It’s official — 2017 is the Year of the ABT. Why not, the ABT is the DNA of story, as my good buddy Park Howell of “The Business of Story” podcast likes to say.  It’s the central tool for our Story Circles Narrative Training which continues to spread.  This year Story Circles kicks off with two big Demo Days for the National Park Service in Colorado later this month.  Also, we’re up to our elbows editing the 20 minute video about Story Circles we’re doing as a co-production with AAAS. And in the meanwhile, the corporate and political worlds are starting to “get it” on the ABT and Story Circles.  2017 will truly be the Year of the ABT.

TIME TO LAUNCH STORY CIRCLES WITH THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE. Two days with 40 participants each in Fort Collins and Lakewood (Denver). A great way to start the new year!

As we prepare to enter a strange new world next year I want to end this year with the figure from “Houston, We Have A Narrative” that underlies pretty much everything we are now dealing with. Our information glutted world has turned “The Creek of Story” into “The Raging Whitewater Torrent of Story.”  The polls show clearly who is the casualty — the tiny fish of truth.  But by “story” I’m not referring to lying.  I’m referring to story structure.  It doesn’t mean you need to lie, only that you need to understand the narrative selective regime in which we now live.  “Just the facts” no longer works, as sadly shown by the losing Presidential candidate who tried to pursue that approach.  From here on, it’s all about story.

FROM HERE ON, STORY WINS. END OF STORY.

THE POST-TRUTH WORLD

There’s mountains of stuff now spewing out about the “post-factual world,” fake news and  “post-truth politics.”   Wikipedia even has a page for the latter.

I have only one simple thing to add to the mix.  It’s the visual (above) that was in my book last year, “Houston, We Have A Narrative.”  I suppose I might modify that figure to have two fishes — one labeled NARRATIVE (ABT, And-But-Therefore) that is succeeding in beating the river.  The other labeled NON-NARRATIVE (AAA, And-And-And) that is being swept downstream.

Hillary Clinton ran a “stunningly boring campaign” as the UK Telegraph and many other media outlets put it.  Her VP selection, Tim Kaine, was uber-boring.

You CAN NOT DO THAT in the United States and expect to win.  It’s an intensely narrative culture we have created.  My Story Circle co-creator Jayde Lovell and I are assembling the data and argument for the process of “narrative selection” — the fact that we live in a narrative selective regime — those who fail to comply get selected against.

NARRATIVE IS NOW OUR NARRATIVE

These are my watch words for the new year — the Narrative Imperative.  Donald Trump has deep narrative intuition, as I talked about on Park Howell’s podcast “The Business of Story” the morning after the election.

If you want to make sense of the world we are headed into, you better have a solid grounding in these narrative principles.  I presented the Dobzhansky Template in the book.   Here it is, filled out for the new year:

“Nothing in America Makes Sense Today Except in the Light of Narrative Dynamics.”

This underlies the fundamental dynamic between the right and the left.  The left has the statistics showing how rare terrorists attacks are in America, but the right has the handful of stories of terrorist attacks that are absolutely terrifying.  Story wins.

That’s the bottom line for 2017:   Story wins.

Happy Holidays!

I know we’re supposed to applaud climate scientists who speak out in defense of climate science, and I do.  But just getting media attention isn’t the challenge — it needs to have long term impact.  Which is where narrative dynamics come in.  I offer up this ABT analysis of climate scientist Mike Mann’s editorial yesterday in the Washington Post to help demonstrate the importance and power of narrative structure.  Yes, presenting lots of conflict draws attention for the short term, but for the long run, if you don’t have good narrative structure (i.e. all 3 of the ABT elements), you’re producing nothing more than “a sundry lists of facts.”  Which is what he did — all B, no A or T.

THE ABT ANALYSIS OF MIKE MANN’S CLIMATE EDITORIAL in yesterday’s Washington Post.

AN 8 WORD THEREFORE?

