by Donna Lichaw
Making Things Go BOOM!
Vince Gilligan, creator of the television show Breaking Bad, knows a thing or two about using story to engage an audience. In this photo (see Figure 1.1), he is seated in front of the story map for Season 4.
TV writers are smart. They map the story out before they write a line of dialogue or shoot a single scene. TV shows are large, complex things that are built with large, distributed teams over a long period of time. With so many people, scenes, episodes, and seasons to manage, it’s hard to stay focused on the big picture. Mapping the story on a wall helps TV writers plot a course while keeping the big picture in mind.
FIGURE 1.1
Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, in front of a story map for season 4.
Mapping the story also helps TV writers build a product that engages an audience by adhering to a millennia-old architecture designed for engagement: a well-crafted story. You’ll learn more about story architecture in Chapter 2, but in the meantime, consider this meticulously placed card near the end of the storyline for Breaking Bad, Season 4 (see Figure 1.2). This card has one word written on it: “BOOM.” If you’ve seen Season 4 of Breaking Bad, you know what this refers to. If you haven’t, you can imagine. Mapping the story helps TV writers make things go BOOM. And it will help you, someone who builds products, make things go BOOM as well.
Story is why people tune in and stayed tuned in, whether you’re creating a TV show, a movie, or a website. Storymapping is how you make that story happen, whether you’re a screenwriter or a product person.
FIGURE 1.2
A close-up of a story card for Breaking Bad.
Storymapping is just what it sounds like: mapping out an intended experience of use for a product, plot point by plot point. This concept of mapping stories is not new. It’s something that Aristotle started doing a very long time ago as he sought to understand what it was about Greek dramas that enraptured audiences, so their success could be reproduced. It’s something screenwriters have been doing for years. It’s something I eventually learned to do for films and more recently with products. And it’s something that you can do on your next project or product.
Why Story?
Story is one of the most powerful tools that humans use to understand and communicate with the outside world. Part evolutionary feature, part survival mechanism harking back to Paleolithic times, part communication tool—story powers the human brain. Story-based cognitive function is so powerful that neuroscientists have a term for it when it doesn’t work: dysnarrativia, the inability to understand or construct stories. Narrative cognition is so central to how humans operate that not having it is debilitating. Like living with amnesia, it is difficult, if not impossible, to function normally. Story, and its underlying architecture, powers the ability to understand what happened in the past, what happens in the moment, or what will happen in the future. It’s a framework and a lens with which humans comprehend everything.
Whether you plan for it or not, your customers use their story-driven brains to understand your product and what it’s like to use your product. They also use their story-driven brains to tell others about your product. The better the story, the better the experience, the better the word of mouth.
More specifically, when people experience something with a story at its foundation—whether it entails watching a movie, riding a roller-coaster, or using a website—their brains are activated. They are more likely not just to have a good experience, but to:
• Remember the experience.
• See value in what was experienced.
• See utility in what they did during that experience.
• Have an easier time doing whatever they were trying to accomplish.
• Want to repeat that experience.
All of this fits under the umbrella of engagement.
If you’re in the business of building products that engage, it’s your job to consider the story that you and your business want your customers to experience. In this book, you will learn how to map that story—or stories—and align everything you and your business do so that it supports that story. For your customer. And your business.
It works for movies, and it will work for you.
NOTE THE OR A STORY VS. STORY
It may look as if I’ve made a mistake throughout this book by using the word “story” without an article in front of it, i.e., the story. It’s no mistake. Story is as much of a tool and framework as it is a discipline. Like art. Or science. When I use “story” without the article, I’m talking about story as a tool. For example, I might say “use story to turn data into insights.” However, if I refer to “a story” or “the story,” I’m referring to the thing you will create and weave throughout your work.
CHAPTER 2
How Story Works
Story Has a Structure
Building Products with Story
“For, the more we look at the story (the story that is a story, mind), the more we disentangle it from the finer growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire. It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tape-worm, for its beginning and end are arbitrary.”
—E. M. Forster,
Aspects of the Novel
Humans are sense-making creatures, and story is our most critical sense-making tool. As humans, we’ve evolved and innovated story over millennia as a way to understand our world. For example, there is evidence that ancient cave dwellers learned how to trap an animal and not go hunting alone through the use of stories.
Given how long we’ve lived with story, it’s not surprising that Aristotle uncovered a working model for it long ago. Basically, he said that every story needs three things: characters, goals, and conflict. What weaves these elements together is a structure or a series of actions and events that have a shape to them.
Fortunately, story and its underlying structure is straightforward, simple, and can be easily learned. That’s why it’s so powerful—for books, films, and products.
