Memory and Storytelling: What Makes a Good Story Memorable?

These days, there seems to be an endless supply of online courses to help us all build our skills while we're working from home and limiting our social and travel activities. I, for instance, recently started taking author Neil Gaiman's MasterClass on the Art of Storytelling.

One of the first things he talks about is memory, specifically in the Little Red Riding Hood story. After hearing the story, you come away with a few key lessons: All people might not be as they seem. When people ask you what you're doing, you might want to think twice about how much and who you tell. And some people might be "hairy" (scary) on the outside and some people might be hairy on the inside.

Hearing Gaiman describe this, I had this sort of epiphany moment. When I heard that story as a child, I immediately picked up these facts. They were programmed into my brain, but I never attributed them to Little Red Riding Hood. Granted, maybe there were other influences as well (including my mother saying, "Don't talk to strangers."), but the fact is, I got the data in without the story ever communicating the data directly. It's almost like a memory hack – a storytelling API from one person's memory to another.

I have often thought about storytelling as this kind of brain hack, where you configure certain data to be retained. If you have a good story, you can hack the brain in a way where it doesn't even know that it's remembered a fact. It got me thinking: What role does memory play in storytelling, and how can we tell stories that are memorable enough to stick in our customers' brains?

The importance of memory in storytelling, according to a world-renowned Memory Coach

To answer my questions, I chatted with Mark Channon, a speaker and memory coach who was named one of the very first Grand Masters of Memory in the world. Like all of us here at Go Narrative, Mark understands how important it is to truly connect with an audience and tap into their deepest emotions and desires through storytelling. During his 15-year acting career in the West End and National Theatre, Mark learned how to create massive energy and impact with every performance. Today he inspires others to live a life of impact through his high-performance coaching work.

Below is an abridged version of my conversation with Mark to illustrate the connection between memory and storytelling, and how brands can harness the power of memory to make a lasting impression with their customers and clients.

Go Narrative: Why is remembering important?

Mark Channon: Memory is who you are. It's all those experiences that have happened in the past. Those stories make up your life. They determine what you believe, what you value, the decisions that you make. It really does affect how you act…not just the decisions that you make but what you don't do. People don't do stuff because they think, "I'm not good enough to do that." Memory is a core part of what stops them from doing it, I believe.

GN: You mentioned the negative impact of a lack of confidence – "I can't do it, I don't have a good memory." When you have a crisis of confidence, that gets in the way of your ability to be receptive to learning new things. And those new things you learn could add additional scaffolding to your ability to remember things.

M.C.: I've seen that time and time again…when [people] have confidence in themselves, they are much more likely to become competent.

GN: There's almost a flywheel effect. If you can get some early confidence you might get to confidence quicker, which will help you build your confidence, which will enable you to come back and build additional skills to get even more competent.

M.C.: Yeah, absolutely. It's almost like that starter step, you know? I come from an acting background, so we're in-built to just jump in. Even if you don't actually feel that confident, you go, "OK, I'll probably do enough that I can get by," because you practice how to improvise yourself out of situations.

GN: There are some folks I've come across who claim to teach storytelling and all they teach is acting. As far as business people are concerned, they're teaching presentation skills, which is valuable, but it's not the structures of storytelling. It's not just about how you come across; it's about that entire construct – that confidence, the competence, and the ability to take a complex idea, simplify it, communicate that in a way that will be retained by other people's brains and memories. And of course, that's a key part of why storytelling is so powerful as a tool when it comes to things like business.

M.C.: I completely agree. I'll help people with confidence and presenting, but it's not storytelling. As an actor, you're not writing the script. It's not your craft; that's a different skill set.

When you talk about "scaffolding," as an actor, through that rehearsal process, that audition process, you're building up scaffolding. Some of that scaffolding is around character and some of it is around learning lines. There's way more pressure now on actors to learn lines just because of the quick turnover, self-taping auditions. So I'll do a lot of work with actors on that, using these kinds of memory strategies to build a scaffolding that helps them think clearly about what it is they want to say and why they want to say it.

