug 31 2023 3:14PM

Chapter 3

  • Big mistake. Because although most of us have been taught that emotion shrouds reason, muddling thought, and leading to impulsive, illogical decisions, neuroscience has shown that the opposite is true: Emotion is what determines every decision we make—and that’s a good thing. Emotion evolved to let us know, in a nanosecond, what’s safe, what isn’t, and what matters to us, and in so doing, emotion is what ensured our survival.Aug 31 2023 3:25PM
  • In fact, if you couldn’t feel emotion, you couldn’t make a single rational decision. As Antonio Damasio points out, “Even if our reasoning strategies were perfectly tuned, it appears they would not cope well with the uncertainty and complexity of personal and social problems. The fragile instruments of rationality need special assistance.”Aug 31 2023 3:30PM
  • Damasio frequently writes about a patient he had, a man by the name of Elliot. Elliot was a successful guy: he had a great job, a loving family, and he was a role model at work and at home. Unfortunately, Elliot also had a brain tumor. Tests revealed that, thankfully, it was benign, and a team of skilled surgeons were able to remove every smidge of it, but not before it had damaged some of his frontal lobe tissue, which was also removed. He recovered from the operation, and on the outside appeared to be hale and hearty. But on the inside, Elliot was no longer himself. His life began to fall apart. He lost his job and his family, he embarked on questionable endeavors that made no sense and ended disastrously, he lost what money he had to con men, and he was finally taken in by his parents. What happened? Was it a previously undetected failure of moral character? Was he just lazy? That’s what several professionals thought, and so his disability benefits were cut off. That’s when Damasio was brought in to answer the question: was Elliot’s behavior willful, or was it part of an underlying medical condition? Damasio ran a large battery of tests, and what he ultimately discovered was that Elliot had lost the ability to feel emotion. His “objective” knowledge, however, had not suffered at all. He still tested in the ninety-seventh percentile in intelligence. He could enumerate, in great detail, every possible solution to any problem you could pitch at him. He just couldn’t pick one. He’d go into his office and wonder, should I do that thing my boss really wants me to do, or should I reorganize my file folders again today? And if so, would it be better to use the blue pen or the black pen? At lunch he’d go from restaurant to restaurant looking at menus, but he never went in, because he didn’t know what he felt like eating. Turned out even his extreme analytical intelligence didn’t do him a bit of good when it came down to making the simplest—and most basic—decision: what to have for lunch.Aug 31 2023 3:32PM
  • As neuroscientist Dean Buonomano makes clear in Your Brain Is a Time Machine, “Memory did not evolve to allow us to reminisce about the past. The sole evolutionary function of memory is to allow animals to predict what will happen, when it will happen, and how to best respond when it does.”Aug 31 2023 3:34PM
  • Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran explains it thusly in his book The Tell-Tale Brain: “The amygdala works in conjunction with past stored memories and other structures in the limbic system to gauge the emotional significance of whatever you are looking at: Is it friend, foe, mate? Food, water, danger? Or is it just something mundane? If it’s insignificant—just a log, a piece of lint, the trees rustling in the wind—you feel nothing toward it and most likely will ignore it. But if it’s important, you instantly feel something.”Aug 31 2023 3:35PM
  • “Human emotions are rooted in the predictions of highly flexible brain cells, which are constantly adjusting their connections to reflect reality. Every time you make a mistake or encounter something new, your brain cells are busy changing themselves.”Aug 31 2023 3:36PM
  • “Storytelling provides humans a powerful means for sharing emotions with others,” writes cognitive neuroscientist Lauri Nummenmaa in the journal Neuroimage. Stories “enable us to ‘catch’ the emotions described in spoken and written language.” It goes even deeper, as it’s not just the emotion that is contagious, it’s also the reasoning behind it. Story translates facts into experience, making them concrete, giving us contextual understanding of their meaning. Simply put, stories allow us to viscerally experience how the facts will impact our life, because when we are lost in a story, we don’t just feel what the protagonist feels, we understand why they feel it.Aug 31 2023 3:37PM
  • To wit: we learn from the experience of others not when they tell us what they learned, but when they allow us to learn it along with them—through an emotionally significant story.Aug 31 2023 3:38PM
  • Plus, since story is about how someone learned something, it implies that in the beginning there was something important that they didn’t already know. And maybe even that—gulp—they made a mistake.Aug 31 2023 3:38PM

