The Importance of Narrative To Everything

Everyone enjoys a good story. I'm sure it's not news to most of you that narrative is important in communicating ideas. But maybe it’s even more important, and prevalent, than you realize.

This blog is designed to remind both myself and other creative types that story is something that exists at multiple levels (and is the blogification of a powerpoint presentation I gave at Wizards a few years ago to an inhouse "better game practices" group).

If you're aware of story, you can use it to your advantage in nearly every creative endeavor.

For instance, a picture can tell a story, but not all pictures are created equal. Some pictures tell stories better than others. That sentence essentially defines an art director’s job; which picture best tells an exciting story?

Which Picture Is Better? 
For many people, the picture on the right is a more engaging picture. (Image is from the cover of the excellent novel Fall of Highwatch by Mark Sehestedt.)

Why? Because the added context allows us to tell a story in our head: Who’s this guy stalking across the tundra, does the woman he’s approaching welcome him, fear him, or want to kill him?

To me it looks like she’s uncertain, and hasn’t yet decided whether the guy is friend or foe. And what’s the guy's deal, and his strange power of the arctic cats? All these story threads engage our attention.

So, What Is A Story?
A story is an arrangement of words and/or images that create life-like characters and events. How a storyteller describes and arranges descriptive events determines how well an audience's attention is engaged.

To sustain that interest, the action of a story often moves towards the resolution of some human need: to feel loved, to be in control of one's life and fate, to avenge wrongs, to overcome obstacles, or to discover and understand the meaning and purpose of life.

In a nut shell, a story re-creates real life in miniature, or in a new context.

What Do People Get Out of Stories? 
By experiencing events in a story, the audience experiences a bit of "life" that can seem more potent and "true" than real life.

Someone experiencing a story can briefly get what they want if they really believe, discover that true love exists, experience inexplicable and fantastic events, and even discover that pain and chaos do have a meaning (as opposed to how in real life, pain, chaos, and loss often seem senseless).

As a story's protagonist resolves issues, the story's audience can experience courage, redemption, rebirth, renewal, overcoming oppression, and so on. A story thrills the audience, and allows someone to live safely outside their own skin without actually having to experience true inconvenience of changing their real lives.

Story As A Tool
Now that we've been reminded of some of the reasons story has power over us, take a look at how story can be used in other contexts. Like advertisements! Good ads have a story to tell. A story resonates with people in one of the ways just described. People remember ads with a good, interesting, or funny story.

This ad ("They Laughed When I sad Down At the Piano. But When I Started To Play") ran for decades essentially unchanged, largely unheard of in the fast-paced world of advertising. Why?

Because it tells a story, engaging the reader's own interest in personal attention and recognition.

Stories in Retail Window Displays
Another example of how narrative is put to good use in ads is in retail window displays.

Barney's has learned to distinguish itself by telling stories in the retail space, a tactic that engages the passerby by engaging the brain's story "circuitry."

But even the merchandize itself can “tell a story.” Storytelling has become buzzword in the world of fashion and branding. Even in labeling: a huge label tells the story of where the fabric comes from, what quality of the dirt the cotton was grown in, the nature of the fabric, its durability, and so on.

Anecdotes: The Power To Influence
Listen to any news program, and pretty soon you’ll hear the thread of a single person come to the fore. A single person's story about how the event affected their life, what they had to go through, and how they emerged different.

Listen to any politician stump, and they’ll try to sway you by telling you the story of some particular person who is suffering with the status-quo, of how that person's life could be improved if only policies were improved. For example, maybe you've heard a politician describe how they’ve recently heard from a "Mom in Michigan," who’s working two jobs to make ends meet, but it just isn’t enough, how one of her son's was wounded in Afghanistan, and how her daughter wants to start college, but there just isn’t money. The politician will promise an answer for this Mom in Michigan. One that’s going to bring her a –Resolution To Her Issues!

Just as all good stories should include. Because stories get inside people’s heads. Stories trigger brain chemistry. Anecdotes are not data—stories do not denote an overall truth, but our brains are programmed to treat a particular anecdote out of all proportion to its importance in a wider world.

The Power of Narrative Over The Brain
Data loses out to anecdote, sometimes even when we're aware of this particular human foible. Facts are easy; and easily forgotten. But stories resonate, they make connections, and thus are easily remembered! Why?

Mnemonics are usually are tiny stories you tell yourself to help fix information in your brain. One of the most common mnemonic is using representative visual images, like a microphone to remember the name “Mike,” a rose for “Rosie.” It's best to use positive, pleasant images, because the brain often blocks out unpleasant stories. Likewise, make these representations vivid, colorful, and three-dimensional — they’ll be easier to remember because we all like a good story.

Want Savant-Level Memory? Tell Yourself A Better Story!
Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky (1886–1958), was a Russian journalist with a seemingly unlimited memory (1968), in part due to his fivefold synesthesia.

“S” had a memory with no distinct limits by any method of testing devised. He could memorize complex mathematical formulas, huge matrices and even poems in foreign languages and did so in a matter of minutes. He used mnemonics.

