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
“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 action 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