The shape and the structure of a story

Dear Data,

Point well made in your last letter on visuals that tell a story.

Got me thinking about what really goes behind crafting a narrative. Is is just art, just words, just creativity or is there some science to it?

From Pixar's rules of storytelling to Paul Smith's "Lead with a story" there are many fascinating explanations. The essence of it - that while stories could be endless, there are commonly understood and repeated structures that are the bedrock of stories.

Personally, I love this one.

Master storyteller?Kurt Vonnegut, in his largely forgotten academic thesis, created something called an universal shape of a story where the?main character has ups and downs that can be graphed to reveal the taxonomy of a story, as well as something about the culture it comes from.

He identified quite a few of these shapes of stories and gave them interesting names as well from "Man in Hole" to "Creation Myth" and "Which Way is Up" to "Cinderella" and "From Bad to Worse" and more.

The basic premise was simple. What if the journey of the main character in the story could be graphed, over time. X axis representing time, as it always does and the Y axis representing the fortune of the main character. Just this understanding can give rise to multiple story arcs or plot structures.

And some of these are quite relevant today to the stories we tell in business.

Let's take two of these - Man in Hole and Creation Myth.

In the Man in Hole structure, the character starts from a point of good fortune and then falls into the metaphorical hole and then emerges out of it as the resolution of the story.

On the other hand, in the creation myth structure, the fortune of the main character starts from a low point. And then step by incremental step, the character improves their fortune and emerges into a new world of good fortune altogether.

Where's the application of these structures?

Well, first of all, deconstructing the structures, what is clear is that stories have essentials. The character(s) we can root for. The end goal/treasure/result which the character wants to reach. The urgency of the story. And the conflict or obstacle that makes their journey more relatable, keeping the treasure, just out of reach, till the end resolution.

In many of the real-life communication we engage in business - our startup strategy, our annual business plan, our project update, we may/may not be comfortable telling individual stories. But the story structure is definitely something that can help sharpen our conversation and help build a clear narrative.

For example, say are we solving for the unemployment problem. It's the classic man in hole structure where the problem is well-known. But, people may not believe yet in a new solution. Now, say we are solving it for a specific segment of people (our chosen character: women who may not have college degrees) with a specific solution (our solution: micro entrepreneurship skilling) that solve for our character's conflict (lack of availability of post degree jobs). Then highlighting the character, their specific conflict and our unique solution of the story becomes more critical for our story to land/connect with our audience.

On the other hand, imagine speeches by world leaders such as Martin Luther King's freedom speech or Steve Job's iconic iPhone introduction speech. The structure of these speeches align with the creation myth story shape where these leaders first paint a clear picture of the world that is, with all of its problems, be it lack of freedom or lack of smart phones and then show a vivid vision of the world that could be, a world that they, the visionaries have seen - a world of freedom, and of iPhones respectively. And we believe that they are the ones who can take us to this beautiful world.

In these cases, people may not yet be aware yet of the problem itself, or its urgency. Hence aligning people to that vision is important, before speaking about solution or conflict. Could climate change fall in this category? Or breakthrough new innovations? You tell me.

Maybe choosing the right shape of our stories coupled with real insights from data as you mentioned, could help us emerge as better storytellers.

But, let's not oversimplify. There's danger in storytelling too. Why don't you tell me how you look at that, in your next letter?

Love,

Story