Chapter 4

  • The purpose of an effective story—the story you’ll create—is to change how your audience sees things, to spur them to do something right now. That is what makes all stories a call to action, because once we see things differently, we do things differently. That’s why your goal isn’t to create a story to show your audience how great your idea, brand, or cause is—regardless of how utterly, completely true that is. I’m sure the newly redesigned LaGuardia Airport is, ahem, utterly captivating by now. That future fact didn’t matter to me even a teeny tiny bit back when I was on that slow shuttle bus, trying desperately to figure out how to salvage the meeting all those renovations were forcing me to miss. Instead, your goal is to create a story that will help your audience see how your idea benefits them in the moment, given who they are, and how they see themselves. To do that, first we have to upend much of what we’ve been taught about story itself and then redefine it.Aug 31 2023 3:41PM
  • Here’s the secret: As counterintuitive as it may seem, a story isn’t about what happens in the world. A story is about what happens in the mind of the protagonist—the person through whose eyes we’re experiencing those events.Aug 31 2023 3:43PM
  • A story is about how an unavoidable external problem forces the protagonist to change internally in order to solve it.Aug 31 2023 3:43PM
  • A story isn’t about how someone solves a problem. It’s about how the problem causes someone to realize something, internally—something that has been preventing them from solving said problem. It is that inner struggle that has us riveted, not the bombs bursting in air. And the realization that the protagonist’s inner struggle leads to is what answers the question your audience is always tacitly asking: “Why does this matter to me?”Aug 31 2023 3:43PM
  • According to Brown, when we’re grabbed by a story, we’re instantly making inferences about the protagonist’s beliefs in order to pinpoint their intentions and what is motivating their actions. We’re not hooked by what the protagonist is doing; we’re on the hunt for why they’re doing it.Aug 31 2023 3:44PM
  • The point is, each of us has a story that we live by, but as we know, for the most part we are not aware of it, the same way David Foster Wallace’s young fish had no idea what water wasAug 31 2023 3:45PM
  • The difference was perfectly summed up by Anna Coscia of Leo Burnett. The younger girls, she said, “ran and fought and hit as hard as they could, with confidence, pride, and incredible self-belief. They had clearly not been influenced yet by the ‘rules’ that define womanhood and were simply being themselves. For them, doing something ‘like a girl’ meant doing it as best as they could.”Aug 31 2023 3:53PM
  • The Third Step: The Realization This is the place in a story where, given what the audience had just experienced, they began to revamp their internal logic. What they thought was true clearly wasn’t. So, what was? Greenfield turned to the young boy who’d thrown “like a girl” by dropping the ball. “So, do you think you just insulted your sister?” she asked. He looked shocked, as if the thought never occurred to him. “No,” he said and then stopped short, “I mean yeah, insulting girls, but not my sister.” And then the penny dropped; you can see it in his eyes. His sister is a girl. If he’s insulting girls, then…uh oh. The beauty of it is that, in asking that question, Greenfield wasn’t vilifying the boy; she was vilifying the belief—a very different thing. It allowed him to look at it without feeling that she was shaming him and to see it for what it is: wrong. Any shame he might have felt came from his own realization, rather than anything she said to him.Aug 31 2023 3:55PM
  • Says Coscia, the goal was “to take viewers on an emotional journey. You go from laughter, to surprise, to anger, as you realize how language can affect the way girls perceive themselves. You end in tears when the older girls realize that they have been sucked into a cultural cliché and they are given the chance to do it all again, this time just being themselves.” And there you have it: Misbelief, Truth, Realization, Transformation.Aug 31 2023 3:56PM
  • The #LikeAGirl campaign helped free girls of the unrealistic, negative expectations society had put on them, so they could be what they wanted to be: themselves. Because in the end, that is our deepest desire: to be who we are, and have the people we care about love us for it.Aug 31 2023 3:57PM
  • A story is about an inner realization that leads to an external transformation. In the beginning, the protagonist has an internal belief that is not true—this misbelief is what’s keeping your audience from hearing your call to action. The events in the story—the unavoidable problem the protagonist faces—will force them to confront and overcome their misbelief in order to solve the problem.Aug 31 2023 3:58PM
  • First: Misbelief This is the closely held (erroneous) belief that your audience enters with. To simply tell them they’re wrong is to challenge both their self-identity and their loyalty to their tribe. It is this belief that’s keeping them from hearing your call to action.Aug 31 2023 3:58PM
  • Second: Truth This is the point you want to make. The events of the story are constructed to show your audience that the belief they think is helping them, isn’t; instead it’s hurting them. It’s keeping them from getting what they want and being who they really are.Aug 31 2023 3:58PM
  • Third: Realization The event(s) in the story cause your audience to—on their own—question their misbelief. This experience finally allows them to see it for what it is: wrong.Aug 31 2023 3:59PM
  • Fourth: Transformation This is the moment when, having realized that their misbelief has blinded them to what will actually help them achieve their true agenda, your protagonist’s (and by extension, audience’s) worldview is transformed. This is what allows them to address the external problem—whether it’s working to stop climate change, damaging societal norms, or a wonky website—by taking up your call to action.Aug 31 2023 3:59PM