Climate scientist Mike Mann and I have been buddies since he was on the post-screening panel for my climate mockumentary “Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy” at Penn State in 2009.  One of my first interviews for my blog The Benshi was with him in 2010.  He’s done a mountain of important work for the climate community, and borne the brunt of relentless personal attacks from climate skeptics — much of which he itemized in his Washington Post editorial yesterday.

But here’s the problem.  The narrative structure of his editorial is weak.  Yes, there’s a ton of conflict in it — a laundry list of attacks he’s endured.  But that’s all it is — in essence an AAA exercise (the dreaded And, And, And template).  Which is interesting, and maybe even a little bit curious, but in the words of Dobzhansky (as quoted in my last book), in the end he presents little more than “a sundry list of facts, some of which are interesting and curious, but ultimately meaningless.”

This is the hard part of narrative.  There’s more to delivering content that will “stick” (and btw, “Made to Stick” was nothing more than the fact that things stick when they have good narrative structure) than just making a list.

This is what participants in Story Circles Narrative Training begin to realize.  The ABT is the magic bullet of communication which seems at first to be incredibly simple, but if you commit to actual in-depth training you begin to realize it has infinite complexity.  And you begin to realize why it has been the central structuring principle of communication since pretty much the beginning of communication, thousands of years ago.

As my buddy Park Howell (host of “The Business of Story” podcast) loves to point out — the ABT goes all the way back to cave people muttering, “Unh Hunh” (A), “Uh Oh” (B) and “Ah Ha!” (T).  It is that primal.

“IT’S THE T, STUPID”

Okay, calm down, that’s not an insult, just a reference to the line from my hero James Carville (a master of simple communication) who coined the expression, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  This is the message to the climate crowd — it’s time to focus on the “THEREFORE” of your messaging.

There’s 21 paragraphs in Mann’s editorial.  20 of them are statements of the problem — on and on. If you’re part of the choir you can’t get enough of these details.  But if you’re only marginally interested (i.e. the masses), after a while you hit the point of wanting to “advance the narrative” which manifests itself with a feeling of “okay, I got it, you’ve been attacked a lot — what are you recommending we do about it?”  This is the power of the word THEREFORE.  It’s what begins to emerge when people work with the ABT — they begin to ask, “So then what’s the THEREFORE of your essay?”

In the case if Mann’s editorial, it was only 8 words at the end — “I would urge these scientists to have courage.”

It could have and should have been much more.  One of the key realizations we’ve had in Story Circles is that “the quicker you can get through the A and the B, the more we’re willing to let you have all day with the T.”  It’s the T that everyone really wants.

But also, without some attention to the A, there is little overall context, importance and depth to the message being delivered.  Yes, it’s nice to hook the reader with a first moment of conflict, but once that’s achieved it’s time to go to work on the basic narrative process starting with exposition. His editorial never did that.

THERE COMES A TIME FOR PREPARING …

If you find yourself getting furious at me for having the audacity to critique someone on the climate team then you’re probably as much of the problem as the climate skeptics.  It’s the same with the Democratic party which has delivered a colossal failure to this nation.  It’s a time for rational, analytical (not arm waving) analysis of what happened, why, and then delivery of the THEREFORE (how to do better).

Mann’s editorial should have given a couple of quick words of A (climate skeptics undermine the serious work that needs to be done, time is running out), a quick statement of the B (3 of his worst experiences plus all the signs that it’s now about to get really bad).  That should have been about 4 paragraphs.

The rest should have been the THEREFORE.  As in, “Therefore it’s time to begin preparing for the assault on climate science we know will come.”  It’s time to assemble defense strategies.  It’s time to look back to 2009 and realize how unprepared the climate community was for the email attacks of Climategate.  It’s time to shift the focus of science organizations from PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING (I served on the AAAS committee charged with this) to PUBLIC PERCEPTION of science.

