Australians inspire me to make trouble.  If you’re going to South By Southwest Education Conference in a couple weeks, come hear me plus three crazy Australians on March 9.   We are presenting a panel on, “Science Refugees.”  Also, Jayde Lovell is giving her own talk at SXSW Interactive on “narrative selection.”

THREE AUSTRALIANS PLUS A WANNABE. Jayde Lovell, Bec Susan Gill, Rod Lamberts and I will talk about life as “science refugees.”

The lovely and talented Jayde Lovell will introduce the concept of “narrative selection” with this talk at SXSW Interactive.

JAYDED

My Story Circles Narrative Training co-conspirator Jayde Lovell is the ring leader responsible for getting us to South By Southwest in a couple of weeks.  For over two years I’ve been working with her and going from fan to loyal follower.  She is now the head of her own science PR agency named ReAgency, runs Sci Q, her own science channel on The Young Turks Network, her own space at the Youtube Studios, is the head of social media for the Tyler Award for Environmental Science, is Chief Storyteller for The Science March, won the National Academy of Engineering’s Next MacGyver contest, and is the funniest person I’ve met in decades.

Suffice it to say, we’re gonna have fun in Austin.  Come join us if you’re there.

If you’re giving a talk or teaching a class and want an amusing analogy for the Narrative Spectrum here’s a little thing we did with an Ikea desk.  Feel free to put it into your presentation.

THERE’S A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG WAY. Which do you prefer?

THE IDEAL FORM

In “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” I presented The Narrative Spectrum.  It’s the central tool for our Story Circles Narrative Training program.

Think of the Narrative Spectrum as being like assembling an Ikea desk.  If you just stare at the parts and never even start the journey, that’s the AAA (And, And, And) form.  It’s non-narrative — you never even started the narrative process.

If you throw the instructions away, over-think how it all goes together, then just do it yourself, turning your nose up at 4,000 years of narrative selection, you end up with something like the DHY form (Despite, However, Yet) — a confused mess.

But … if you heed the age old powers of narrative (i.e. you read the instructions/learn about the ABT), take the time to do things right, then you end up with the ABT form (And, But, Therefore) and everything works properly.

Yes, it takes time to do it right, but do you really want to bore or confuse people?

THE NARRATIVE SPECTRUM. Respect it’s authora-tie.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine just announced they are releasing a report titled, “Communicating Science Effectively.” A quick search of the report for key words reveals a number of biases in the thinking behind it. I’m sorry, but this is a sad case of the blind leading the blind. Truly it is.

SCORE NONE FOR SIMPLICITY.

LET THE NUMBERS DO THE TALKING

The numbers say it all.  How can you talk about communicating anything effectively and never mention the word SIMPLICITY?  Any mathematician, for starters, will tell you the key to solving problems effectively is to find the simple solution. There’s the age old adage that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” And yet here is a report from the National Academies that doesn’t have even a hint of that thinking?

How can you talk about communication and not mention the word INTUITION? Communication isn’t something that robots know how to do. It’s done by humans. They draw on intuition when they communicate. Even if they are scientists. Even if they are scientists speaking at the most intense of scientific meetings. I know this, I was a scientist once.

There is nothing in this report about the need to find singular, unifying themes, or consider science as a journey. There’s not even a nod to the IMRAD template that lies at the heart of the effective communication for research scientists.

How does something like this happen?

And yet … what you do see in the numbers is the word FRAMING mentioned 67 times. What is framing? There’s not even clear agreement on what the term means, much less agreement that it leads to effective communication. It was debated hotly in 2007. It may be the cutting edge of debate among theoreticians, but then if that’s so, the report should have had been called “Communicating Science Theoretically.”

This report is so vastly mislabeled. I don’t want to ridicule it, I just want readers to know that as the science community complains about not being heard, this is where large amounts of effort are going.

It’s tragic.

Having trouble sleeping?  Here’s three hours of my droning voice, going on and on about the ABT, that’s a guaranteed cure for insomnia.

Trump, Coral Reefs, and the ABT.

It’s been a busy past few months for me on the podcast circuit (with a couple more in the works). Here’s three I’ve done since the election.

THE BUSINESS OF STORY:  TRUMP HAS NARRATIVE INTUITION

My buddy Park Howell is a professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.  He and I connected nearly four years ago when he read my second book, “Connection,” and instantly grasped the power and importance of the ABT Narrative Template.  He listened to me try to warn about the power of Donald Trump as a communicator, but when my warnings proved correct he had me appear on his podcast the morning after the election.

