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 in 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 Dan Lee 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 narratologists, I've never heard that term before,
can you define what that means and what do you do?
>> [LAUGH] Well, narratology basically is just a study of narratives and
narrative structure, and the ways that these things affect human perception.
So, narratologists basically is just someone who does the studying.
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 about what makes narrative 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 [LAUGH] 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 what happens, character's, point of view or
perspective, and that relates to focalization.
Setting, where it's located, scene,
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 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 it's good, so
maybe a preacher or a mother or an aunt.
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 because
I'm always reading or watching some cereal or something.
When we do that, we can easily become bored by characters we proceed and
stock characters for plots that are predictable.
if you read enough narratives, you start to recognize certain particular turns.
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 [LAUGH] so 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.
>> Yes. >> And you need to be careful,
I heard also of falling into the trap of using common clichés or
common ways of telling the story or designing the story.
I heard you talk about surprise, I heard you talk about a 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 making it familiar, which we like.
Just as human being, psychologically,
we have a kind of principle of familiarity that drives us and also making it new,
making them a little surprising, giving us something that is not predictable.
So, but this 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 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 listening to a story, you might need a heavier dose of repetition,
to help your listener to 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 if you're listening to story, you can't go back and
look something up, right?
>> 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 the same way.
>> [LAUGH] >> 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.
>> [LAUGH] No, well, I do a lot of speaking, so I repeat myself a lot,
much to my family's dismay >> [LAUGH] 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, so
what is the medium through which we are communicating?
So obviously, a novel is a different medium than say a story circle where
you're sitting around talking to people.
The medium really that it makes it so important to sort of shift how you do
something 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 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 diversity is also the most obvious way.
That is to write 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 they're 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 was 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,
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 in the stories, it's what those stories
are about and the focus and what 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 every one.
You were 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 Perfecto Project is actually an extension of a larger project
involving a very large interdisciplinary team at Stanford University.
There 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 mobile mobility app that helps
takes 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,
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 in 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 and with the situation and event,
a person, a place to provokes a subjective feeling of recognition.
So if I guess, I've been at that tamale making party,
I've been at that birthday party where there's where we break a piñata.
So it doesn't have to be perfect, but it brings something out of ourselves to us.
And I think being recognized makes us feel good, feel valued and
makes us feel a sense of belonging.
>> This notion of helping people feel what 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 see how they can change
that experience, enhance that experience, etc.
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?
>> That's a very interesting question.
I'm not sure that I think of it as programmatically as that, like,
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 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 has 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 in,
whether that'd 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 asked 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?
>> Make them want to turn the page.
>> I really liked that.
>> It is an eight word sentence, I think.
But if you're reading a novel, you want to know either because the character or
the situation, 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 a communicator that you admire and why?
>> 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 also was not afraid to make difficult characters who are real
in the sense that people like them exist out there in the world.
>> Final question,
what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?
>> I'd say sense, the story has to make sense, humor, and then finally,
suspense, and that comes from making them want to turn the page.
[LAUGH] >> 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 how to make our stories work better.
We're taking away so many important insights that can really strengthen our
narratives and help us to 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
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