Stories Mean Business - Nick Warren

In 2009, Pixar's Up brought my gnarly heart to tears.

(My BIG tearjerker is still ET of course – when the flower blooms – but I digress.)

Yesterday we talked about Psycho, and the attention storytellers generate when they show us that the world isn't what we think it is.

But it's more than attention that's being created; it's opportunity.

Opportunity for persuasion. Opportunity for change.

The opening 11 minutes and 34 seconds of Up are a masterclass of storytelling, particularly the montage that begins at 7 minutes 14 seconds.

For four wordless minutes, we watch as the dreams of Carl and Ellie Fredricksen grow, falter and fail.

It's beautiful work, but it's also necessary. Without that montage, Karl is just another grumpy old man sitting on a porch.

And in stories (as in business) the frame is the game.

The oft-cited Medium post, "The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen", starts like this:

1. Name a Big, Relevant Change in the World

And that makes sense because humans don't do anything unless there is tension.

Karl's whole world changes when Ellie dies.

Rose Walker's whole world changes when she meets Jack on Titanic.

Harry's whole world changes when Hagrid arrives (on the world's 2nd-best motorbike*).

Each of these reframes the world and creates a tension that MUST be resolved. By adventure. By death. By Hogwarts.

But this isn't just for stories. Before I talk to clients about story or status or copywriting, I work to reframe their world.

Whatever our business, the frame IS the game.

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This is one of thirty riffs on #Business #Storytelling. Follow me to get the series.

*Except Streethawk.

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In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock pulled his most famous trick.

He hired a major movie star and placed her at the centre of drama about passion and escape. In Psycho, Marian Crane steals $40,000 and flees across the country to marry her lover in California.

And you already know what happens next.

She's stabbed to death enroute by a motel owner's mother.

This is cinema's most famous mid-point twist, the PIVOT around which the story WE THINK we are watching turns into something strange and terrifying.

Suddenly, the world isn't what we thought it was.

And we lean in.

The shower scene is the iceberg in Titanic, the piano sex in Pretty Woman and the T-Rex attack in Jurassic Park.

It's the moment that danger increases and attention deepens.

John York's brilliant storytelling book, Into the Woods, goes deep on mid-points, quoting Macbeth after the murder of Banquo.

Fair enough, but how can this help us tell stories that mean business?

Here's one example from the best technology pitch I ever saw.

In the early 1990s, I was watching a presentation on this new technology called Virtual Reality.

It was the usual dull PowerPoint until – halfway through – the presenter pulled back from the screen to reveal that the presentation was playing on a virtual screen INSIDE a virtual room.

Boom.

Suddenly, the world wasn't what we thought it was.

And we leaned in.

Nick

Sometime in the mid-1980s, an episode of Cagney and Lacey blew my mind.

Actually, I was furious. The writers DIDN'T bother to finish it!

Inexplicably, we got to the end of the episode WITHOUT getting to the end of the story. The bad guy wasn't caught. Justice wasn't served. It was a ridiculous, shameful mess.

... and I COULDN'T stop thinking about it.

Maybe that should have been a clue, but I've always been a little slow to work things out.

Humans hate loose ends.

In storytelling and copywriting we call them open loops.

In the hands of great writers – or even slightly above-average ones – they can be a ruthless engine of tension.

Earlier this week, I got a note from someone who'd finished one of my novels. She loved it, but complained that she couldn't get anything done while she was reading it.

I'd love to tell you it's because I'm a once-in-a-generation kind of thriller writer, but really it comes down to the relentless layering of open loops – 120,000 words of questions that need answers.

We've seen that stories get more attention than facts, but the the science goes way deeper than that.

Studies show that audiences focus more and remember more when they have to work for it.

This insight is not just for storytellers, by the way, it's for anyone who creates content.

Hemmingway famously finished each day's work in the middle of sentence.

Smart guy.

He'd learned that the best way to drive his attention back to the blood-soaked typewriter was to leave the sentence unfinis

Why does Rose Walker CHOOSE to go into the water?

Yesterday, I described how two video games – animated pixels on a screen – stopped me like a slap to the face.

