How can neuroscience research inspire your storytelling?

An excellent resource to understand this topic is Story Wars about the marketing power of storytelling. Excellent tips to implement!

Emotion is key but to me the suspense and surprise aspect is what keeps your readers engaged. It may sound counterintuitive but this applies to corporate communications as well. Rather than giving it all away in the headline, draw readers in with a question or an invitation. Provide part of the answer in the lede (first paragraph) together with the big picture -- the answer to 'why is this important?' or 'why should I care?' and then build out the story from there. At the end of the story, whether it's about corporate strategy, a new product, or an interview with an employee, the reader should be thinking "Oh, cool! Now I get it!"

Imagine crafting a story where your main character is an electrical designer, who is not just designing a power pole, but safeguarding communities, ensuring that they remain connected and protected against the fiercest of storms. You could highlight the inner turmoil, the pressures, and the small victories that come with each successful design, grounding your narrative in real, tangible emotions, connected intricately with the kind of work you do every day. Here, the calculation of wind direction isn’t just a scientific activity, but a measure of predictability in a world of chaos, a beacon of hope that science and diligence can offer solutions in a turbulent world.

I recommend to support your storytelling efforts by working with psychological models. You can either work with proven ones, such as the limbic system, or even better, develop your own. It becomes a transformational guide to your storytelling strategy!

Evoking emotion is certainly key in effective storytelling to keep the audience engaged. But we have to go deeper than simply creating what we think are relatable characters. A sophisticated audience with limited attention span has to be convinced to stick around. Why should they care about these characters? Show relatable moments that resonate; moments instantly recognisable and yet rarely acknowledged. Add details of how a character navigates a specific world and character weaknesses that will cause difficulties in attaining a set goal. Emotion stems from authenticity. Once we care enough to follow a character on their journey, we are invested emotionally to stay engaged with the message of the story.

We often do this exercise where when we have the story written, we ask the team to retell the story from the perspectives of each character in it. This tells us three things. 1. The same piece of information can be shared differently, hence determining their impact. 2. There is always a part of the story that we miss. Multiple perspectives bring us closer to the totality of that story. 3. We can still choose to tell the story in a particular way, but now at least you will be more aware. Awareness is good for firefighting.

A story can change completely and perceived differently depending upon the point of view from which it is told. A loathed antagonist in someone else's story is the empathized protagonist in his/her own story. When one enters the world of storytelling and sees the same story from different perspective, one becomes more compassionate and less judgmental. That's the beauty of learning storytelling.

One of the main reasons I'm passionate about storytelling in audio is because of the emotional connection created when listening to a story told in images. This takes us out of the "what's going to happen next?" mode that images lead us into, and puts us in a state where we place ourselves in the shoes of the person telling that story. Sometimes I'm driving or biking past a place and immediately a snippet of the podcast or audiobook I was listening to at that corner, weeks or months ago, comes to mind. My brain anchored the emotion I was feeling at the moment I was listening to the podcast.

Wow, the role of perspective in storytelling is absolutely fascinating. From my experience, the perspective from which a story is told can make all the difference in how it resonates with the audience. It's like offering them a lens through which they can view and connect with the narrative. By choosing the right perspective, you can transport your readers or listeners into the very hearts and minds of your characters. This immersion not only makes the story more engaging but also helps them truly empathize with the founders' / customers' journey and the startups' narrative. It's akin to turning storytelling into a vivid, shared experience. ?

I was quite astonished when I was taught that the structure of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth applies not only to tales of brave heroes and damsels in distress but also to any Hollywood story. Romantic comedies, too, follow the hero's journey. Many people think that in a story, the hero is the one who "wins" in the end, who achieves what they want. But a story where the hero goes on a mission and, in the end, gets everything they wanted is a bad story. Stories were invented thousands of years ago as a way to share knowledge. The hero is not the one who slays the dragon and takes the treasure; it's the one who is transformed by the journey.

I recommend to follow the structure of Hollywood Hit Movies: 1. The Setup: The hero's world before the adventure. 2. The Conflict: The hero's world is turned upside-down. 3. The Resolution: How the hero's world is transformed.

I don't write screenplays, movies, or fiction. I'm interested in moving people to action through story, so I take a different approach. My goal is to make it as easy as possible for my audience to make the meaning I intend. In real-life, an uncomplicated, straight-forward, Before --> Challenge --> CHANGE --> Resolution --> After structure will serve you well.