AMERICA ADAPTS:  CORAL REEFS COMMUNICATION IS BAD NEWS

Doug Parsons was part of our Connection Storymaker Workshop in 2011 when he was working for the National Park Service on their climate team.  He eventually branched off on his own and started this excellent climate podcast, American Adapts.  We had a few discussions last fall about climate issues, but when I started ranting at length about the poor job that’s been done in communicating about the worldwide decline of coral reefs he demanded I put my mouth where my mouth was by being a guest.

NEW BOOKS NETWORK:  HOW THE GREENHOUSE MANAGER PUT ME IN MY PLACE

Bob Wilson of Syracuse University hosted me in 2010 for a two day campus visit to show my movie, “Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy,” and speak to their sciences programs. I gave what I thought was a respectable talk, but a member of their audience didn’t think so. What transpired in the Q&A was the greatest public humiliation of my speaking career. It’s a great story that helped inspire much more effort and conscientiousness on my part and contributed to my third book.  He gave me the chance to tell the story in detail and lots more about what we’re doing with Story Circles and the ABT these days.

A TRUE VISIONARY. This is the man who got Bill Clinton elected. At 72 he’s more alive and electric than ever. The Democratic party needs to recapture voices of leadership (and narrative) like his.

PROFESSOR RAGIN’ CAJUN

Every college student in America should be jealous of the lucky 50 students enrolled in James Carville’s political science class at Tulane University.  On Monday nights they meet at the home of Mr. Carville and his legendary Republican wife, Mary Matalin, to have him present a guest speaker. It’s the way that college ought to be — a chance to hang out with awesome and innovative professors like that.

I got to know James last year, as I talked about on Park Howell’s Business of Story podcast which I recorded the morning after the election. From my work with narrative structure I came to realize that Donald Trump had an unfair advantage in the political world. He has deep “narrative intuition” — the term I coined in “Houston, We Have A Narrative.” In the podcast I told about my journey of frustration during the months leading up to the election.

I set to work starting in the summer of 2015 trying to publish an editorial titled, “Trump Knows Narrative,”(a broader version of this in-depth essay) showing how the ABT Template can be used to quantitatively show how much of an upper hand Trump has with communication. I drew on every contact I have at the NY Times (which was a lot), as well as contacts with 538 Blog, Slate, The Guardian, The Upshot Blog — on and on, pounding on the door of every possible journalist and news pundit, BUT … in the end I hit a complete brick wall.

Finally, a year ago I searched simply HILLARY CLINTON BORING. The first result that came up was an article with the headline, “James Carville Admits Hillary Clinton is Boring.”

I set to work and by April was on the phone explaining the ABT to James Carville himself.

He got it, immediately.  For the man who coined the term, “It’s the economy, stupid,” it didn’t take any explanation for him to see the power and importance of the simple ABT Template.  He tried to get the folks at Hillary Clinton’s campaign to listen to me.  BUT … they didn’t.  Just as they didn’t listen to a whole stack of people with good ideas.

The rest was sad history.

THE RIGHT WAY TO TEACH COLLEGE STUDENTS. Incredible night. Fifty incredibly bright minds. Far more questions than we had time for. There is hope for this country!

THEREFORE … LET’S HAVE FUN WITH CARVILLE AND THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

So Mr Carville invited me to give the second lecture of the semester to his class at Tulane. You can see the setting from the photo above — James and I seated on the landing with me showing slides to the right. Every few minutes he would interrupt with some hilarious story or gem of wisdom. The man is a gold mine of political wisdom, as well as communications savvy.

In fact, he opened the evening with a brilliant introduction that he said to me, “Once you hear this you’re gonna want to use it for every talk you give.” Which is true.

He asked the students if anyone knew who Edward Everett was. No response. I should have known — the name even rang a bell — but I was still lost. He explained.

Everett was the famous politician who spoke before Lincoln at Gettysburg in November, 1865. As Carville pointed out, Everett’s speech was two hours long, Lincoln’s was two minutes. “Which politician do you remember today?” Carville asked the students.

In fact, this is the famous quote from Everett after their speeches, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

And just to get didactic for a moment here, he was absolutely right. Lincoln had a super-clear theme of “unfinished business” which underpinned the 270-some words of his powerful speech. Lincoln had deeeeeep narrative intuition.

And the Everett anecdote is doubly fitting given that Lincoln’s speech, as first noted by Park Howell, is itself nothing more than a three paragraph ABT (basically “We have a great AND mighty nation, BUT now we’re in a civil war, THEREFORE it is up to us, the living, to make sure these men did not die in vain.”).  Mr Carville included that in his introductory comments as well. As I said, he gets it on the ABT.