This last one is big, and is very difficult for scientists to accept.  There is about to be a hell storm of attacks on the credibility of the entire science community.  David H. Freedman’s excellent 2010 book, “Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing US” pretty much foretold that eventually the problem of “fake news” (which is no different from “false positives”) would emerge.  The door is now wide open for major communications chaos for science.

I saw it four years ago in my local California community where there was a painfully divisive local environmental issue. The anti-science forces wrote editorials in our local newspapers saying, verbatim, that today “scientists are no different from lawyers — you can buy one to argue whichever side of an issue you want.”  That, of course, is not true, but you better get ready for this at the national level.  It’s coming.

Last week I had dinner with the head of the largest science organization in the world.  I detected no major preparations in progress for the coming onslaught.

The bottom line, it’s time for a lot of THEREFORE’ing about the climate skeptic/anti-science community.  But I don’t see it happening.  At all.

All I’m seeing coming is a whole lot of the same old Climategate “Well, that just isn’t fair” reactions.

Get ready for “Lalaland” to win the hearts of movie fans over the next few months.  I attended a Screen Actors Guild screening yesterday where the lead actor Ryan Gosling spoke afterwards.  He was amazing, both in the movie and as well as tremendously likable in the Q&A.  But most important, the movie was an ABT tour de force, wrapping itself up in a neat story package at the end, prompting the audience to give it a well deserved standing ovation.  Musicals that work are difficult.  Musicals that work AND tell a good story are incredibly rare and difficult.  The film is already scoring advance raves and deserves every bit of the hype.

HE SINGS, HE DANCES, HE PLAYS PIANO — AND HE’S HUMBLE. Ryan Gosling shows incredible talent in the movie, saying he spent three solid months, night and day, learning the piano and dance moves.

MUSICALS WILL NEVER DIE

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I wrote and directed a 20 minute musical comedy film at USC film school that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, chosen as one of six student films out of nearly one thousand submitted.  You can actually view it here, but you need to keep in mind it was made 21 years ago as a student film and shot on 16 mm film, back in the days when that still happened.  It starred Carol Hatchett, one of the Harlettes, Bette Midler’s backup singers, who gave a tremendous performance that made it all work.

One thing I learned in the process of making that film is that it’s incredibly difficult to make a film that both has song and dance numbers, yet still tells a good story.  It’s easy to let the musical numbers, because they are so difficult, take priority and end up with a movie with a clunky story.

Knowing that gives me an even deeper appreciation for the new movie “Lalaland” starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone which manages both great musical numbers and a tight, simple story that builds to a wonderful conclusion.  It’s great.

GET READY FOR THE OSCARS

A friend invited me last night to a Screen Actors Guild advance showing of “Lalaland.”  For starters it was a pushover audience packed with actors who knew all too well the world the film is set in (actors and musicians in Hollywood).  Every bit of humor about auditions was greeted with roars of laughter and squeals of “oh my god, yes!” as the crowd related to the pains of rejection.

There were a few cliched moments and a couple of scenes that could have been trimmed a tiny bit, but otherwise the two actors overflowed with on-screen charisma and managed to reach the heights of performance of the classic 1950’s musicals.  Of course, it wasn’t quite “Singin’ In the Rain,” but nothing ever again will be.   Some things are just plain sacred and untouchable.  But that’s a sort of “shifting baselines” issue that’s not worth letting get in the way of this really fun movie.

ABT AT WORK

For me (predictably) the most significant element was feeling the tight story dynamics.  It’s a very simple story.  Almost too simple at times — i.e. you know that when the two lead actors fall in love there’s bound to be some rough times ahead.  But it all works, and by the end you can feel the ABT elements coming together, leaving the audience with the sort of feelings of satisfaction that are needed to connect deeply with a movie.

Truly great movies have a simple core that lets you leave the theater feeling everything made sense and was resolved, but also allow you to later find great complexity by thinking back on what the story meant.  This one was great that way.