Chapter 5

  • So right off the bat, let’s clarify who your audience isn’t. It is not: 1. You. 2. Everyone.Aug 31 2023 4:00PM
  • Trying to reach everyone is the same as trying to reach no one, and it has just about the same effect. That’s because there is no “everyone.” There are only individual people, who band together based on their common interests and beliefs, with the goal of survival, whether physical, social, or both.Aug 31 2023 4:02PM
  • What’s more, if you try to reach everyone, your focus shifts from grabbing their attention to not offending anyone in the process. Now all your creative energy is focused on being toothless because each faction of “everyone” will have a different misbelief that keeps them from hearing your call to action. There can be no single, overarching truth to counter…what, exactly? So no resulting realization. No transformation. No emotion.Aug 31 2023 4:03PM
  • Over the years, I’ve learned to ask: within the wide group of people who could be my audience, who would I pass on? (Full disclosure: That benign sounding “learned to ask” is a euphemism for what the flaming, mortifying mistakes I made along the way taught me.) So what did I learn? I learned to pass on writers who aren’t willing to dive deep and do the hard, often painful work of dredging up the real story they’re after. Writers who want to argue with every bit of feedback and tell me their bestie, their mom, their writing group told them that what they were doing is just fine. I don’t want to work with writers who only want positive feedback, and whose real goal is to have me say, “Why, this is brilliant! Let me introduce you to my agent.” I don’t want to work with writers who can’t kill their darlings (for you nonwriters, yes, that is a metaphor). I don’t want to work with writers who want a guarantee that they’ll be able to finish their book in three months, or even three years, or that it will be published when they do finish—none of that is my callAug 31 2023 4:05PM
  • That’s why the one hard-and-fast rule is that what you want your audience to do can’t be conceptual, vague, or abstract. It has to be concrete, specific, and actionable. Because without clear steps toward achieving your call to action, your audience will be left with the unsettling feeling that you want them to do something but they’re not exactly sure what. Or, in the words of Miss Miller, “Available for what?”Aug 31 2023 4:07PM
  • Because the surer you are of what that benefit will be, the more likely it is that you’re not really seeing it from your audience’s point of view—and so, by extension, you won’t be able to tell a story they truly identify with.Aug 31 2023 4:09PM
  • The difference between these announcements and LaGuardia’s is that LAX focused on how we feel and on our lives going forward, rather than on how great their airport was going to be.Aug 31 2023 4:12PM
  • Like our homeowners, these groups sound specific, and it might feel as if we’ve nailed it. But the truth is categories like these are still way too general. To be effective, we need to refine it further. Is it tweens who are in the -H Club, or the ones who only listen to indie rock? Is it middle-aged men who like to watch football because they’ve bet thousands on the game, or guys who watch because they’re reliving their high school glory days? Big difference. Once you’ve zeroed in on your specific target audience, the goal is to close your eyes and envision the one person you see as embodying the group. What do they look like, what are they wearing, what is an average day like for them?Aug 31 2023 4:15PM
  • Don’t envision your audience as part of your tribe. See them as part of theirs.Aug 31 2023 4:17PM

