Wired for Story: Four Elements for Telling Stories That Stick
Element 1: Relatability
We’re a giant planet on narcissists.
Our brains are averse to concepts that are too foreign. It’s hard to get comfortable enough to invest in a story that’s too out there or that we can’t see a bit of ourselves in.
For us to accept the unfamiliar -- we need some familiar things to make us care.
And the more relatable, the more likely we are to get pulled in.
Take for example villains.
Even though we might hate the bad guy in the story, the villains that fascinate us are usually the ones that we can see a little bit of ourselves in.
Carl Jung calls this our “shadow.” His research shows that we tend to loathe people who embody the things we don’t like about ourselves.
Who are some villains you loved?
Why did you love them?
What or who is the villain in the story you're trying to tell? Is there a way to humanize them?
Element 2: Novelty
Novelty: the balance point of familiarity.
Here’s a dolphin. We love dolphins, right? But this one’s pink. It’s weird and it freaks us out a little bit but we also love it. Why? Because it’s new.
Dr Düzel said this about how novelty motivates us:
“When we see something new, we see it has a potential for rewarding us in some way. This potential that lies in new things motivates us to explore our environment for rewards. The brain learns that the stimulus, once familiar, has no reward associated with it and so it loses its potential. For this reason, only completely new objects activate the midbrain area and increase our levels of dopamine.”
Element 3: Tension
Jack and Jill lived next door to each other and their parents were friends. They grew up, fell in love, got married, and everyone was fine.
This story is a total snoozefest - why? There’s no tension.
The opposite of a boring love story is Romeo & Juliet. Their families hate each other. They have to keep their love secret. There’s poison involved.
Many things can go wrong -- and showing your audience that tension makes a story extremely powerful.
Element 4: Fluency
Fluency means flow, seamless, smooth, ease.
Fluency is the reason Ernest Hemingway is a more widely celebrated writer than Proust.
Hemingway sentence:
Courage is grace under pressure.
Proust sentence:
"Their honour precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; their position unstable, like that of the poet who one day was feasted at every table, applauded in every theatre in London, and on the next was driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head, turning the mill like Samson and saying like him: "The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart!"; excluded even, save on the days of general disaster when the majority rally round the victim as the Jews rallied round Dreyfus, from the sympathy--at times from the society--of their fellows, in whom they inspire only disgust at seeing themselves as they are, portrayed in a mirror which, ceasing to flatter them, accentuates every blemish that they have refused to observe in themselves, and makes them understand that what they have been calling their love (a thing to which, playing upon the word, they have by association annexed all that poetry, painting, music, chivalry, asceticism have contrived to add to love) springs not from an ideal of beauty which they have chosen but from an incurable malady…………. This goes on for another five minutes of reading. You get the point.
This concept of fluency is especially important for design researchers.
To connect with decision makers, you need your research and/or story to FLOW, not get stuck on the grainy details and data. You can (and perhaps should) always attach those details in an email after the initial meeting.
You all probably write naturally at a 9th grade level. Try to write (and present) at a fourth grade reading level and see what friction that presents for you, and what ease it allows for your audience.
Happy writing, UXers!