I loved it — so much I wish I could go into enormous detail about why, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.  Suffice it to say the early critics are raving wildly — USA Today posted this article saying the NY critics have already called it the best film of the year.  If it is, I’ll be comfortable with that.

This is not an indictment of any one individual, just the entire community.  It’s characteristic of the science community in general — the inability to communicate broadly.  Coral reefs around the world are approaching their third act, but the messaging about their welfare continues to be muddled.  Yes, there are lots of dire warnings, but there HAS NOT BEEN THE ONE SINGULAR MESSAGE CONVEYING THE LEVEL OF URGENCY.  Singularity is everything for narrative and narrative is everything for mass communication.  The atomic bomb community knew how to do this starting in the 1940’s.  The military knew how to do it with hunting terrorists.  But scientists have been too deeply ensconced in their soup of facts to speak effectively to the public.

THIS IS EFFECTIVE MASS MESSAGING. The Doomsday Clock countdown to nuclear nightmare.

DON’T BE SUCH A CORAL REEF SCIENTIST

I spent a year of my life living on an island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.  After spending upwards of 8 hours a day underwater conducting research almost every day, I knew the reefs around that island like the back of my hand.

Now those reefs are a wasteland from the mass coral bleaching event of this year.

The coral reefs of the Caribbean are worse.  I got to know the reefs of Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Panama 40 years ago.  Today they are shot.  In my lifetime coral reefs around the world have been obliterated.  And yet, while this has happened, the science/conservation community has been unable to produce much more than a “things are bad in some places” message to the world.

WHAT PART OF “SINGULARITY OF NARRATIVE” DON’T SCIENTISTS GET?

Actually, pretty much all of it.  Scientists are so determined to convey “all the facts” in all their joyous complexity that they have failed to convey much of anything when it comes to the plight of coral reefs.

I began bellyaching about this 15 years ago when I started my Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project with coral reef biologists Jeremy Jackson and Steven Miller.  I kept asking them, “What’s the ONE NUMBER we can tell the world about the state of coral reefs?  Are they 90% of what they were?  50%?  25%?”  And asking them why the coral reef community in general didn’t grasp the importance of having a single, simple indicator for the general public.

The world needed ONE NUMBER.  Not the standard, “Well, it depends on whether we’re talking about live coral cover or total biomass or standing crop or …”

To this day there is still no widely accepted one number for the overall state of coral reefs.  Yet at the same time there are still countless television documentaries and tourism agencies painting pictures of coral reefs as happy and healthy as they’ve ever been.  And why not — dead reefs don’t attract viewers or tourists.  We talked about this 15 years ago.  Nothing has changed.

THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK AND IRAQI PLAYING CARDS

Go ahead and ridicule the simplicity of things like the Doomsday Clock for nuclear armageddon and the pack of playing cards that were used in 2003 to communicate about the most wanted Iraqis.  If you’re a sophisticate you probably think those things are moronic.  But they work for the masses.

Mass communication requires a commitment to finding simplicity.  If you doubt this just look at our new President.  And if you’re mad about that guy being the new President, don’t blame him — blame the Democrats who let you down by their endless inability to simplify anything.

I’m sick of listening to the whiners.  I voted for Hillary.  But I also watched her campaign fail to find any simplicity in their mass messaging.  You can hear my sad story about it that I told the morning after the election on Park Howell’s “Business of Story” podcast.

The Clinton campaign was just like the coral reef community that has been either unwilling or unable to simplify their message of decline for 30 years, and now sits in confusion as coral reefs approach their own midnight.

Rotten, rotten, rotten mass communication, completely oblivious of narrative dynamics.

Next week we will launch our 15th Story Circle (at University of Maryland) making 75 scientists and communications staff participating in individual Story Circles, with 510 taking part in Demo Days. Some circles have finished but have gotten into narrative analysis so deep they haven’t wanted to quit. It’s effective, however there is one casualty: students and postdocs. Sorry.