Chapter 6

  • We’re about to take a deep dive into our target audience’s mind, with these three things in ours: 1. How will your call to action benefit your audience based on their specific worldview? 2. What beliefs do they have that you’ll be butting up against when asking them to change? 3. Based on their worldview, how will the change you want them to make help them become their most authentic self?Aug 31 2023 4:18PM
  • Yes, knowing who you want to reach and having a general notion of their worldviews is a great start. But knowing it intellectually isn’t enough. In order to persuade, you have to go deeper still. You have to empathize with them. That doesn’t mean simply knowing why they’re doing what they do, it means being able to actually feel the compelling internal logic behind it, without demeaning it, vilifying it, or rolling your eyes.Aug 31 2023 4:18PM
  • That’s why you aren’t simply trying to find out what your audience’s reasons are; your goal is to find out why those reasons have the meaning—the emotional weight—they do.Aug 31 2023 4:22PM
  • The bottom line is: if the story you create doesn’t take place within the world of your audience’s belief system, they, and their tribe, will, at best ignore you, and, at worst, rise up against you. They’ll smite you, even, with babies safely stowed in their slings.Aug 31 2023 4:29PM
  • One of the biggest errors we can make is believing that when we ask them to trade one behavior for another, we’re asking them to make an even swap, in an emotional vacuum.Aug 31 2023 4:30PM
  • When you know what the internal change you’re asking your audience to make means to them, it becomes abundantly clear that they have deep-seated reasons for what they’re already doing, whether they’re aware of it or not.Aug 31 2023 4:31PM
  • This is what matters most to my audience right now: _________________________ Be on the lookout for their biggest concern in the present. The goal here is to be concrete. In other words, name something they can actually do something about.Aug 31 2023 4:32PM
  • This is what my audience most desires in order to become their most authentic self: _________________________ What do they aspire to be; what is their goal? Be specific. For instance, you might note that the individual who represents your target audience follows the hashtag #tinyhouse. This might reveal that they aspire to live in a simpler way that offers more financial freedom.Aug 31 2023 4:32PM
  • This is what my audience most fears: _________________________ What do they stay up at night worrying about? As always, be as specific as possible. For instance, your audience’s posts might reveal that they worry about being shamed for their lack of patience with sorting and recycling, or judged for their devotion to cheesy romcoms, or wonder how on earth they’re going to pay for their kid’s education.Aug 31 2023 4:32PM
  • This is what my audience is doing now instead of the ultimate thing I want them to do: _________________________ What external thing would they have to give up in order to heed your call to action? What emotional ties, if any, might they have to what they’re doing now?Aug 31 2023 4:32PM

