Every business and marketing guru is always saying “Story this”, “Story that”, “X was a great businessman because he was a great storyteller.”, “Y business was great because they told a great story.” Rarely do they actually teach you HOW to tell a story.
I then started looking for books on the topic. In most of the books, the author spends about 70% the pages telling THEIR life story, 20% of the pages telling you why their model is the best thing in the world and the solution to literally everything, and then maybe 10% of the book about how to actually tell a story.
I decided to just learn the first principles of storytelling, so I spent the past several months learning about the neuroscience and psychology of effective storytelling. Recently, I synthesized it into a simple, acronym-based model: SCRIPT . In this post, I’ll explain each element of the model in 3 sentences or less.
The six elements of great storytelling:
Structure:
Information without structure (especially narrative structure) is just an information dump, and our minds don’t handle information dumps well. Your audience will most likely either forget the information or tune out when it’s just dumped on them with little structure. Use story structures that have been proven to work: 3 Act, 5 Act, Hero’s Journey, Harmon Circle, Vogler’s 12 Steps, Kishotenketsu, etc.
Conflict :
No conflict, no story⁰. There are a few types of conflict we know work that have been identified by neuroscience and psychology. They are as follows: us vs them, status plays (ascent or de scent of the dominance hierarchy), and the sacred flaw approach.
Relatable characters:
The relatability helps us form a bond with the characters that makes us more invested in what will happen to them. This is also why characters that are not traditionally “good” (for ex., Walter White, Dexter Morgan, Light Yagami, etc.) still capture our attention and keep us watching.
Internal consistency:
A story does not necessarily need to be “realistic”, but it should at least be consistent with itself. Otherwise, the story won’t make sense and will be harder for your audience to process. Great storytellers know that the scenes and acts in one’s story should not be connected by a “and then”, but instead via “because” and “but”¹.
Perception:
Vivid and descriptive language helps the audience visualize and engage with the story. Vivid sensory details (sight, sound, touch, etc.) in a story can create a more immersive and realistic experience for the audience. Acting on the senses has also been shown to make up for “so so” storytelling (see: the first “Avatar”²) or YouTubers who don’t really do much, but are great at attracting a lot of attention (and getting significant engagement).
Tension:
Your story needs stakes to be interesting. George Lowenstein details 4 specific ways to arouse curiosity and create tension in his research paper Psychology of Curiosity (I’d break my 3 sentence promise if I explained all 4 here😉³). Make sure you use tension and release , as tension maintained for too long is exhausting and tedious (see: the car chase scene from Bad Boys 2 ⁴). Originality affects tension; if the story feels repetitive, unoriginal, or like it’s already been seen/read before, it will be hard to create meaningful tension and therefore connection to the study.
Just a quick summary because I haven’t written on here in quite a bit! If you’re interested in learning more, I cover this in more detail in my newsletter and on some of my other social media channels. You can find them here.
Footnotes:
0. Conflict does not necessarily need to come from a traditional enemy or antagonist, as is the case with Kishotenketsu style storytelling. It may instead be a chance that necessitates the character’s personal growth.
- I think this is one of many reasons why the Star Wars sequel trilogy was not very well received. The story felt like it was pieced together, and it felt as though there was little internal consistency with the rest of what we know about Star Wars . To think about why “and then” isn’t good storytelling structure, consider that this is how children tell stories. They just tell you everything that happened. Although children are fun to listen to, most of us aren’t watching blockbuster movies or reading bestsellers that were created by children.
- Hot take: the first Avatar , although a visual spectacle, is just a ripoff of Dances with Wolves and Pocahantas . Avatar 2 is actually both a visual spectacle and a great story. 10/10. Would recommend.
- I’ll be teaching the 4 methods and many other neuroscience principles you can apply to storytelling, marketing, and design in my Neuromarketing Transformation course, which will be launching soon. It is available for early access at a reduced price with a lot of lectures already posted. I will be doubling the price once I post all the lectures, so the current price is for a limited time (literally, this isn’t a bluff. I will be doubling the price).
- This clip isn’t even the full scene. The full car chase / shootout scene is waaaay too long. I remember watching it on TV with my family, and we were all like “Are they still in this scene?”
P.S. Yes. I did cheat a little bit by using conjunctions and semi-colons 😎
