Story telling Part 2: The story-house that Jack built
One day Jack wanted to build a story-house. He had great ideas about the decor and where he wanted to put his plasma TV, but he knew he needed a solid foundation before laying the floor or fitting a kitchen. So starting from the bottom, this is the story house that Jack built.
This is the message foundation
That lay on the story-house that Jack built.
Jack remembered that a wise story-builder called John Iving had once said,
“Know your whole story before you fall in love with your first sentence, not to mention your first chapter. If you don’t know the story before you begin, what kind of storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind — making it up as you go along, like a common liar.”
First of all Jack’s foundation had to be very simple and clear, with the one message he wanted to get across to visitors. Otherwise his complicated story would simply be a serious of rooms cobbled together.
One tactic to test himself, was to write his story in a single sentence or a just a few words. So that no matter which angle people looked upon his house they could get a flavour of the meaning and purpose of the house, inside and out.
These are the narrative pillars
That stood on the message foundation
That lay on the story-house that Jack built.
Jack thought long and hard about the different elements of his story. Almost all stories he had read had four elements. CHARACTER, IDEA, WORLD and some sort of EVENT but one was always more important and pronounce, due to the focus of the underlying message.
For example, one of his favourite stories was Gulliver’s Travels. But he knew that the story was not really about Gulliver. Gulliver was just a prop to explore different worlds and to discuss different issues. Really Gulliver’s adventures were WORLD stories. The emphasis lay in the descriptions of those worlds.
Some of the stories Jack knew he had to write were competitor or category landscapes (A world story), target audience stories (Character) selling new media concepts (Idea story) or explaining problems or big challenges (Event story).
So when deciding what type of pillar to focus he considered the following:
Character: It is not what they do, but who they are!
To bring someone to life, he would analyse the data and facts he knew to be true, then put them to one side and attempted to fill in the emotional blanks- what was really important to his characters? A little exaggeration was fine because he was subtly informed by his data.
- What do they believe in, and what do they aspire to?
- How do they challenge themselves and society?
- What worries them and how do they exert their control?
“[The] absence of intimate material is both a problem and an opportunity. I have had to do my best with hints and possibilities…It is hard to please both the historian and the literary critic. The former wonders why you don’t include all the detail- don’t you know it? And the latter wonders why you aren’t more slick; couldn’t you lick history into a more dramatic shame? The art, if there is one, lies in grasping why things happened and then forgetting the reasons.”
Hillary Mantal on writing Wolf Hall
Idea: Think of mysteries, puzzles who-dunnits and QUESTS. Here the story was about seeking information and making discoveries. Jack’s aim was to recreate a sense of puzzlement, interest, wonder and then awe through his story.
- Start by raising a question; end when the question is answered.
- Create tension in the question, explore why it’s worth asking
- How one answer leads to more questions, so development of the quest
Event stories: Where shit happens. Think TRAGEDY, COMEDY, and MONSTER stories
Events are the stuff of life. But Jack knew that a strong contextual build up was vital otherwise no one could appreciate the event as being unusual.
- Something happens that either throws the world into chaos, or provides a solution to a problem that has always existed
- To avoid length and boring build ups to the creation of chaos, Jack’s event stories were viewed through his characters’ eye. And readers as to care about the hero to stick around to see the saving of the world.
- The event story ends when a new order is established.
World stories: VOYAGE AND RETURN, RAGS to RICHES
Richly detailed, often political, or highly imaginative, world stories are how Jack explored his place in the world
- The story would start as his character enters new world, and the end is simply when they returned home or become settled in a new home.
- There were lots of opportunities for sub-stories and characters who personified the history, the politics, the nature of the worlds he wanted to describe.
This is the bridge structure
That lay on the narrative pillars
That stood on the message foundations
That lay on the story-house that Jack built
Will his pillars in place, Jack was aware then, that his structure would not just be a chronological brief template. It wasn’t a timeline but something that really reflected the journey represented by his core message.
Like all good architects, Jack knew that he needed a simple classic structure. And after much deliberation he decided on a bridge structure. (This way he had really two houses and made him feel like a property tycoon.)
There are lots of kinds of suspension bridges so obviously there can be many more pillars but a simple Tower Bridge will do. Two pillars essentially holding up three platforms. He named Pillar one “But” and Pillar 2 “So”.