I always say you're not there to remember the words, you're there to react and be, but have an intention. The words will happen when you have the right thoughts.

GN: I don't know if you've ever read any of [physicist] David Bohm's work, but his whole thesis was around consciousness being a byproduct of not just the biological and chemical processes within the brain, but also the quantum interactions within the brain, and the brain's interactions with the environment that it's in, i.e., the universe.

He talks about the concept of holograms, and how you have information for multiple parts of the hologram in one place. If you look at any part of that hologram, it contains data that represents more than just that one part; they're all interconnected.

Bohm uses this as a metaphor for the brain: You have these different parts of the brain that you might think are separate, but actually it's the interplay between all the connections that result in memory and ultimately, in consciousness.

M.C.: Yeah, I love that. When you think about a story and you hear some other information, it's almost like, when you add the data to it, it sticks. And it sticks because you're thinking about how it connects.

I was a [tap] dancer for years, believe it or not. When I learned these routines, I'd always think about the story of the dance. I let my feet fill in the gaps, the intricacies of what the beats were doing – but there was always a story, and it allowed me to just get there quicker.

You can kind of transfer [that idea] to whatever you want to learn. If you understand the story of something, you can add [the data] together in a weird way, and then you make sense of it. You give it some emotion and then it sticks.

GN: I was imagining all the little movements in your body when you're tap dancing – not just your feet, but the whole body – and there's no way on God's green earth you could ever be conscious about every one of those little tiny things that are happening. It makes me think of, when you're reading a book, every word's important, because, without every word, there's no information. Yet we don't agonize over every single word as we're reading it. We see the bigger picture.

That converts to the idea of storytelling and the data that a story transmits and programs in [your brain]. And that connects deeply with memory. One of the things I teach my clients is that you've got data you want to get across – facts, features, benefits – and the best way to do that is within a story. By telling a story, you create this mechanism to deliver each piece of data. When you put all these things together, you are then able to enjoy it and walk away from the experience remembering something.

M.C.: You're talking about how story "programs" the data [of] your business. Sometimes [with clients], we take a word and go, "Let's have you create a picture that sounds like just the first three letters of the word." They go, "How is that gonna help me remember it?"

Well, if you take 10 of these words and you place them around your room, initially you might not remember what the word is. But if you read it and look at it and then you think about it, that act of thinking makes a connection. You'll find that very quickly, you'll have these 10 words inside your head. Now that picture is not the word, it's just a representation of something.

GN: And the word is not the picture. Yet, their interconnectedness brings it all to life.

M.C.: When you were talking about the hologram idea, I was thinking about it through my lens. Now I'm thinking about stuff that I maybe have read or I'm aware of, and I'm making all these connections – and then that idea sparks off other stories in my mind, which is why I went off into something else. That's what I find fascinating – this fact that stories spark off stories. It's like this domino effect that happens.

GN: We're back to the brain and the neurons firing all around. You took that information and you brought it into this "Story Council" within your mind with all of these memories and stories and constructs. You put the hologram idea in the middle of that and it immediately triggered reactions from the Story Council. "Maybe this is relevant, maybe this will help me remember, maybe there's something here happening." And then it got sucked in it became a part of the Story Council.

I recently read Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens" and I'm currently reading "Homo Deus." In both books, he talks about the Cognitive Revolution about 70,000 years ago, which was this kind of watershed moment for humans. It's where storytelling was born, where culture was born, as well as religion. And as much as I am a massive proponent of storytelling, I can't help but think about the fact that it works because of the biology and the physics that's going on in the brain.

M.C.: Memory techniques can feel very theoretical. And you can get people to a point where you go, "Hey memorize these 20 things or 50 things," and you go, "So what?"