When thinking about numbers he reported: “The number 1 is a proud well-built man; 2 is a high-spirited woman; 3 a gloomy person; 6 a man with a swollen foot; 7 a man with a moustache; 8 a very stout woman—a sack within a sack. As for the number 87, what I see is a fat woman and a man twirling his moustache.”

His ability to devise mnemonics were aided immensely by his 5-fold synesthesia. So, yeah, S had a great advantage—the stories would just sort of come to him and engage all his senses, not just one or two senses like for most of us.

This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain On Stories
When stories are read to subjects in an fMRI machine (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), interesting patterns of brain activation are observed by researcher Herbert Wray, who notes (paraphrased):

Motor neurons flash when characters grasp objects, and neurons involved in eye movement activate when characters navigate their world.

Readers are not passive consumers of words and stories. Taking in a story is much like remembering or imagining a vivid event.

So a hearing/viewing a story is sort of like really being there. No wonder stories affect our minds so powerfully, and ring true where mere fact devoid of context has such a hard time swaying its intended audience.

What Does It all Mean?
Ultimately, nothing mindblowing. This collection of annecdotes affirms that the better story you craft for your book, for your artwork, for your marketing effort, your article, your speech, or for your mnemonic, the better success you'll have. A story has many elements: plot, theme, character, setting, structure, and style. Any one of these elements, if approached with fresh energy, can set a story apart. But no story can succeed without the most important ingredient: character.

And that character, my friends, might just be you.

Does Your Inner Voice Like Pie? How About Cosmology?

Our new neighbors Helen and Matt brought us a homemade rhubarb pie as a housewarming gift. What fabulous neighbors!

However, making the pie touched off something of an epiphany for Helen, which she related to us a week later when we returned the pie plate with a return-pie in it (made by Batgirl). Helen also wrote it up in her blog, which I think everyone who's got a critical inner voice might enjoy:

Recently I baked a rhubarb pie as a gift. It went down a treat for my new neighbors. In return, today they brought back my pie plate with a beautiful berry pie baked in it. In between I had a bit of a revelation about Pi. [Click to read Helen's Pi blog entry]

Which reminded me of a similar revelation I had a couple of years ago. In my case, it wasn't pie that touched off my train of thought about the insidious nature of an over-critical inner voice, it was a pile of Time-Life books:

Last night I was packing up some books—a bunch of 80s era books on stars, planets, and cosmology—that I haven’t looked at since I was a kid. I pondered giving them all to Good Will, but something nagged me. It took a moment to pin the thought down, but it was essentially: “You’re the kind of person that would own these books, so you better keep them.

Really? [Click to read my blog entry Your Story]

Both these blog posts approach the same thing: recognizing whether you have an over-critical inner voice, and by recognizing it, taking the first steps to shushing it.

BOOK REPORT: Predictably Irrational, the Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Were you an evil mastermind, you’d use the insights in Predictably Irrational to manipulate the behavior of others to do as you wished.

That's my one sentence blurb on the book. A somewhat longer (but by no means exhaustive) overview of the book follows.

Key Insights Of Predictably Irrational 
    1) Relativity
    2) Decoys, Anchors, and Ownership
    3) Power of Expectations

Relativity
Decisions can’t be made in a vacuum. Without context, we can’t choose. Which means that when we do make decisions, that decision is made relative to a related piece of information. What that related information is shapes the decision that follows. It can’t logically be otherwise.

Decoys, Anchors, and Ownership 
Someone who understands the relative nature of decision making can design related information that serves as either a decoy or an anchor.

A decoy is designed to make us compare something the decoy-setter wants us to do, think, or buy with something else that seems like a worse action, philosophy, or deal.

An anchor sets an expectation, and as such it is a kind of decoy. It is usually a presented as a price, giving the would-be buyer a sense of how much something should cost. A high price for a bottle of wine on a menu conditions the buyer to be more willing to spend more for any wine bought. A feeling of ownership is a particularly pernicious anchor.

A feeling of ownership magnifies the perceived value of an item, a story or piece of art, or even a concept or ideology over the ACTUAL value of the item by at least an order of magnitude in the “owner’s” mind.

Power of Expectations
Expectations influence not only psychology, but also physiology, like a placebo. For example, when people expect an aspirin to make them feel better, they begin to feel better even if the actual tablet given is a sugar pill. When people expect to be fed, they salivate. When they expect a particular outcome, they are more likely to ignore indications that other outcomes are possible. When people are asked to recall the 10 commandments or any code of ethics before taking a test, they do not cheat even if cheating is easy.

Summary 
This book offers a trove of psychological truths of interest to anyone with a human brain. It's useful both in understanding some of your own irrational instincts, as well as those of others.

For instance, the book describes how people are drawn to keeping all options open, despite that bad consequences usually follow from keeping all options open too long. It’s true in life, such as when keeping too many romantic partners available instead of concentrating on the one most likely to bring lasting happiness. #SFWApro

Your Story

Time-Life "Voyage Through The Universe"

Last night I was packing up some books—a bunch of 80s era books on stars, planets, and cosmology—that I haven’t looked at since I was a kid. I pondered giving them all to Good Will, but something nagged me. It took a moment to pin the thought down, but it was essentially: “You’re the kind of person that would own these books, so you better keep them.”