DINNER WITH A LIVING LEGEND

After the two hour class we went to dinner at a quiet, local upscale restaurant. Every head turned as we were seated, and before the evening was done there was a line of people coming to the table to beg Mr. Carville to do something about this horrible new President, to have their photo taken with him, or to tell him stories about their parents having worked with him.

He laughed and joked his way through every autograph and photo, truly a man of the people. It was a fantasy night starting with his house which you can see looks like it’s straight out of “Interview with a Vampire.”  What a great, great professor, political strategist, and all around excellent fucking guy. Who has the foulest mouth you’ll ever hear. And the students, being from New Orleans, absolutely love him for it.

You can read about Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock bemoaning the sad state of college life these days in America, BUT … I can assure you students are still alive and kicking ass at Tulane. THEREFORE, that one night in New Orleans made the entire journey of rejection with my Trump editorial worth it in the end.

Yay.

SHORT, NOT SWEET, AND STRUCTURED.

INCOMING

Okay, Trump sucks and is a horrible person and all that stuff. There, that’s my disclaimer so that hopefully no one calls me a Trump lover. I’m not. But I do demand the right to analyze the narrative elements of his communication and call them “good” without having that mean I support his policies. I don’t.

The political pundits, who are deaf and blind to the entire concept of narrative structure, thought Trump’s inauguration speech was short, dark and weird.

First off, it wasn’t unusually short. It was 1,475 words. The first inaugural speeches of the previous three presidents were 1,592 (Bush), 1,607 (Clinton) and 2,422 (Obama). Yes, it was the shortest of the group, but only 7% shorter than Bush, 8% shorter than Clinton. That’s not a big deal.

It just felt short. That’s what properly constructed narrative structure results in — a feeling of “wow, that was quick.” I’ve made films that people thought were much shorter than their length and, sadly, I’ve made films that people doubted the length could possibly be as short as it was (which is a painful comment to hear).

It was powerfully structured in terms of narrative. As I have been saying for two years now, Trump has deep narrative intuition. This is just the start. He is going to give mean, angry, powerfully focused speeches for a long time to come. It’s what he thrives on. He will never, ever be content with a lack of tension. Never. It’s what narrative demands.

Here are, in my opinion, the 5 most important narrative features of Trump’s inauguration speech:

1) OVERARCHING ABT – THE “WE SHALL EMERGE FROM THE DARKNESS” THEME

Obama gave a solid first inauguration speech for which you could say the key word of “hardship” was at it’s core. It was justified then given the collapsing economy he inherited. Trump is getting a booming economy, yet he delivered the same sort of message. His ABT was basically, “We are in a dark time BUT I am now President, THEREFORE we are going to return to good times AGAIN.” Make a note of that last word.

Why would he do this? Is it because he’s a liar? Is it because he wants to scare people? Is it just “fear mongering”? No. He lives and breathes narrative. At the center of narrative — at the center of the ABT Template — is the word “but” which is a deeply negative word that arouses the brain with tension. Trump thrives on this word.

He will always be working to generate narrative tension. That is the main driver of all his actions. Even if there were ever peace, he would find a source of tension. The man will never, ever be comfortable for one moment if there is no tension. Everyone should accept this core property of his psyche. It explains more of his behavior than anything else. It’s why, rather than be a good sport with the SNL parodies of him, he instead takes issue with it. Being a good sport destroys narrative tension. That’s just not him.

2) NARRATIVE INDEX (18) – THE HAND OF BANNON

I had predicted last week that by looking at the Narrative Index of the speech (the BUT/AND ratio) you would be able to infer whether Trump’s schlub speechwriter Stephen Miller (author of his speeches last summer that mostly scored around 10) wrote it, versus Trump (who averaged 29 last spring when he was writing his own speeches that got him the candidacy).

In the end it was probably neither. The inside sources say it was his agent of darkness — his “strategist” — Steve Bannon. Which makes sense. It ended up being a compromise between the styles of Trump and Miller, and thus had the intermediate score of 18.

But more importantly, it had strong narrative form. Clear set up, short, structured journey, concise synthesis.

Also, there’s the side note of the Batman stuff that’s been pointed out. Bannon is a mediocre filmmaker. You can bet he probably shaped the Batman stuff.

3) OPENING ABT – YES, THERE WAS ONE

In classic ABT form he opened with words of agreement. He spoke the platitudes of how power is transferred every four years and thanked the Obamas. But then … he inserted a singular statement of contradiction with this passage:

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.