Chapter 7

  • In fact, effective stories often show the audience that they already have the courage—and ability—to do something they’ve been afraid of trying because it felt risky.Aug 31 2023 4:33PM
  • Why isn’t your audience already doing what you want them to do? What is holding them back? Because here’s the thing: even if you asked them point blank, they might not know the answer. Or, more likely, they’d give you the wrong one.Aug 31 2023 4:33PM
  • What matters most isn’t saving money; it’s saving face. We want to do things that show the members of our tribe that we’re on the same team, because that’s what keeps us safe and makes us feel worthy. Most of the time. When it doesn’t—when what we want and what our tribe expects from us appear to diverge—the misbeliefs that keep us from being our authentic selves take hold. That is often where your audience’s resistance lurks.Aug 31 2023 4:34PM
  • “It all comes down to what I want versus what’s expected of me.”Aug 31 2023 4:36PM
  • Or, as Brené Brown points out in The Gifts of Imperfection, we struggle with the difference between fitting in and belonging. While at first those two sound like the same thing, they are not. Fitting in implies we’re hiding who we really are; belonging is being accepted for being ourselves. The two are mutually exclusive. Often we struggle to fit in, when what we really want is to belong, to be seen and valued for who we really are. That’s why we evaluate everything based on the question: “What does this say about me?” Hence it bears repeating that the real question the audience asks themselves isn’t, “Is this a good idea, cause, product, or service in and of itself?” Rather, their unspoken question is, “How could this help me and how could it hurt me in terms of how others see me, and how I see myself?”Aug 31 2023 4:36PM
  • The problem was with the story that General Mills was telling themselves about their audience. We can even deconstruct it using the following handy template. THE MISBELIEF: Everyone wants to do the easiest possible thing. (And what could be easier than just adding water and baking? It’ll sell like hotcakes.) THE TRUTH: People don’t want things to be so easy that they, themselves, feel irrelevant. (I bake to show my family how much I love them; using a mix feels like cheating. The dog could make this cake.) THE REALIZATION: Everyone needs to feel like they’re part of the process; that’s how they get their sense of purpose and authenticity. (Sure, while easy is good; effortless isn’t. Lesson learned. Can’t make an omelet—or a cake, apparently—without breaking a few eggs.) THE TRANSFORMATION: All we have to do is take out the powdered eggs, and customers will feel included. How easy is that? (We’ll give them less, and they’ll buy much, much more. Talk about a win-win.)Aug 31 2023 4:41PM
  • It’s just that in such scenarios, even with the most open and earnest participants, either: 1. People will tell you what they think you want to hear (because they want you to like them, and don’t want to offend anyone). 2. People won’t admit to things that make them feel vulnerable (because if they do, you might not like them). 3. What they tell you in all sincerity won’t be the “real reason” (because the real reason is scary for them to contemplate). 4. They don’t know the “real reason” anyway (because truly, they’ve never even thought about it).Aug 31 2023 4:41PM
  • The good thing is that, in the end, she had the courage to admit it to me. Often what makes us feel vulnerable is the last thing we’ll admit to. But ironically, as we’ll soon see, that’s often the very thing that makes us a hero in other people’s eyes. Vulnerability is story’s lifeblood. Because there is nothing more inspiring, more powerful—or harder—than admitting to something that makes us feel exposedAug 31 2023 4:43PM
  • That is the power of a perfect story. THE MISBELIEF: Staying at Motel means you’re cheap. THE TRUTH: Staying at Motel means you have better things to spend your money on than meaningless amenities; you’re saving it for what really matters. THE REALIZATION: If I stay at Motel 6, I’m not only being smart, I’m living up to my values. They really get me; no wonder they leave the light on for me. We’re on the same team. THE TRANSFORMATION: Not only will I stay at Motel 6, I’m going to recommend it to my friends, lest they stay away for the same reasons I would have. Paying it forward feels good.Aug 31 2023 4:47PM
  • THE MISBELIEF: I have to work 24/7 so my family will see me as a success and love me. THE TRUTH: My family feels rejected because I’m always working. THE REALIZATION: It’s not about money; it’s about spending time together. THE TRANSFORMATION: I’m going to work less, maybe take that short beach vacation my kids keep clamoring for.Aug 31 2023 4:48PM
  • THE MISBELIEF: Every enrichment activity just adds more stress to my kids’ lives, to my life, and becomes yet another thing piled onto everyone’s already long to-do list. There’s no time for play—but that’s just the way life is these days. THE TRUTH: Something as simple as raking the leaves with your kids and bagging them up for the neighborhood garden network can be an enrichment opportunity—disguised as playtime. THE REALIZATION: We have time for this. We would have raked those leaves anyway—but now it has a purpose, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something (however small) about climate change with my kids. Plus, I’m showing them how to take care of the Earth, be a good citizen, and connect with nature and the neighborhood. THE TRANSFORMATION: Maybe I can get the whole neighborhood to contribute—and maybe, just maybe, I’m not too busy to have a backyard garden myself. I mean, if the kids are into it…Aug 31 2023 4:52PM

Chapter 8

  • The realization reframed the situation they found themselves in, allowing them to read a very different meaning into it. As T. S. Eliot so astutely said, “The end of our exploring is to return to where we began and to see it for the first time.”Aug 31 2023 4:55PM
  • When it comes to story, our brain is wired to expect that there will be some useful takeaway, something that will better help us navigate the world—a point—and the story’s job is to make it. We expect that everything will lead toward that single point, ultimately supporting it—even though we’re not sure what it is until we get there. And that’s okay. Curiosity is part of what hooks us. How will this end? Where is it going? That anticipation is what keeps us riveted, but only as long as things add up. If, instead, the story zigzags around, going in several different directions to make several different disjointed points, we get lost. Really fast.Aug 31 2023 4:58PM
  • In fact, the more edgy your story—the more boldly it champions your audience without hedging, equivocating, or pulling punches—the better. Because it signals that you have their back and you have the courage of your convictions—that you, yourself, are willing to be vulnerable.Aug 31 2023 4:58PM
  • Simple implies there are supporting layers beneath the elegant summation. “Just do it” is simple. #LikeAGirl is simple. “We’ll leave the light on for you” is simple. Because each one of these taglines taps into its target audience’s specific, complex internal narrative and tells a compelling story.Aug 31 2023 5:00PM
  • Simplistic implies there are no layers at all. Simplistic is so shallow there’s nothing to dig into.Aug 31 2023 5:01PM
  • As South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, said of his decision to come out to his conservative constituency during an election year, “What I learned was that trust can be reciprocated and that part of how you can win and deserve to win is to know what’s worth more to you than winning.” What’s worth more to your audience than their misbelief? What’s worth more to them than what they’re doing now?Aug 31 2023 11:36PM