Jack’s opening platform to reach Pillar But was vital. No one would visit the story house unless they were comfortable and intrigued to walk across platform 1 in the first place. It needed to be attractive, interesting and ultimately something people believed in. If they didn’t believe plank one was safe then the house was a dismal failure as no one would visit.
Plank one is the reason why someone should listen.
“Conventional wisdom of the crowd”, an idea or information that nobody would disagree with. Some examples from the openings of some great IPA award entries…
Stats: “There are more than 300,000 apps in Apple’s UK AppStore. 80% of these are forgotten within a day of downloading.” Depaul UK: iHobo
Quotes: “Analogue switchoff is vastly more complex, with more potential for chaos and consumer revolt than any other civilian project in our history, including North Sea gas conversion and decimalisation.” Digital UK: Leaving no-one behind
Personal Anecdotes: “My good chum Mickey Rourke once said to me “You know, Monkey, the early noughties, like, really, really, REALLY sucked. Really.” Trust me, If this was true for ol’Mick, it was doubly true for me.” PG Tips — the chimp also rises
Pictures: Data visualisation, or print headlines
Questions: “How does a bank increase consideration and drive positive word of mouth at a time when people hate banks?” first direct live
Reaching pillar “But” is a signal that everything was about to change. It is the hook, the reason why readers should stay with the story.
“Buts” can be attractive and they can also be hideous. Ideally they should be Marilyn Monroe shaped. Enticing and seductive. Used to flirt. Not to give it away too soon, only suggestive that solutions or dangers lurk on the horizon (in industry speak this could be a competitor innovation, a price hike in the near future etc.)
- The character is unhappy for a reason (Elizabeth Bennet is insulted by Mr Darcy/ quality, and value tracking suggests there is a problem)
- Where one world is forced to interact with another. (Alice falls down the rabit hole/ brand decides to move into a new category)
- Where the first idea question is posed (Poirot hears of a murder/ should we target only men when we know for a fact women drink our drink too?)
- Something major happens for good or ill where there is no turning back and the world will never be the same again (Romeo meets Juliet/ government legislation completely changes our market)
Then between bridges, layer the evidence. Of course there can be more pillars, additional notes etc. but essentially walk listeners/readers to Pillar “So”.
Pillar “So” is the signal that the conclusion is in sight.
- The detective has pieced the clues together
- The character has an epiphany of spirit and finds their answer.
- The world has been explored and the explorers can start to understand the geography and how the world it’s together and what it means.
- There is a final response to the first event (Romeo and Juliet kill each other)
The conclusion platform is to neatly wrap things up Jack wanted his audience to leave his story-house thinking in a new way or move them to action. Not to leave them hanging (no Sopranos endings!!!).
These are the style ropes
That hang on the bridge structure
That lay on the narrative pillars
That stood on the message foundations
That lay on the story-house that Jack built
Jack knew, having been on many communication styles training, knew that his guests were all kinds of beasts. And that they liked to receive information differently.
- MONKEYS. They get very excited!!! So when telling stories Jack knew they like to jump around so don’t feel a need to be logical. They are very motivated by moving images, people and ideas. Very much want to play and get involved. It is ok to miss steps, they can easily jump over any vague uninteresting points.
- LIONS. They storm through the story and want to be in charge. They are very likely to want to just leap over the evidence and just get to the Pillar So, but they will want to know that all the steps are there in case they want to majestically power their way through all the material. So Jack needed to keep to the point whilst making sure every step was robust.
- OWLS. They want to see EVERYTHING. If they choose to walk across the evidence bridge they will be tentative and will inspect everything. They will also want to truly understand how everything fits together, so Jack anticipated that they would want a bird’s eye view to link everything together.
- HORSES. They usually trot amiably over the bridge in order to make sure everyone else is happy but they could bolt or get scared pretty easily. They are looking out for who else is involved and who also might like a ride over the bridge!
So based on who he thought was coming to visit, Jack built his evidence platform on scrolls, through videos, tweets, detailed reports and visual powerpoint slides so that every guest was happy to walk with him through to the end.
And in this way Jack was able to build many story houses. Each one was furnished differently, but the story house design was the same.
Next: Part Three: If you were to tell a story…
Written for SMG’s 2014 Beyond Digital Week