There’s actually two words of contradiction — however and but. A double dose, fitting of what was to come. He identified the problem (the elites have had all the power), then launched right into the statement of consequence:

That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment, it belongs to you.

4) THE JOURNEY: ARISTOTLE WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPRESSED

From there, Trump/Bannon embarked on a series of narrative cycles — all ABT structured — all matching Aristotle’s cycles of paridos, episode and stasimon which you can see in Figure 5 of “Houston, We Have a Narrative.” Over and over until climaxing in this passage shortly before the end:

Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining, but never doing anything about it.
(APPLAUSE)
The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.

5) THE GRAND SYNTHESIS, “AGAIN”

What is most stunning is the grand synthesis of everything — his last 100 words. SIX of those last 100 words were the word “again.” That is very, very significant. When you study the monomyth of Joseph Campbell you come to realize that once the journey has begun — once you have entered the “special world” — your only overall goal is just to get back to the “ordinary world” … AGAIN.

That word is deeply powerful in narrative terms. And guess where it’s shown up for the past two years — as the last word of his slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

That is how deep Donald Trump’s narrative intuition is.

So to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. Together, we will make America strong again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America. Thank you. God bless America.

BOTTOM LINE: THE SPEECH WAS NOT FOR ELITES OR EGGHEADS

Sorry. It’s the truth. If you are smart enough to pick the speech apart analytically then it simply wasn’t meant for you. Trump has deep narrative intuition. He knows how to use it to connect with the masses. No one — not one person — in the Democratic party has this attribute. It’s not just about being a populist hate monger. He embodies the “narrative imperative” of the American masses, and they will be listening to him for a long time to come.

What sort of narrative strength will Trump’s inauguration speech have?  Will he breathe narrative bluster like Richard Nixon?  Or deliver a rambling drivel-a-thon like Eisenhower’s second inaugural.  One indication will be his first paragraph.  Will there be a clear narrative/ABT structure (I would predict yes if Trump over-rules his speechwriter) or will it be rambling and unfocused (his designated speechwriter is not good).

NIXON’S SPLENDIDLY PORTENTOUS WORDS: He opened his inaugural speech with this ABT: “Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. BUT some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries. (THEREFORE) This can be such a moment.” He should have continued with, “Everybody better duck and cover cause HERE COMES TRICKY DICK!”

INAUGURAL

Wherever you find great speeches you’ll find the ABT at work.  Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech opens with the ABT structure for the first paragraph — so plain and simple I use it in all my talks.  The Gettysburg Address was nothing more than three paragraphs — one for each of the ABT elements.

Mario Cuomo’s legendary “A Tale of Two Cities” DNC speech of 1984 opened with an ABT as he basically said that Reagan says we’re a shining city on a hill AND in some places that’s true, BUT he hasn’t been to the worst parts of our cities, THEREFORE he needs to realize we are a nation of two cities.

Barbara Jordan’s legendary 1976 DNC speech opened with an ABT — 144 years ago Democrats first met to choose a candidate AND this week’s meeting is a continuation of that process, BUT tonight is different because I, Barbara Jordan am a key note speaker, THEREFORE the American Dream continues to advance.

It is the hallmark of great communication — clarity and simplicity of message.  Trump showed early in his campaign a strong aptitude for this, BUT … once he won the nomination he began allowing others to write his speeches, and their clarity declined.

Now he has appointed Stephen Miller as the main writer for his inauguration speech.  The guy wrote a misguided rambling mess last summer for Trump’s RNC speech that was shockingly long.

What he ought to open with is a clear ABT that presents his narrative theme of making America great again.  If he does, the speech will probably have been rewritten by Trump and will have focus and clarity.  If the first paragraph (or two) doesn’t have solid ABT structure, I predict it was written by Stephen Miller (and others who are rumored to be getting their hands into it — danger, danger) and will be flabby and rambling.

Tune in to see.

Last month PLOS published a paper titled, “Narrative Style Influences Citation Frequency in Climate Change Science” which was a nice study, BUT… How do you write a paper about “narrativity” in scientific papers and not discuss the IMRAD narrative template that scientists began using a century ago? How can you use the word “influences” in the title if you did nothing more than correlations? Why would you over-complicate things by using “narrativity” instead of just narrative structure? The paper stands as a monument to the lack of “narrative intuition” in the science world.  Other professions (business, law, politics, advertising) already know that narrative structure underpins all communication. EVERYONE knows that narrative is central to all communication. Except, apparently some scientists, who lack intuition and thus need data. The bottom line is the same old thing, don’t be such a scientist — the world needs your efforts actually using narrative dynamics, not questioning their value.