Chapter 9

  • The riveting conflict in any story—whether a thirty-second ad, a PSA, or a novel—doesn’t revolve around a bad guy, or a dire external problem. It revolves around the internal struggle that the protagonist goes through in order to solve that external problem.Aug 31 2023 11:53PM
  • To echo what Faye said to Don on Mad Men, we’re constantly struggling with the difference between what we actually feel and what society expects us to feel.Sep 1 2023 12:19AM
  • 1. AN EXTERNAL LAYER: The thing that happens, the external event, the unavoidable problem the protagonist must tackle (the plot). 2. AN INTERNAL LAYER: What that external problem causes the protagonist to struggle with, internally—the misbelief versus the truth—in order to solve it (what the story is really about).Sep 1 2023 1:46AM
  • Here are the three interwoven elements that, by activating the neurotransmitters we discussed in chapter 1, transport us into the world of the story. 1. STORY ELEMENT: SURPRISE. The protagonist expects one thing to happen, and something else happens instead. Familiar pattern broken; now what do I do? BIOLOGICAL REACTION: DOPAMINE. The curiosity neurotransmitter surges, triggering our desire to find out what is going to happen next. 2. STORY ELEMENT: CONFLICT. The protagonist has no choice but to make a hard choice. Consequences will ensue, maybe bad ones. BIOLOGICAL REACTION: CORTISOL. The stress hormone surges, and we’re tense as the suspense mounts, because… 3. STORY ELEMENT: VULNERABILITY. We empathize with the protagonist. We hope they succeed without getting clobbered. BIOLOGICAL REACTION: OXYTOCIN. The empathy neurotransmitter surges, making us care. We’re on protagonist’s side, rooting for their success.Sep 1 2023 3:21AM
  • “Narratives that cause us to pay attention and also involve us emotionally are the stories that move us to action,” says Zak in Cerebrum.Sep 1 2023 3:23AM
  • Okay, the power of story is great in theory. But how do you create a story capable of wielding it? Let’s break down what we already know: There’s one person (the protagonist, the person who will experience the conflict) with one unavoidable problem (the external conflict) that spurs one internal struggle (misbelief versus truth, the core conflict) leading to one “aha” moment (the protagonist’s realization, the point your story will make, resulting in the emotion you want your audience to feel) which allows the protagonist to solve the problem and take action (the transformation).Sep 1 2023 3:25AM
  • The key point is: the protagonist is our avatar in the story, and the person who has the power to solve the problem. Says international story coach Andy Goodman, “Large-scale, systemic change may be the ultimate goal…[But] If we cannot see and feel the changes at ground level—through the eyes of one human being—we simply cannot relate.”Sep 1 2023 3:25AM
  • All protagonists enter the story already wanting something. The story’s core conflict revolves around what it will cost them to get it, not cost in dollars and cents, but an emotional cost. Getting what they want will be your protagonist’s driving agenda. Your agenda will be to create an external problem that forces your protagonist to reevaluate their misbelief in order to get it.Sep 1 2023 3:29AM
  • What does: “Diet Coke is more authentic and approachable than ever” even mean? More authentic than what? Tea? Water? Regular Coke? And who ever said Diet Coke wasn’t approachable? It’s always right there, on the shelf, in the market, ready, willing and able to go home with you, no questions asked. It’s never busy, or asleep, or having a bad day. It’s the epitome of approachable.Sep 1 2023 3:38AM
  • And brainstorm answers to the following questions: Who, exactly, is my protagonist? Chances are your protagonist will be a version of the person you’ve been envisioning as representative of your target audience. Make that person as real as you can. What does my protagonist enter the story wanting, in a general sense? This is the desire that your story will give them a chance to fulfill. What, specifically, is happening—here, now, on the day the story is taking place—that can fulfill that desire for your protagonist? For instance, if Hazel nails her presentation, beating her nemesis out of that coveted promotion, she will have achieved what she wants: success at work. What external force might stand in the way of my protagonist? Three things to keep in mind as you tackle this question are: First, you’re looking for something that threatens to stop your protagonist from getting what they want. Second, this external challenge must force your protagonist to take action. Third, in order to overcome this external challenge, your protagonist will have to reconsider their misbelief.Sep 1 2023 3:38AM

