50. Telling Good Stories: How to Use the Elements of Narrative to Keep Listeners Engaged
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We all know that a good story can move us, make us feel something, teach us something, help us be better at something. But can a story literally move us? That is, get us to move and be healthy. Today we'll learn the answer to this question and many other best practices for what makes a good story.

I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. We are so lucky today to be joined by Paula Moya. Paula is the Danaly and Laura Louise Bell Professor of the Humanities and a professor of English at Stanford. She also is a recipient of the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Paula has several books on the market, the most recent being The Social Imperative, Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism. For the past two years, she's been part of a research project that investigates and validates using narrative to encourage individuals to increase their activity levels to improve health span. Welcome, Paula. I am so eager to work with you.

Thank you, Matt. I'm so glad to be here and to have an opportunity to chat with you. Great. Let's get started. Before we get into some of the really cool ways you're using stories to motivate people, I'd like to start with some general questions about stories. You are a narratologist. I've never heard that term before. Can you define what that means and what do you do?

Well, narratology basically is just the study of narratives and narrative structure and the ways that these things affect human perception. So a narratologist basically is just someone who does the studying. You know, I've always loved reading and I'm captivated by stories. And so it's been my pleasure over the last decade or so to be able to spend time thinking

thinking about what makes narratives work. Wow, a whole field I was unaware of. So as somebody who studied narratives as deeply as you have, I'm curious, from your perspective, what makes a good narrative or story? I guess I'd have to say that a lot depends on what anyone means by good, right? So I love many different kinds of stories, and I know that they all draw on different kinds of

elements to give them their value. But the basic elements of a story, we can start there, of a story or a narrative or plot, so like what happens, characters, points of view or perspective, and that relates to focalization.

Shedding, like where it's located. Theme, kind of basically what they're talking about. And of course, style. So conflict is also central to any story because there always needs to be something that kind of gets the story going and powers the events that occur. So these elements will always be present in any particular story.

albeit in different combinations and with different emphases. So, you know, a good story or narrative will have all of those. But it's important to know, from my perspective, that what one person defines as good may be very different from what some other person defines as good. So what good is will be very much influenced by what someone knows, what they value, what they love, and also what they recognize.

And this is sometimes cultural, right, based on where someone grew up, what they are accustomed to doing in their daily lives. And it's also sometimes learned, right, based on what we were taught in school, right, what did our teachers tell us, or even what someone we admire says is good. So maybe a preacher or a mother or an aunt, right?

So, for example, those of us who read a lot of stories or consume a lot of narratives, and so I count myself among those who are always reading or watching some serial or something. You know, when we do that, we can easily become bored by characters we perceive as stock characters or plots that are predictable.

If you read enough narratives, you start to recognize certain particular terms. And we get bored by them because we've seen them too many times before and they contain for us no surprises.

At the same time, for someone else, that same story can be fresh and interesting. So my answer kind of to like what's good, what makes a good narrative is that a story is good if someone somewhere values it as good. Now, it just might not be good for me. And I'm making a larger point about the existence of multiple conceptions of the good. Certainly.

I hear you talking about several things. For example, you need to think about who your story is for and what's going to be interesting, relevant and exciting for them.

And you need to be careful, I heard also, of falling into the trap of using common cliches or common ways of telling the story or designing the story. I heard you talk about surprise. I heard you talk about novelty, or at least I'm applying novelty to what you said, to really make it something that stands out. Would you agree with those? I would completely agree with that. So it's kind of a mix of

of making it familiar, which we like, just as human beings psychologically, we have a kind of principle of familiarity that drives us, and also making it new, making it a little surprising, giving us something that is not predictable. But it kind of goes back to the first thing that you picked up on, which is that we always have to think about who this narrative is for.

Because it's going to be, you know, what's going to work is going to be different according to who it's for. Absolutely. And that is a theme we have heard many times on this podcast about really reflecting on our audience for our communication. Should we approach crafting stories meant to be read differently from those that we speak? Absolutely. I really agree with that. Because, you know, it is if you're if you're listening to a story, you might need a heavier dose of repetition.

To help your listener keep track of what is happening. And so you see this in sort of storytelling cultures where there's often a great deal of repetition and they come back to certain kinds of motifs. So like a certain image or a certain color.

And, you know, if you're listening to a story, you can't go back and look something up, right? So you need the storyteller to help you by drawing you along with these repeated motifs, these repeated words, and also reminders of who is who and how they are related to their characters.

And I think it's probably a little easier to have a more complex narrative in writing than listening. I really want to emphasize this point in the work that I do.

there's a really big challenge that people have. They write as if they're writing their content to be read, and then they speak it, and it just sounds different. It doesn't connect in the same way. A lot of the ideas that you suggested, those are all things that can really help a story stand out when spoken, and similarly might

seem redundant or repetitive or short-sighted in a written piece. So the big message is we have to envision

writing for speaking and writing for being read is very different things. And I think that point is super important. It absolutely is. And I'm glad that you are articulating it so clearly. I need to learn from you. No, well, I do a lot of speaking, so I repeat myself a lot, much to my family's dismay. Yeah.

But let me just say one more thing about that is that always when we're thinking about communicating, we need to think about the medium. Like, so how is it that we are, you know, what is the medium through which we are communicating? So obviously a novel is a different medium than, say, you know, a story circle where you're sitting around talking to people. The medium really makes it so important to sort of shift how you do something, right?

if you want to communicate well. So true. I cannot tell you the number of times I see people try to tell stories through bullet points on PowerPoint slides. And it's the wrong medium. It's the wrong tool to get your message across. And I really appreciate that advice. I'd like to turn to your research. Your research and writings focus on race and culture. Do

Do you have any guidance on how we can be more inclusive of diversity in the stories we choose to tell and how we actually craft those stories? Well, I think probably the easiest way, the most simple way to be inclusive of diversity is also the most obvious way. That is to write stories.

or consume stories about those people, places, events, and dilemmas that are, for the most part, absent or underrepresented in the mainstream of society. So there are not, for example, sufficient representations of Latinx people in the media-- television, theater, the movies, and journalism-- to give a true and accurate picture of the richness and the complexity of Latino life.

