The Art of Storytelling: The Mechanics of a Great Story

a tourist is uh backpacking through the highlands of scotland and he stops at a pub to get a drink and the only people in there is a bartender and an old man nursing a beer and he orders a pint and they sit in silence for a while and suddenly the old man turns to him and goes you see this bar i built this bar with my bare hands found the finest wood in the county gave it more love and care than my own child but do they call me mcgregor the bar builder no points out

the window you see that stone wall out there i built that stone wall with my bare hands found every stone placed them just so through the rain and the cold but do they call me mcgregor the stonewall builder no points out the other window you see that pier on the lake out there i built that pier with my bare hands drove the pilings against the tide of the sand planked by plank but did they call me mcgregor the pier builder no but you one goat storytelling is joke-telling it's knowing your punchline your ending knowing that

everything you're saying from the first sentence to the last is leading to a singular goal and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings we all love stories we're born for them stories affirm who we are we all want affirmations that our lives have meaning and nothing does a greater affirmation than when we connect through stories it can cross the barriers of time past present and future and allow us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others real and imagined the children's television host mr rogers always carried

in his wallet a quote from a social worker that said frankly there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story and the way i like to interpret that is probably the most greatest story commandment which is make me care please emotionally intellectually aesthetically just make me care we all know what it's like to not care you've gone through hundreds of tv channels just switching after channel after channel and then suddenly you actually stop on one it's already halfway over but something's caught you and you're drawn in and you care that's not

by chance that's by design andrew stanton is one of the most famous storytellers in hollywood his movies toy story finding nemo and wally to name but a few have become blockbusters and have probably revolutionized the way we view and perceive animated character films their incredible narrative is not based on luck nor was it a momentary inspiration andrew stanton while writing these stories knew exactly where to focus on and how to make them successful in his own words he actually knew how to care like andrew stanton i did not decide to start this video with a

recount of his story by chance i wanted to actually find a concrete way to introduce you to the power of storytelling for i hold the conviction that storytelling is a skill every single one of us ought to understand and eventually to cultivate i will try to illuminate the essence of a great story by narrating a modified excerpt from the short story shahir azad by the great novelist haruki murakami when i was young i loved listening to my grandfather tell me stories i didn't know whether his stories were true invented or partly true and partly invented

i had no way of knowing reality and supposition observation and pure fancy seemed jumbled together in his narratives i therefore enjoyed them as a child might without even asking too many questionings what possible difference could it make to me after all if they were lies or truth or a complicated patchwork of the two whatever the case my grandfather had a gift for storytelling that touched me in my heart no matter what sort of story it was he managed to make it special his voice his timing and his spacing were all flawless enthralled i was able

to forget the reality that surrounded me if only for a moment like a blackboard wiped with a damp cloth my worries were erased as were unpleasant memories at this point in my life this kind of forgetting was what i desired more than anything else the essence of a great story is its ability not only to make you care as andrew stanton stated but also to make you forget forget your worries your problems even your pain the story helps you enter a new magical world that is extremely appealing the person who helps you achieve such a

thing automatically becomes extremely appealing too so why is this actually happening what kind of process occurs in our brains that can help us experience all of the feelings evoked by great story let's say you are in a meeting room and you have to attend a powerpoint presentation by one of your colleagues during this process two parts of your brain the broca's area and the vernicas area are activated these are the language processing areas which help us decode words and determine meaning other than that they don't do anything therefore when this process takes place alone it's

almost impossible for our brains to feel engaged with the speaker and we consequently lose interest when we are being told the story however things change dramatically not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated but so is any other area of our brain that we would use to experience the events of the story in essence you're not just listening to a story you're making yourself part of it yuri hasson associate professor of psychology at princeton university in one of his papers states when we narrate stories that have had a huge impact on our

lives we can pass the feeling we have experienced to other people too during a research study when the narrator spoke english the volunteers understood her story and their brain synchronized when she had activity in her insulin which is an emotional brain region the listeners did too when her frontal cortex lit up so did theirs by simply telling a story the woman could plant ideas thoughts and emotions into the listeners brains so anything you have experienced you can help others experience the same thing or at least activate the same brain areas in them that were activated

during your experience storytelling is an essential part of communication it is the most effective way to learn digest information become energized be influenced and get carried away although it seems quite challenging to master the art of storytelling when you manage to understand the main principles of a great story you are in a position to deconstruct them and build a system off of them my storytelling system is called see you and it is inspired by andrew stanton's ted talk as well as countless interesting stories i have heard and read the main pillars of the system are