Chapter 10

  • The sentence “the man was happy” sounds specific. It’s a man. And he’s happy. Sure it sounds concrete, but it’s not. What man? Happy why? What is happiness, according to him? No clue. That’s why it’s general.Sep 1 2023 3:41AM
  • Andy Goodman has a great example of the power of the specific, using a story Senator Elizabeth Warren tells about growing up in Oklahoma. In it she says, “And about the time I was in middle school, my daddy had a heart attack. And it was serious. Thought he was going to die. The church neighbors brought covered dishes. It was a scary time.” Says Goodman, “Stories live in the specifics, the seemingly small details that help us see the world the storyteller is conjuring. Consider the difference between ‘our friends were very supportive’ and ‘the church neighbors brought covered dishes.’ Same meaning, sure, but only one immediately evokes an image.”Sep 1 2023 3:42AM
  • Rep. Willard D. Vandiver said in 1899, “Frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri. You’ve got to show me.” When it comes to specifics versus generalities, we humans are all Missourian.Sep 1 2023 3:43AM
  • Once a story grabs our attention, our curiosity kicks into gear—wow, we wonder, how is the protagonist going to get out of that one? Which means the answer can’t be a slam dunk. It has to be hard won. Sure, you know what the right thing for them to do is—that’s why you’re creating this story. But the story is about how your protagonist gets there. How she fights against it, what makes her decide to take a chance, and what she learns in the process.Sep 1 2023 3:53AM

Chapter 11

  • Because one of the ironies of modern life is that although everything is geared to make our lives “easier,” we’re hardwired to crave problem solving. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, distinguished professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University, research shows that we’re happiest when we’re working on difficult-but-possible pursuits—once our interest is piqued, that is.Sep 1 2023 4:21AM
  • The urge to figure things out is also what keeps us alive. As we know, our brain is a prediction machine dedicated to divining the (seemingly) reliable logic behind “if this, then that, oh wait, that means therefore…” Without this ability to anticipate the future, our lives would be one terrifying surprise after another.Sep 1 2023 4:23AM
  • Cause and Effect: Making It Believable First, let’s define believability. It’s when, without having to think about it, you automatically accept that this could have caused that. When it comes to creating your story, there are two layers of believability you should be aiming for: 1. Generic physical believability (this one’s relatively easy). 2. Emotional/psychological believability, based on your protagonist’s internal logic (this one isn’t easy, and it’s why you’ve done all the work so far).Sep 1 2023 4:28AM
  • The second layer of believability, that of your protagonist’s internal logic, is far more important to get right, so that what they say and do rings emotionally and psychologically true. This is what your audience comes for, the internal why behind what the protagonist is doing—based on how their tribe sees the world. Violate that, and even if everything else is totally and completely physically possible, your audience will be thinking, Well, that sure could never happen.Sep 1 2023 4:28AM
  • Humanized is the key word here—and it translates to being accessible. When your protagonist sees the world through your target audience’s eyes, using their particular brand of logic, your story becomes believable—even if what actually happens in it is patently impossible. Which can actually be a fantastic strategy for incorporating that all-important element of surprise.Sep 1 2023 4:30AM
  • The prime example is from the (apparently apocryphal) story wherein, during a literary bar fight, Ernest Hemingway was challenged to come up with an entire story in six words, to which he replied: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”Sep 1 2023 4:31AM
  • Then there is William Shatner’s even twistier, “Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.” Twistier still is master storyteller Dr. Karen Dietz’s six-word story: “Played golf. Boss won. Kept job.”Sep 1 2023 4:31AM
  • Because as Anton Chekhov said, “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” By showing them that bike, we made our audience a promise. We primed them to expect that it will be significant, that it will matter. Otherwise, why would we have shown it to them in the first place?Sep 1 2023 4:38AM
  • Because as we know, the brain is programmed to search for patterns, and the smallest possible pattern is…three.Sep 1 2023 4:38AM
  • Each new twist should give your protagonist more to loseSep 1 2023 4:39AM
  • And finally, one last rule—and this one is pretty reliable because it’s how our brain is wired: we’re primed to try the easiest solution first.Sep 1 2023 4:39AM
  • Here are three questions that can help you zero in on the most effective twists: Does this twist, turn, or detail move my story toward my protagonist’s realization—that is, their “aha!” moment? Does my protagonist have to explore, and then reject, this possible solution in order for their decision at the end to make sense? Does each twist have an escalating impact on the problem my protagonist is dealing with right now, making it even harder to solve?Sep 1 2023 4:46AM

