Nobody Wants Bedtime Bullets

Having our world told to us as stories starts when we are wee. It doesn't change for adults. But how do we as storytellers find new narratives?

It rained all night, so instead of sleeping I was thinking. I had a lot of time to do the latter since I did virtually nothing of the former.

Most business presentations are god awful - rife with bullets, and worse, bullets with tons of teeny text following it. And spoiler alert. It is very likely no one will pay attention.

Science backs me up. Two 19th century scientists, French neurologist Paul Broca and German neurologist Carl Wernicke, are known for their observations on language and memory. The advent of MRI allows their theories to literally come to light as different parts of our brain light up when listening to a story.

The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.

Research shows that evocative stories cause neurons to fire in the same way as they would if you were doing the actual action. For example, if you were listening to someone talk about kicking a ball, the motor part of the brain that would help you kick a ball in real life lights up.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank.

It turns out we are a social bunch and storytelling is literally in our DNA – it’s how we have passed on customs, history, even rules.

And indeed, facts don’t resonate with people until after they are intrigued. So how do you intrigue them? By dropping them into scenarios that they can imagine.

Storytelling is about capturing attention - and triggering the imagination.

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

The three block quotes are the introductory sentences from The Cat in the Hat, Alice in Wonderland and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia. They powerfully set the scene - disappointment, boredom, and judgement. You want to know, what did Eustace Clarence Scrubb ever do to deserve a name like that!!??

Who knew that when we start describing Lewis Carroll’s Alice sitting on the bank getting tired – that children might want to lay down and nap?

And we can all feel the annoyance of having the weather get in the way of our plans – leaving us with nothing to do but just sit, sit, sit, sit.

Kids are captivated by stories – and so are adults.

So how do we find the things that will trigger imaginations?

1. Train your self to “see differently” - look past the routine. What if you didn’t follow directions? What if you did things backwards? What if you had a non-expert try something?

2. Embrace the unusual - find the absurd. This is where you embrace your inner 12-year old child and let your imagination loose. It’s not that you coded all night, it’s that it was a 7-hour power-drink-a-thon.

3. Start with you - how do you feel - and why? You might have gotten the job done with all your drinking, but wow, your stomach and head are killing you the next day. Trust me, people will relate.

The images from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince are wonderful reminders of how to view something through the lens of a child.

Which brings me back to my twilight think-a-thon. I realized that as adults we tend to become creatures of habits. Fall into a routine of what works. But our language and metaphors can’t evolve when we fall into routines. As storytellers, we need to embrace our inner child and explore. We need to put ourselves in positions to try and fail - or practice, practice, practice – and taste new successes.

To connect with our audiences means standing in their shoes. But if we want to expand our audiences - we need to try on different shoes.