as follows stick to a central theme evoke wonder embrace change use personal experience as andrew stanton states all well-drawn characters within a story have a spine this is their inner motor a dominant unconscious goal that they are striving towards a niche that they cannot scratch michael corleone for instance in the godfather was driven by a constant underlying theme which was to please his father it consumed his entire life and it was visible throughout the movie when you're telling a story whether you want to draw on details from your personal experiences or from somewhere else try

to be congruent with your theme is your story about existential angst is your story about the struggle of being human is it about the depth of your emotional or intellectual world whatever your theme and its emotional underpinning make sure that it prevails throughout the story this is what keeps people engaged and helps them resonate with your emotional world and that's what i think the magic ingredient is the secret sauce is can you invoke wonder wonder is honest it's completely innocent it can't be artificially evoked for me there's no greater ability than the gift of another

human being giving you that feeling to hold them still just for a brief moment in their day and have them surrender to wonder when it's tapped the affirmation of being alive reaches you almost to a cellular level and when an artist does that to another artist it's like you're compelled to pass it on it's like a dormant command that's suddenly activated in you like a call to devil's tower do unto others what's been done to you the best stories infuse wonder let me repeat his words so you can realize the profanity of what he just

said managing to hold your audience still for just a brief moment in their day and have them surrender to wander is a skill that when performed correctly can reach you to an almost cellular level a great example of a person who manages to evoke wander in his speeches is dr jordan peterson here is a small clip that signifies that beauty is so valuable and we're so afraid of it and i think we're afraid of it because it does it's a pathway it's not the only pathway to the divine i mean there's a lot there's pathways

to the divine love is one of them i suppose but beauty especially for people who have an affinity for beauty it's it's like music it's one of those things that you can't argue against right you can't even understand it just hits you and and it does it shows you well it shows you the ideal that's one way of thinking about it but it also shows you i think it's like a vision of the potential future it's something like that as well that if we just got our act together and beautified things that that's the place

that we can inhabit and that would ennoble us and that's why this jerusalem the heavenly city is paved with gemstones you know they're crystalline they emit light and yeah it's the proper dwelling place for an enlightened consciousness beauty is the proper dwelling place for an enlightened consciousness and we we ignore it at our spiritual and economic peril it's like it's obvious that beauty there's almost nothing more valuable than beauty he has this incredible ability to talk about big ideas and attempt to answer life-defining questions just by choosing topics that can speak to our unconscious mind

and help us feel immediately engaged wonder is strongly associated with themes that are not commonly experienced in our everyday lives or with situations that flirt with the idea of the extraordinary and are difficult to achieve whenever you want to spice up your story with wonder try to think of events where the protagonist exceeded the expectations of his or her surroundings and accomplish something beautiful and extraordinary so we're all learning all the time and that's why change is fundamental in story if things go static stories die because life is never static in 1998 i had finished

writing a toy story in a bug's life and i was completely hooked on screenwriting so i wanted to become much better at it and learn anything i could so i researched everything i possibly could and i finally came across this fantastic quote by a british playwright william archer drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty it's an incredibly insightful definition when you're telling a story have you constructed anticipation in the short term have you made me want to know what will happen next but more importantly have you made me want to know how it will all conclude

in the long term have you constructed honest conflicts with truth that creates doubt in what the outcome might be an example would be in finding nemo in the in the short tension you were always worried would dory's short-term memory make forget whatever she was being told by marlon but under that was this global tension of will we ever find nemo in this huge vast ocean change and anticipation is what makes us crave for more andre stanton knows that pretty well and at some point he makes this excellent comment make the audience work for their meal

give them just enough so that they want to find out more humans are born problem solvers we are compelled to deduce and to deduct because this is what real life actually looks like it is this well-organized absence of information that will draw us in give your audience a two plus two in a story never give them a four the elements you provide and the order you place them in is crucial to whether you will succeed or fail in engaging with your audience use what you know draw from it doesn't always mean plot or fact it

means capturing a truth from your experiencing expressing values you personally feel deep down to your core personal stories help us to speak from our hearts once we do so the listener immediately identifies value in our story and can easily relate to it as discussed earlier people want you to make them care or sometimes even forget that is why personal experiences are important they are the most effective way to make yourself relatable and help others become lost in your narrative the best storytellers look for their own memories and life experiences for ways to illustrate their message

what events in your life make you believe in the idea that you're sharing the whole world is built on stories religions political parties companies and various social groups are using storytelling to promote their ideas as you all know a harare wrote in sapiens humans thinking stories and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories i don't know which stories are the best but there is one thing i know for sure if you're not capable of writing your own story other people will write it for you hey guys hope you enjoyed today's video

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