They MADE ME care.

How?

Perhaps you cracked the case?

I stopped because both those moments WERE ABOUT ME ... about who I was in that game (and in life).

They were about identity.

In The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin nails the connection:

In 1997, Rose Walker and Jack Dawson sailed into cinemas and became (haha) a titanic success. But, if you step back a little, it's kind of surprising that the movie was ever made.

"A ship sails across a flat sea, hits something, then everyone dies."

But of course, Titanic isn't about the ending – EVERYONE KNEW IT ANYWAY. It's about two people drowning in the roles the world has forced on them.

It's about identity. Who they are AND who they want to be.

That's why we care. That's the key insight for business storytellers. Little cuts deeper into our souls and psyches than who we are.

So if we want people to care, tell them a story about identity – who they are and who they could be.

Just DON'T tell them the whole story ... that's for next time...

Nick

This is Business Storytelling riff 14/30. SHARE and follow me to get the series.

Meet Judy. 

If the FIRST COMMANDMENT of storytelling is 'MAKE ME CARE', she's the bomb.

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My favourite line from Jurassic Park is the god-level understatement that comes at the end.

“Mr. Hammond, after careful consideration, I’ve decided not to endorse your park.”

But if there's one thing we learned from that epic movie ... life will find a way.

Yesterday, we saw the power that stories have over attention, recall and reality – BUT WHY has evolution granted them such special status?

Here's three reasons:

1. Stories Teach Without Risk

Evolutionary psychologists believe that stories are flight simulators of the mind. Think back 1,000 generations. It's safer to listen to your elders talk about hunting buffalo a few times before you try it. Much safer.

People who listened to those stories were more likely to survive.

2. Stories Level-Up Thinking

If we can tell a story, we can test alternatives, judge plans and assess counterfactuals.

When you think about it, decision-making is storytelling, reaching out into the future to simulate what might happen.

People who test alternatives were more likely to survive.

3. Stories Create Culture

Great stories scale. They grow, spread and bring people together. 1,000 generations ago (as now) there was safety in numbers. Stories spread beyond the boundaries of family, friends or tribes. Stories created kingdoms.

And like dinosaurs, the kingdoms ate everyone's lunch.

Which leads nicely back to my second fav Jurassic Park quote:

Ian Malcolm – "God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs." 

Ellie Sattler – "Dinosaurs eat Man. Woman inherits the earth."

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This is Business Storytelling essay 12/30. Please SHARE and follow me to get the whole series.

For a long-time, Back To The Future was my favourite time travel documentary.

It's just ... science.

Marty McFly was short (like me), uncool (like me) ... but still had a great-looking girlfriend.

There we differed.

At 15, I had no girlfriend of any kind.

The movie 'transported' me in the sense I mentioned yesterday. When humans encounter stories that resonate, they become the characters.

This isn't a metaphor.

Nicole Speer and others have shown that stories activate neural representations of visual and motor experiences. When Marty McFly flips his skateboard (okay, that was cool) our brains simulate that action.

In fact, we engage and understand stories by simulating the story world and updating our simulation as things change.

Just like life.

Our brains aren't just watching great stories, they are bathing in Cortisol (stress), Dopamine (motivation) and Oxytocin (love and bonding).

Partly because of this, studies show that stories:

In 2002, J Bruce Moseley – a knee surgeon – operated on 165 patients in a controlled experiment. Half got the knee surgery they were promised, half just got the anaesthetic, the scars and the belief that they'd had the operation.

The relief felt by both groups was the same.

When I tell my clients that people who tell better stories get better lives, I mean it literally.

Stories are powerful ... but why?

Why do our brains take them so seriously?

I'll dig into that (and what it means for business leaders, tomorrow.)

Nick

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It's time to talk about our favourite Christmas movie.

Yesterday, we heard that the first commandment of storytelling is to make people care ... and saw how Andrew Stanton did that with a 22nd century trash compactor.

He made Wall•E like us.

This matters, because we humans are generally selfish, self-obsessed creatures. Evolution made us that way.