A MONUMENT TO THE LACK OF NARRATIVE INTUITION IN THE SCIENCE WORLD.

IT’S CALLED INTUITION

Bob Dylan once said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”  If you have the least bit of common sense/intuition you can walk outside and figure it out for yourself.

The idea that science communication benefits from narrative structure was established a century ago by a generation of scientists with much deeper understanding for communication than today’s scientists.  They created the IMRAD Template which today underpins the communication of pretty much all scientific papers.  If you don’t know what IMRAD stands for, Google it.  If you’re a scientist, you should know.

“DATA” —  IT FIGURES

My development of the ABT Template has resulted in a great deal of interest, not just in the science world where I’ve launched it, but far outside of science.  In addition to 5 government agencies, I’m now working with a wide range of corporate clients (Roche, Billabong, Deloitte, Genentech, among others) who, instead of saying “Gosh, we don’t know — where’s the data to show this narrative stuff is actually needed?” have simply brought me in to get to work helping them apply the knowledge emerging from the ABT.  (I’m also working with a number of political folks shaping their messaging)

It’s very exciting. Everywhere I go, people are applying the ABT to strengthen their narrative content (just this week the National Park Service used the ABT throughout a 50 page climate report)

BUT THEN … I turn back to the science world and what do I see?  A paper presenting “data” to “prove” that “narrativity” matters.  Which is true.  It does matter.  Of course it matters.  It’s why scientific papers morphed from their original non-narrative form in the 1600’s to the structurally regimented narrative form of today using the IMRAD elements.

NOT WRONG, JUST SAD

There’s nothing wrong about their paper (except using “influences” in the title — isn’t that the same as causation when all they present are correlations?  I don’t see any controlled experiments).  If you really are stuck back in the 1600’s, needing evidenced-based arguments to convince you narrative matters, then I guess it’s the paper for you.

But seriously, the point was made a century ago.  The major thing everyone should learn from this paper is that no other professions feel the need to question the importance of narrative.  This is the handicap that science suffers from — a vast lack of intuition when it comes to communication.

It needs to change.  It has to change, given the coming anti-science onslaught, starting with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. this week (sheesh!).

As I said last week, 2017 is going to be The Year of the ABT.  This is a perfect start.  Just in time for our Story Circles Demo Days in two weeks in Colorado, the National Park Service has released a 50 page report on their Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy featuring the ABT approach throughout.  If it’s good enough for them, it really is good enough for you.

IT’S SIMPLE AS ABT. The climate is changing AND it’s having an impact on cultural resources, BUT we’ll never know how much change is happening if it isn’t documented over time, THEREFORE the National Park Service just released a statement of their strategy on this.

HOW TO ABT. On page 30 of the report is this nice, simple presentation of the ABT and how it works.

THEREFORE …

What’s best about this new report from the National Park Service on “cultural resources and climate change” are the sections on the ABT Template (And, But, Therefore) — on page 17 and 30/31 where they explain the ABT, tell how to use it for case studies, then present case studies throughout the document where they have clearly used it.

It’s not like the case studies all use the three words — it’s just that you can feel they have solid narrative structure.  Each one sets up the context, presents a single narrative thread, then addresses the significance and meaning of what’s going on.

It’s not that complicated.  Effective communication is simple.  Just like the ABT.

I can’t wait to run our two Demo Days with the NPS folks in Ft Collins and Denver.  This is the first group we’re working with who have already adopted the ABT approach.   We’ll be starting at the most advanced level yet.

We’ll be starting at the most advanced level yet.   Therefore … (stay tuned!).

The pundits keep laughing about President-elect Trump’s use of Twitter for diplomatic statements.  They shouldn’t be laughing.  It’s dangerous.  The problem with Twitter:  It’s a NON-NARRATIVE medium.  I showed this in my 2015 book.  I compared the average number of characters needed for a narrative statement (an And, But, Therefore or ABT statement) versus what Twitter allows.  The difference is huge.  This means there is little chance to put comments into context.  Stephen Colbert found this out the hard way in 2014.  For Trump there will come a disaster soon based around his tweeting, and it will be the result of the medium being non-narrative.  Maybe that will wipe the smiles off the faces of the pundits.

The dashed line is for the 140 character limit of Twitter.   When asked to write the narrative statement of their project using the ABT template (And, But, Therefore) the statements of workshop participants averaged more than twice the length of a tweet.  Bottom Line:  Twitter does not give you enough characters to make a clear narrative statement