NOTE STORY VS. NARRATIVE VS. PLOT
Don’t think that you’re alone if you confuse the words story, storyline, plot, and narrative as they are often used interchangeably. Even the dictionary will define them similarly. While story or narrative can refer to the broader version of events, and plot or storyline breaks down the “plan” or series of actions and events that lead up to the story, I use them in this book interchangeably. The reason for this is that a story without a plot or storyline (i.e., without a structure) is just a random series of events. Random series of events don’t make for good stories and definitely won’t engage your target audience. Your story must engage your audience. And in order for it to do so, it must have a structure at its foundation.
Story Has a Structure
First, every story has a beginning, middle, and end—with the middle typically taking up a longer period of time than the beginning or end, as shown in Figure 2.1.
FIGURE 2.1
The parts of a story.
Next, every story has a structure, similar to what you see in Figure 2.2. It’s typically called the narrative arc or story arc, which is a chronological series of events.
FIGURE 2.2
A story arc.
While the X-axis in Figure 2.2 represents time, the Y-axis represents the action. In other words, you can visually see in the figure that the story builds in excitement, the pace of its action increases over time until it hits a high point, and the story winds down before it ends. When the story doesn’t wind down and instead ends while the action is still rising or at a peak, the story is called a cliffhanger.
Every narrative arc has specific key plot points and sequences, as shown in Figure 2.3.
Let’s dissect the narrative arc of a story. Narrative arcs are comprised of the following elements:
• Exposition
• Inciting incident or problem
• Rising action
• Crisis
• Climax or resolution
• Falling act
ion or denouement
• End
FIGURE 2.3
Plot points on a story arc.
Exposition
During the exposition, you are introduced to the world of the story, the characters, and some kind of big goal. There is a main character, and that character wants something. Big. The exposition functions not only to set the stage of a story, but also to get the person on the other end—you, the viewer—interested and engaged with the main character or characters and what drives them. At its most powerful, a good exposition will compel you to see yourself in and identify with a character or a set of characters. At the very least, it compels you to empathize with them.
Take for example the 1985 feature film, Back to the Future. In the exposition, you meet Marty McFly, who lives in Hill Valley—any suburb USA. His family isn’t very ambitious, but Marty has plans. He’s going to make something of himself. Marty has a friend, Doc—a mad scientist who built a time machine (see Figure 2.4). All very cool.
FIGURE 2.4
In the exposition to Back to the Future, you are introduced to Marty, Doc, and their time machine.
In a movie like Back to the Future, you’re compelled to empathize with Marty. You don’t have to like him. You just have to understand him, his goals and why he wants to pursue them.
Inciting Incident or Problem
The inciting incident is the moment where something changes or goes dramatically wrong in the world of the story. A problem surfaces and gets in the way of the character meeting his big goal. The moment when the hero is thrust into leaving his safe world in order to fix the problem is called the call to action.
Neuroscientists have shown that when you listen to or watch a story, it’s as if you are experiencing the story in real time. As action rises, your pulse might quicken or your palms get sweaty. Something startles you, and you jump. Stories are not just about looking or listening, they are about being. The inciting incident is the first hook or trigger point in a story that amplifies if and how you identify with the main character, what problems he has, and what he has to go through to fix that problem and meet his goal. It’s what gets you hooked. When the main character is called to action, it’s as if you, the viewer, are called to action. Your brain starts working in overdrive to figure out what will happen next and how the hero will right the wrong.
In Back to the Future, the excitement of a time machine doesn’t last long; militants shoot Doc in a parking lot in an attempt to retrieve plutonium that he stole from them (see Figure 2.5). Not good. In an attempt to escape, Marty ends up driving the time machine to 1955 and then finds out that he can’t get home. That’s a problem—a meaty enough problem to name the movie after. Marty’s call to action is simple: to get back to the future.
FIGURE 2.5
Inciting incident: this is the point in Back to the Future where the story kickstarts into action.
Rising Action
After the problem surfaces in the inciting incident, the protagonist of the story goes on a journey to right that wrong. We spend the rest of the story not just seeing how it all pans out, but also feeling how it pans out. A good story escalates during the rising action, creating new tensions and conflicts that help move the story forward. As the story builds, the audience’s anticipation and excitement builds simultaneously.
During the rising action of any good story, there is also plenty of conflict to keep the audience engaged. Without conflict, endings come too easily, and the audience is unconvinced or bored or both.
In this sense, humans are easy—because to keep them engaged, you save the best for last.
In Back to the Future, Marty sets out to find 1955 Doc. They try to get Marty home. But they can’t solve the problem, or the movie would end. So things get weird. Marty meets the younger version of his mom. His mom has a crush on him (see Figure 2.6). Marty meets his dad’s nemesis, Biff. Biff becomes Marty’s nemesis. Things get tense. And more tense. And as a result, more engaging. We become more and more invested in how Marty will get back to the future, scene by scene.