We pay more attention to stories and situations that seem to be about us.

Which brings us to Die Hard.

In 1988, John McClane exploded into cinemas. Played by Bruce Willis and his vest, he was the Ghost Of Christmas I-Don't-Give-A-YipeeKayAyyy.

I was 17 at the time, and I loved him. Cool. Funny. Fearless. Exactly who I wanted to be ... but wasn't.

Yes friends, John McClane and I had little in common aside from our stylishly retreating hairlines.

And yet ...

When he ran across the glass strewn floor of Nakatomi Plaza ... I FELT HIS PAIN. The whole audience winced and writhed.

Because we had become him.

It didn't matter that he was impossibly cool, or that few of us have sprinted over broken glass. Everyone has cut themselves. Everyone has struggled with family. Everyone has been shaded by someone with impossibly good diction.

And so, the human side of the story calls out to us and draws us in.

Psychologists call this transportation, the ability of great stories to pulls us into the story world ... to trigger real physical changes in our body and brain.

So what's the takeaway?

Whatever business story you are telling, start by finding the humanity, then use it to build a bridge to your audience.

Nick

Notes: 

Aside from Alan Rickman's final fall and Bonnie Bedelia's hair, Die Hard totally stands up.

This is Business Storytelling essay 10/30. Please SHARE this this follow me to get the whole series.

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For the first 40 minutes of Wall•E, we watch a menial robot – a trash compactor – trundle through an abandoned world.

There is no almost dialogue, and yet we are filled with emotion.

The robot is industrious, creative and desperately lonely.

He gazes up towards the heavens, dreaming of ... what?

Connection?

Companionship?

Love?

Andrew Stanton, the film's creator and director, called this dialogue-free opening the purest form of storytelling.

When I first saw the film, it reminded me of a Doctor Who comic I read when I was 7 or 8. I don't recall the details, but it ended with a robot being abandoned on an empty world, BEGGING not to be left behind.

I remember because I cried, undone by its vast endless loneliness.

Here's the point.

In both these stories, the robots were human.

If they weren't, in some sense, we wouldn't care.

We COULDN'T care, because we wouldn't SEE OURSELVES in them.

And yet, so much business communication – the posts, the press releases, the so-called news – are about organisations, not people.

And we don't give a damn because we can't relate.

Yesterday, I talked about the power of deeply knowing our audience.

Why?

Because until we do, we can't create stories that speak to them, or deliver on Stanton's first and most important story commandment.

"Make me care."

Nick

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Three days ago, I literally jumped with joy ... but I'll get to why in a moment.

First, I want to talk about Iron Man.

In 2008, Jon Favreau's superhero-spy movie exploded into cinemas and lit the fuse on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

How?

With the exception of Sam Rami's Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 – the superhero genre had been patchy at best.

But Favreau represented a different approach.

He wasn't just a director for hire. He was a fan.

He worked for Marvel, not just for some studio who'd optioned the character rights.

He consulted legendary comic book writers.

He created inside jokes and Easter eggs.

He polled comic book fans on who should play Pepper Potts.

(Full disclosure. I voted for Jewel Staite from Firefly ... who would have KILLED it.)

The insight is ... actually ... this leads back to me jumping for joy three days ago.

I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the Playstation, fighting a rogue AI. (Yes. Just an ordinary Wednesday.)

And then it spoke ... with the voice of an angel.

Actually, it wasn't an angel, it was sing-song voice of GLaDOS ... the psychopathic and hilarious antagonist from Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011) talking about cake.

A moment of pure surprise, recognition and joy.

Perhaps, this means nothing to you.

That's fine.

Focus on the lesson beneath.

Because the creators of Cyberpunk 2077 share the (obvious) secret of great storytelling with Jon Favreau.

They KNOW and CARE about their audience.

Deeply.

Nick

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Notes: 

I'm playing the patched PS5 game ... which doesn't suck ... so I'm giving CD Projekt Red a little latitude on the whole 'caring' thing. The point stands.

This is Business Storytelling essay 9/30. Please SHARE this this follow me to get the whole series.

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