People want to get the juice of it, and I think that's always been my curiosity, my interest when I got started [in memory work]. I was always asking, how do I use it? How do I let people get this into their heads, you know? How do you make that transfer?

It's a massive mindset, and you almost have to forget what you know about memory when it comes to learning. But then, at the same time, people won't make that leap unless you can go, "Here's a technique, here's a model, here's a framework you can use to practice."

One of my basic frameworks – I call it creative memorization – is really born out of the art of memory, which has been around thousands of years. It's the idea that we have fantastic imaginations and if we bring things to life and we connect them – because that's what happens in our brain – we can remember something. And ultimately you have to have things mean something, not just logically but also emotionally. It's what really makes things stick.

GN: Yeah, because you have to care, don't you? When you understand the meaning, you can care about the meaning, and when you care about something, that makes it stickier.

M.C.: And you're also more interested. In fact, that's the first place I start with anyone. It's all about, how do you prime yourself to be interested? We all know that when you're interested it's easier to learn. However, I think the real trick is, how do you get yourself interested in stuff that you don't want to learn but you have to learn?

I use metaphor a lot. It's just a great learning technique, and I'm fascinated by the metaphors people use for their life. I was working with someone the other day and they were like, "I feel like I'm trapped." Whenever I hear someone use a metaphor like that, I always like to follow up with it, like, "Where are you trapped? What does it look like?" They may go, "It feels like I'm behind a wall." And I go, "What happens if you put a door in the wall?" And now suddenly you start to play with this stuff underneath.

I think when people start to raise their awareness of the metaphors they use for themselves, that's where real change can happen. Sometimes I'll do the metaphor thing and they're not even aware that I'm playing with metaphor. And then I'll say, "Do you realize what has happened there?" And they go, "My god, that's so obvious."

Making the connection: How to get your customers' neurons firing with brand stories

Mark's thoughts on the use of metaphor got me thinking about a question we frequently ask our clients here at Go Narrative. We'll ask them about a time they had to explain something complicated that had nothing to do with their work. Maybe it was a hobby, somewhere they went, or maybe they're describing something to a child.

"How did you describe that to them?"

They inevitably say something to the effect of, "What I said was, 'It was kind of like (fill in the blank) – it was kind of like snow melting on a mountain, that freshwater before it trickles down into the streams and the rivers and eventually the ocean.'"

Whether they realize it or not, they're using metaphor, because it works. It makes that connection. Somewhere in that "Story Council" of your listener's brain, you're finding a point of reference with some story that they get. There was a time they went to a mountain, and that means they can start to understand and decode it within their own brain.

This isn't just storytelling; it's story making. You're making a reaction in somebody's brain where they create their own story. You're saying something that will trigger a real story in people's brains that will force them into a position of having to remember it – and that's where some real magic comes in.

It goes back to the very beginning of my conversation with Mark – our memories are who we are. Our experiences and the stories we tell ourselves and others, all those things really do accrue to our place in the world and how we interact within it.

That's why it's so important for us to have a sense of what memory is – so we can be familiar with it so that we can be confident that we can build it. It's a reminder that we've come so far already, and we can go even further.

Story plays a huge part in this, especially in these current trying times. We all need to remember the lessons we've learned during this crisis so we can build on them in the future. The stories you make and tell today – about your challenges, about the new skills you're investing in, about the things you've done to maintain your sanity until you come out the other side – are what will make you memorable to your customers tomorrow.

Ready to start activating your customers' neurons and making connections through stories? Book a complimentary 30-minute consultation with Go Narrative and let's chat about your storytelling strategy.

Go Narrative is a Seattle Based marketing firm that assists business leaders in technology companies build and implement advanced marketing strategies. Our secret sauce is storytelling for business growth and transformation. We can help you cut through the noise and improve your reputation. We love helping business leaders understand, use, and apply storytelling in business via writing, presentations, video, strategy, and actionable plans. Get attention. Be heard. Sell more.

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