FIGURE 2.6
In this scene, Marty starts to realize that his mom is taking an interest in him and his Calvin Kleins.
Crisis
The story culminates at the point (or series of points) of maximum conflict—the crisis. It’s the point of no return. Nothing the hero has done has worked, and he is further from the goal than ever. The story either has to right itself or end in tragedy. If the story ends with neither, then it’s a cliffhanger and is incomplete. At this point, the main character has gotten so far and is so close to meeting his goal that it’s impossible to just give up. Defeat or success is the only option.
In Back to the Future, the crisis starts when Marty is close to figuring out how to get back to the future. But because his mom falls in love with him instead of falling for his father, there is the chance that he will never be born in the future. Because he might never be born, Marty begins to disappear (see Figure 2.7). The only way to get over this hurdle is to make sure that his parents end up together. But how? And then what? Once he overcomes this obstacle, he still has to figure out how to get home. How will this all play out, you wonder, as you are now totally invested in the outcome of the story.
FIGURE 2.7
Marty starts to disappear while he’s on stage at a school dance. Will he or won’t he get his parents together so that he can live? Suspense!
Climax or Resolution
Just as it sounds, the climax occurs at the top of the story arc. It’s the most important part of the story. It’s the high point. The final showdown. This is the point at which the hero’s fate and the direction of the story are determined. As such, it is also the most exciting part of the story. It’s the point at which all of that tension and will he or won’t he from earlier scenes culminates in you jumping out of your seat, cheering, laughing, feeling satisfied that you solved the mystery before the main character, or simply smiling because well…that was awesome.
Climax is why you are glad that you tuned in and stayed tuned in.
Sometimes, this point is also called the resolution, which occurs when the main problem from the inciting incident and the hurdle from the crisis are resolved. Problems and hurdles are either resolved or they’re not, and you’re left with that tragedy or cliffhanger.
In Back to the Future, the climax begins when Marty’s parents kiss at the high school dance. At the very least, this means that he can finish playing his song on the guitar. Excellent.
But wait!
There’s more!
There’s a clock tower and lightning (see Figure 2.8). The underlying problem still needs to be solved: Marty needs to figure out how to get home. In a bolt of lightning, boom, Marty gets catapulted back to the future. Even more excellent.
FIGURE 2.8
Climax and resolution in Back to the Future. Doc figures out how to get Marty home by harnessing lightning to power the time machine from atop a clock tower.
Think of the climax as a sort of pay-off. This is why you sat through one hour and 30 minutes. It’s exciting. It’s suspenseful. It’s satisfying. The climax is not only the best part of the story, but it’s what you remember most. It’s why you come back. It’s like a reward, or a thank you for tuning in and staying tuned in.
But then what? Imagine if Doc managed to harness the power of lightning, get Marty home, and the movie just ended. Stories can’t just end on a high point, or they’re as unsatisfying as a cliffhanger. Once Marty gets back to the future, he still needs to actually get home. For that, you have the falling action or denouement.
Falling Action or Denouement
Have you ever listened in frustration to someone having a conversation on her mobile phone? If you had to listen to the entire conversation in person, with both participants audible, it wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating. You could probably tune the conversation out or listen and just not care. It turns out that the main reason why these conversations are so frustrating is that your bra
in naturally wants to complete the conversation. Just hearing half triggers an automatic, unsatisfying response that leads to frustration. Researchers call this phenomenon a halfalogue: half of a conversation that your brain naturally and uncontrollably tries to complete.1
Humans, it turns out, need closure. Stories, likewise, need closure so that humans can feel closure.
Imagine if The Wizard of Oz ended after Dorothy had defeated the wicked witch. Goal met. The end. You’d be frustrated. Your brain would jump into overdrive as you wondered what then? What about Kansas? Your mind would jump full circle as you started to remember the exposition of the story and wanted to know not just how evil was defeated, but how the story ended. What happened to Dorothy after she defeated the witch? For this reason, stories need not just to resolve their conflict and show characters meeting their goals, but also to have a fancy ending called a denouement, a word derived from the French meaning “to unknot.” This is the part of the story when the conflict is resolved and the action starts slowing down in pace and excitement toward the closing scene. It’s how everything in the story gets wrapped up.
The line between the climax/resolution, falling action, and ending can be blurry and happen so quickly that it’s hard to discern the difference between one and another. What matters is that the climax is exciting, and it resolves the major conflict or problem—the falling action leads to closure. In Back to the Future, Marty McFly goes home (see Figure 2.9). This is the falling action for many adventure tales: the hero goes home.
Tension releases. Ah…all is good in the world.
And…it’s important that home is better than when the story started and where the character left it. In this case, it’s much better. Marty’s parents are successful. Biff is his family’s servant. Marty got the truck he always wanted. Not bad.