Chapter 12

  • That’s why for the protagonist’s realization to be believable, your audience has to understand the internal logic behind it. What they want to know is: Why did the protagonist decide that their misbelief was wrong? What opened their eyes to the truth?Sep 1 2023 4:47AM
  • There are four elements to an effective “aha” moment: It must come at the last possible minute. It must belong to the protagonist rather than someone else in the story. It must be transparent, so the audience understands the evolving logic—the inner struggle—behind it. It must be liberating—the protagonist is freed from the misbelief that has held them back and can now solve the problem.Sep 1 2023 4:48AM
  • THE MISBELIEF: When things go wrong, your best option is to run away and start over somewhere else, hopefully in that place on the other side of the rainbow where troubles just melt away. (As if, right?) The problem is, wherever you go, there you are—meaning, like your target audience, Dorothy has brought her problem, and her belief system, right along with her. Troubles never just melt away, and ignoring them only lets them grow bigger, in the dark, unattended. The story is going to force Dorothy to test her assumption: Is running away the best option? Because in the things-go-from-bad-to-worse category, now she’s stuck in Oz, so she can’t just decide she made a mistake and slink back home. Instead, she is going to find out what her misbelief has cost her. While Dorothy’s external goal is to go home, her real problem is that she doesn’t believe she has the power to solve her problem, so instead of standing up for what she believes in, she runs. Not because she’s weak or lacks courage, but because that’s what, up to that moment, life has taught her the right course of action is. But on the road to the Wicked Witch’s castle in the hopes of solving her external problem, by helping her new friends muster the courage to stand up to bullies and fight for what’s fair, Dorothy discovers her own inner strength, and the antidote to that misbelief.Sep 1 2023 4:49AM
  • The “aha” moment always belongs to the protagonist. The protagonist is your audience’s avatar in the story; the person they’re rooting for as they viscerally experience what the protagonist is experiencing. They don’t want the protagonist to be saved by someone else. They want her to do it herself; they’ve felt her pain, and now they want to experience her moment of triumph. That’s why no one can step in and solve the problem for her—not her mom, not her boss, not even Glinda the Good Witch.Sep 1 2023 4:52AM
  • The “aha” moment sets your protagonist free from the misbelief that’s been holding them back from the get go. It’s incredibly empowering to realize that what they thought had power over them—whether an idea, a person, or a belief—does not, and with it comes the realization that the change they’re about to make is truer to their authentic self.Sep 1 2023 4:53AM
  • The answer Dorothy was looking for was right there in her own backyard, but she couldn’t see it. To find it she, like your audience, had to be shoved out of her normal routine, her comfort zone, in order to gain the perspective necessary to see through her misbelief. Dorothy’s “aha” moment—indeed, all “aha” moments—are perfectly summarized by Proust’s keen, if paraphrased, observation that “the only true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”Sep 1 2023 4:54AM
  • And therein lies the irony: Having the grit to allow yourself to stand up for what you believe in—which makes you feel vulnerable—is also what gives you power. Lynda knew what her audience wanted. And she was willing to bank on the fact that she’d given it to them. Her story reveals the power of trusting yourself before there is any proof that it will turn out okay in the end. Because, in truth, it might not.Sep 1 2023 5:00AM
  • To make sure your protagonist’s “aha” moment is powerful enough to inspire your audience to action, these four conditions must be met: TIMING. The “aha” moment must come at the very last second, and not a moment sooner. It happens in the split second before all would be irrevocably lost. ASK YOURSELF: Did I put my protagonist’s feet to the fire? Is the protagonist really one second away from failure before realizing how to solve the problem? AGENCY. The protagonist must be the one who saves the day. ASK YOURSELF: Does my protagonist do all the heavy lifting? TRANSPARENCY. The audience needs to see the why behind the protagonist’s sudden change of heart. That is, they need to see the penny drop—it’s not just that the protagonist now sees things differently; it’s why. ASK YOURSELF: Is my protagonist’s “aha” moment transparent? Does the audience understand the reasoning behind the sudden realization? LIBERATION! The “aha” moment is what sets the protagonist free from the misbelief that has been holding them back all along. ASK YOURSELF: Does this realization allow the protagonist to be more true to him/her/themself, more authentic?Sep 1 2023 5:02AM

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