THIS WEEK’S UPDATE: This is our weekly update showing circles that are meeting and what’s ahead.

FOUR HOTSPOTS

Story Circles is right on track to where we had hoped to be by the end of the year. Last year we developed the training through four prototypes with NIH, USDA and Hendrix University. Now we’re spreading the training.

In particular, we’ve developed four major hot spots — USDA, USFWS, USGS and Genentech. These are the places that have hosted multiple Demo Days and Story Circles with plans for broadening ahead. National Park Service is set to join the group in January with two Demo Days.

Best of all is watching circles finish their 10 one hour sessions and ask to keep going because they are so deeply connected with the process. Story Circles teaches a whole new narrative language that takes a while to fully grasp, but once you do becomes very powerful.

Right now we’re in the thick of a 20 minute video about Story Circles we’re producing with AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) that will be released early next year.

THE ONE CASUALTY SO FAR: STUDENTS

Sorry. We had hoped, along with many others, that Story Circles would be an effective training program not just for professionals, but for students as well. At this point we’re having to conclude it isn’t.

There just doesn’t seem to be the “need or want” when it comes to students. Professionals tend to have a lot of experience with projects that have suffered from poor communication, creating a feeling of need for the training. Or they’ve been hearing for years “you need to do a better job of telling your story.”

But when it comes to students, they seem to be more concerned with “is this gonna be on the exam?” or “are we gonna get credit for this?” or they’re too busy and over-committed. There just isn’t the depth of connection, and without that burning desire that is needed to light up the narrative part of your brain, the training just doesn’t amount to much.  I’m afraid it doesn’t work to shout, “You need to know this for your future!”  Apparently that doesn’t activate the narrative part of the brain..

They also have a tendency to say, “yep, three words: and, but, therefore — we got it, all done, thanks.” Several students have verbatim said that — “we got the three words, we’re all set.” If only it were that simple!

Here’s a great example of the ABT in action as well as the ABT/AAA overall structure.  It’s Bob Dylan’s 1966 song, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”?  It’s built of repeating ABT verses with an over-arching AAA structure.  Give that man a Nobel Prize (if he wants it).

To be stuck inside of Oslo with the Nobel blues again.

OH, MAMA

As he decides whether or not to make a showing at his Nobel Prize ceremony (some of the hosts are already so pissed at him!) let’s take a look at the ABT dynamic at work in one of his greatest songs.

The song consists of 9 versus, all with the same basic ABT structure of agreement, contradiction, resolution.  The words themselves are not that clearly ABT in structure, but the basic inflection/chord sequence clearly follows the ABT pattern.

Each verse begins with a bunch of statements that all have the And, And, And feel.  Some of them, like the first verse, even start with “But” but they’re still just statements of exposition.

Then the chord goes minor with “Oh, Mama …” and you can feel the contradiction of the flow.  In fact, you could drop in the word BUT to make it, “But, oh, Mama …” and it would work just fine.

The last line would be a little clunky if you added THEREFORE, making it, “Therefore to be stuck inside of Mobile …”  But … you can hear the tone of consequence in the music — i.e. you can feel the tension being released.  In fact, you could make it, “So I guess I’m stuck inside of Mobile …” and that would work fine.

Same thing, over and over, nine times.

The first three versus of “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” showing the repeating And, But, Therefore (ABT) structure.

ABT/AAA

Overall, the songs shows the standard recipe for what we might call “engaging boredom.”  So many TV shows, movies, plays, personal stories, events … pretty much everything … commonly show this pattern.  Each verse is really engaging and pulls you in, but overall, the song doesn’t build to anything.  It kind of just “is.”

Which is cool, and is a perfect showcase for strong character work.  But, that said, the character side of the material had better be strong or it’s going to lose us.  Lots of nature documentaries are like this — made up of really cool, engaging little vignettes which hold your interest, but in the end leave you without much for a deeper experience.