If you have a point, make the point as soon as you can. There is no need to circle around unless that's the point you are trying to make. One must understand the importance of the structure in a story. Humans love plots, and those plots cannot be linear. If there is conflict, there must be a resolution. Audiences are smart, they would anticipate when you are trying to lead them to something in your story. You can either do that and make them happy, or you can give them that moment in the story not when they expected it the most. They will be happier. Surprise stick to the stories like no other thing. One must know the grammar and structure of the storytelling before attempting to break it.

The way a story starts often sets the stage for all that's to follow. Structure, while important, can be thrown to the winds if the story involves thrill, mystery, or action. For more conventional story-telling, a linear narrative works best --- introduction, body/conflict, followed by resolution/outcome/catharsis.

Decades ago, I moved from Rio de Janeiro to NYC to work at a technology company. I had never lived outside my hometown, and until a few years prior, I was still living with my parents. After a while, my boss turned to me and said, "You've been here for 3 months; we need to do your performance evaluation." I was shocked. How had it only been 3 months since I started this new life? It's because each day brought new experiences that my brain had to process, understand, and store. From the smell of the city to the subway routes, not to mention the foreign language. Much of our brain's work is to seek changes in the environment and make decisions based on that.

Is there any idea that's truly original anymore? Reel and real lives are replete with me-too models. When a unique idea is introduced to audiences, it creates an indelible impression. Striving for novelty can at once be a worthy endeavour or completely pointless one since truly original stories are super hard to come by. And yet, a fleshed out story that checks all the essential boxes, may do supremely well even if it utilises some hackneyed tropes.

Be open to expressing yourself, the honesty and vulnerability as a storyteller will elevate your originality, believability, and novelty. Consistency with this approach will have you accepted by your audience, even when you are taking them on a fantasy land journey, they will still believe you. The power of great stories is that they never try to be like any other story. They built their foundations from where they stood. The most memorable stories depart from the point of truthfulness, even if that truth is subjective.

This is one of the most misunderstood topics related to storytelling. Attention is cheap. A buzzing phone. A barking dog. A knock on the door. All steal your attention. If you are competing for attention, you'll lose to the barking dog every time. The same people who say our attention spans are getting shorter will binge a season of their favorite show on Netflix. The goal isn't attention. It's interest. If you have someone's interest, they'll come back to you after the buzz, bark, and knock. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing is more interesting to us than ourselves. If you show how your story will make someone else's life better, easier, less painful, you'll never have to fight for attention again.

"Writing is rewriting" and "Kill your darlings" are some of the most truthful clichés for storytellers. Every word should move your story forward, and this becomes increasingly necessary in the age of the Attention Economy, where we are surrounded by stimuli trying to convince us that this new piece of information deserves our focus. A very useful technique in these times of divided attention is to have "signposts" throughout your story, reminding the audience from time to time why we are telling this story, what has already been said, and what comes next.

If your story is great and your storytelling skills sharp, you will not worry about attention spans. Good stories, and by virtue of those, good storytellers always find their niche whether they are doing long format stories or 30-second reels. The fundamentals of storytelling will never change.

This is one of our biggest challenges as storytellers. And unfortunately social media and our "current 24/7-scrolling-culture" don't help with building productive attention spans. Building emotion often takes longer than a few minutes but when you do it right you can make a lasting impact. That's the Holy Grail!

From a marketing perspective, this is where visuals play a critical role in storytelling. How often have you looked at a photo or watched a short clip of video and had an emotional response to it? There are many ways you can utilize creative assets to help capture and captivate your audience.

For most of history, human survival depended on our ability to remember and pass on stories. Every other creature has to learn things for themselves. Dogs don't have a school where they learn the best ways to get treats. They have to observe patterns & experience treat-giving/treat-denial for themselves. But humans? We're different. We are designed to learn from one another. I can learn what is safe to eat, where to find water, how to avoid being eaten by a tiger, what to do when it rains, and where to build shelter through stories. Storytelling allows me to learn from your experience without suffering your pain. I'm not sure whether our neuroscience adapted to our stories or the other way around, but stories work in our brains.

Even though I'm an author, I think the focus on storytelling, especially in business, can sometimes be too much. I often see attempts to turn everything into a story, and it doesn’t always work. It can leave people confused and without learning anything. If you have more than three points to make, think about framing it as a story; otherwise, just present the information clearly and simply.

There’s always opportunity to incorporate story even if it doesn’t look like or read like a story. You can argue a chart isn’t a story but the data can be used to convey a story.

What do we want to achieve in our writing? What do we want our readers to learn as a result? Those answers should dictate the decisions we make in our storytelling; if a story is even the appropriate way to achieve our goals.