This is not to say that there is none, just to say that there is a dearth of such representation relative to the number of Latinx people living in this country. And unfortunately, many of the representations of Latinx people are quite negative and stereotypical, and so not representative of the wide range of experiences of people who are associated with that ethnicity. So it certainly sounds to me like

If you're looking to be more inclusive in the stories you tell, you need to tell stories that include people. That by definition, I think, is what we're talking about. But we also have to be sensitive to what we represent and what we tell those stories about. So it's not just including people.

people in the stories. It's what those stories are about and the focus and what they, the message they send beyond the story itself. And that's really important for all of us to think about as we live in a more diverse culture, it's critical to hear the stories and voices of everyone. You are part of a very cool interdisciplinary team looking at the role of narrative in motivating positive health behavior. Can you tell us briefly about the Perfecto Project?

So the Perfective Project is actually an extension of a larger project involving a very large interdisciplinary team at Stanford University that has been researching the effectiveness in motivating mobility of narrative-based feedback that is delivered on the ambient screen of an Android smartphone.

So basically, that just means it's a mobility app that helps take the user through a narrative. And as the user exercises or walks or does some kind of physical activity, the story moves along. So they help power the story in that sense. It sounds to me like it's a fitness tracker app.

the data from which actually moves you through a story and that story serves to help motivate even more movement. Is that right? That's exactly right. And so what we're trying to do is create a narrative that's interesting enough that the person wants to do their exercise so they can get the next chapter. Wow. I think for the listeners, this notion of

thinking about creating stories that you share as a leader, as a participant of teams that are culturally relevant, and the fact that you are finding that the notion that a story can serve as motivation for any behavior potentially is really a fascinating one. As part of the work you just described, I read that there seems to be a link between motivation and empathy for characters and stories.

Can you describe this association and any guidance that it might suggest for those of us trying to motivate others through the stories we tell?

Well, I do think empathy, where we feel for others, as well as things like recognition, where we maybe see characters that remind us of ourselves, are very important for how stories affect listeners and readers. Because one very basic psychological phenomenon is familiarity, which is simply a form of remembering in which a situation, an event, a person, a place, or the like, provokes a subjective feeling of recognition.

So it's like, yes, you know, I've been at that tamale making party. I've been at that birthday party where, you know, there's where we break a piñata. So it doesn't have to be perfect, but it brings something of ourselves to us. And I think being recognized makes us feel good, feel valued. It makes us feel a sense of belonging.

This notion of helping people feel what you're talking about is familiar to them is really interesting. It really speaks to the need to demonstrate that you understand people's experience and help them understand.

see how they can change that experience, enhance that experience, et cetera. So this notion of using empathy to demonstrate familiarity, I think is a really interesting tool for those of us who craft communications to have in our toolkit.

Do you have a favorite tool that you listen for or look for in what you write or you read? For example, I do. I love alliteration. I'm curious, do you have any tools you find that you gravitate towards in narratives that you write or listen to?

You know, that's a very interesting question. I'm not sure that I think of it as programmatically as that, like, oh, these are my tools, but I definitely use alliteration. I find it very effective. So a modicum of repetition, alliteration, I will often speak my written sentences aloud to see how they sound.

sound to me. And then, of course, thinking about images. I'm very attentive to the use of certain words and also not reinforcing certain associations that have been negative, for instance, for people of color. The tools you shared are really helpful for all of us to think about

Before we get to our closing, I am curious if you have any last best practices on how to craft better stories to motivate our audiences.

Clearly, an author or storyteller needs to create compelling situations and dilemmas full of suspense and surprise because those are things that give us joy. They also need to create characters in whom we are interested, whether it be because the characters, we see ourselves in them or because we care about them or feel empathy for them or because they operate in a field of action that in some way intrigues us, maybe even scares us.

Before we end, I'd like to ask you the same three questions I ask everybody. Sound okay? Yeah, sure. All right. If you were to capture the best communication advice you ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title, what would it be?

makes him want to turn the page. Ooh, I really like that. It is an eight word sentence, I think. But, you know, if you're reading a novel, like you want to know either because the character or the situation or whatever, you want to know what's going to happen. Absolutely. It's building suspense and intrigue. And that's important in all communication. Let me ask you question number two. Who is the communicator that you admire and why? I

I would say that Margaret Atwood is an amazing communicator. She is an amazing novelist. I eagerly seek out anything she writes. She is a beautiful user of language. She could make me envision...

the world that she was putting together. And she wasn't, she also was not afraid to make difficult characters who are real in the sense that people like them exist out there in the world. Our final question, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? I'd say sense, like that, that the story has to make sense. Humor,

And then finally, suspense. And that comes from like making them want to turn the page. I like this notion of it. It just has to make sense, right? A lot of us don't take a simple criterion like that. We've definitely on this podcast talked about humor and the value of humor. And you've illuminated today how suspense and familiarity can be really, really helpful. Paula, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing the story of your work and

and how to make our stories work better. We're taking away so many important insights that can really strengthen our narratives and help us motivate people in the direction that we want. I appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you. Well, thank you, Matt. I'm very happy to have had the chance to talk with you. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

produced by Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. For more information and episodes, visit gsb.stanford.edu or subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, find us on social media at stanford.gsb.

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