Really? What an odd thought. Who was I trying to impress with my (probably out-of-date) books on stars and planets, if not myself? If I was the kind of person who would own such books, you’d have thought I would have pulled one down to peruse during the last decade. Sure, in a pre-web era, I would have, but knowledge isn’t confined to dead trees any more, and . . . Well, the books ended up in the Good Will box.

That incident and a few other recent events made me realize how much a victim to our sense of “what other people think” many of us are. Have you ever wondered explicitly (or vaguely), “What will people think?” as you pondered doing, saying, trying, or arranging something different? Did the answer to that question influence your action in some way? If you’re a human being, then of course the answer is yes.

But just who are these people we’re so concerned with?

From an early age we’re taught what’s right and wrong. But for every one of society’s codified rules, there are a dozen unspoken guidelines that insinuate themselves into our gray matter. Society teaches us that it’s “right” to comb our hair, to buy a house, to get a 9-5 job, to get married, to have kids, and so on and on . . .

And at some point, we internalize “what people think” into ourselves, so that “society” becomes one more tiny voice in the chorus of personality fragments that make up each of us.

This can be slightly insidious if we don't recognize it, because our sense of ourselves, our very consciousness and self-awareness, is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Or so some people who study language’s effect on the brain believe. If true, then it follows that we not only want to create a story that's pleasing to ourselves, but one that's pleasing to others too. But others do not . . . How can I say this?

Let me put it baldly. For the most part, unless you’re breaking a law or a heart, other people don’t care.

Oh sure, they care, but not to the degree you might think they do. Other people are not you. And unless your particular decision directly affects someone, people in general don’t have to live with (or without) the decisions you make. And trust me, after their initial reaction, they won't give your particular decision hardly another thought until the next time they see you. They’re living their own lives, wrapped up in their own stories they’re telling themselves. As they should be!

Not all the decisions we make are as ultimately unimportant as whether we keep some dusty old books. But the point remains: Make decisions for yourself, not for the sake of what you believe “society” or some constructed version of yourself would have you do.

Also, if you’re looking for some Time-Life books on stars and planets, I know where you can get some cheap.

A Wider Perspective

I have an acquaintance who often rails about Democrats and their evil schemes to "socialize" America. This fellow is retired and draws benefits from Medicare, Social Security, and a pension his union helped negotiate for him.

Hmm, remind me, which side of the political spectrum did the former two programs originate, and from which side of the political spectrum is the latter most supported by?

But, come the election this fall, he's voting McCain, baby!

When I ask him if he's OK with the mess the last 8 years of Republican rule has caused, he and his wife say, "What're you talking about? We're doing fine." Meaning him and his wife.

I think that response defines parochial. He is getting by, which means he sees no reason to "change teams" after all these years. To do so would, to his way of thinking, somehow invalidate himself.

The thing is, he's not doing fine. Most immediately noticeably: he can't go see his grandkids as often as he'd like because of high gas prices. He can't sell his house for the price he'd like because of the mortgage industry crash. And his savings are being drained by health issues, despite his Medicare, because of a lack of a comprehensive single-payer health care plan. But he's doing fine.

Ok, but what about those grandkids? The administration has only contributed to plummeting test scores with its moronic 'No Child' initiative, which forces educators to teach to tests as opposed to allowing educators even the potential to teach kids how to reason.

The administration's disastrous War Against Terror sent us into Iraq on a pack of lies, the repercussions of which we have been and will continue to deal with for a long time. Not least being how America's reputation has been punked. And don't get me started on the money we've thrown into this fiasco, billions of which have simply disappeared with no accounting. Billions of dollars of money sapped from our paycheks--gone!

And finally, my perpetual cause: the ecosystem that generates the air we breath and the food we eat. The Republican administration of the last 8 years has waged a war on the science that underlies strategies to save it. Why? So the administration's friends and supporters can make a buck, that's why.

Though my acquaintance may not live to reap the repercussions of our failure to get on board with saving the planet, his grandchildren certainly will.

From my point of view, he's not doing fine. From a wider perspective, it seems to me he might be in trouble.

Obama Hero Worship

I think our species' instinctual desire to put others upon pedestals is a flaw we'll have to overcome. It is one of the reasons we had to suffer through a second term for George Bush despite all his demonstrated failures to lead the free world in a positive direction. Too many people were unwilling to give up their earlier formed idealized version of Bush.

Though I'm behind Obama, I don't want to fall into the trap of becoming a blind supporter. I don't want to engage in hero worship or fall sway to celebrity. That said, I will offer respect where due.

Anyhow, I just watched this video. It's quite cool, but I urge you to watch it while keeping in mind just how celebrity and hero worship come naturally, perhaps genetically, to us. (Thanks T Heck for passing this video on.)