That’s where the over-arching ABT comes into play.  It’s what great stories are made of.  It’s not obligatory, but it makes the difference between “a sundry list of facts” (as Dobzhansky so eloquently put it) and deep connection.

And that, is what narrative is all about.  To be stuck inside of AAA structure with the ABT blues again.

Not sure what kind of drugs I was hopped up on a couple nights ago (maybe still recovering from the election) when a poor innocent woman named Erin Rodgers from Toronto politely asked me to answer at least three of her ten questions.  Turned out they were all good questions so I answered them all, sounding like a lunatic, but so what, the new President has instilled this in me.  We can no longer afford to bore or confuse.

RIBIT.

Ten good questions, ten blunt, repetitive answers, all of which arise from “Houston, We Have A Narrative.”

“Mars Attacks” was a movie that was exactly 20 years ahead of it’s time.  The entire movie is ABT structured — “The Martians land AND they seem to have come in peace, BUT then they start slaughtering everyone THEREFORE basically beware of the Greeks and their damn wooden horse gifts.”  The ABT is the fundamental template of narrative and consists of three forces — agreement, contradiction, consequence.  Last week Trump was pure agreement in meeting with Obama.  Do you kinda think there might be some contradiction coming soon?  Better start getting ready because I don’t think the consequence that will follow is gonna be pretty.

TIME FOR A LITTLE BIPARTISAN EFFORT!

LET THE ABT BE YOUR GUIDE IN THESE DELICATE TIMES

Hate to be a skeptic, but all I could see last week was Trump’s deep, deep narrative intuition at work as he sat there with his new buddy President Obama.  That day will come to be known as the AND phase of Trump’s post-election process.  I would expect nothing other than that from the man given his deep narrative intuition.

But I also know what’s coming — the BUT phase (contradiction).  Which will then be followed by the THEREFORE (consequence).  It’s coming.  You can see it play out in a movie from 20 years ago, “Mars Attacks,” which was all I kept thinking about last week as the post-election olive branches came out.

Trump has narrative intuition.  I did this podcast the morning after the election with my buddy Park Howell for his Business of Story series.  To put it in terms of the Dobzhansky Template (see my last book for details), it’s like this:  Nothing in our near future is going to make sense except in the light of Donald Trump’s deep narrative intuition.

My advice:  Keep your eye on the narrative.

MY PODCAST THE DAY AFTER THE ELECTION WITH PARK HOWELL, APPLYING NARRATIVE ANALYSIS TO WHAT HAPPENED.

Of all the exercises we did in film school, this one was the best.

JAKE GITTES KNEW THE POWER OF SIMPLICITY.

OVER-THINKING “CHINATOWN”

As much fun as I had in film school at USC, I was a little disappointed at times with some of the faculty who put little effort into their teaching.  Many of them pretty much said to go shoot a film and they would critique it — not much more than that.

But we did do one very simple and memorable exercise in our first semester production class. They broke us into groups of four, gave us one page of the screenplay for the movie “Chinatown,” and told us to come up with a shot list for everything on the page.

My group broke it down into 17 shots.  It was the scene where Jack Nicholson is watching through binoculars as a young boy on a donkey rides slowly through the empty creek bed.  We had a crane shot, a few dolly shots, close-ups of the boy and dolly, close-ups of Jack as he talks to him.

Everyone put their shot lists up on the board.  The other groups were in the same range — between about 15 and 20 shots.  And then they showed us the scene.  We were all stunned.

It was 3 simple shots.

That’s all.  No fancy camera moves, no cutting back and forth, just simple storytelling, first and foremost.

SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION

This exercise came to mind this week because a young filmmaker showed me a one minute video he had just shot.  It was packed with text and twists and turns and quick cuts and … it was a tangled up mess.  This happens a lot.

People get excited about filmmaking and think it’s all about impressing your audience with the complexities of what you can pull off.  A truly great filmmaker has the experience and intuition to solve the challenge of telling the story in the fewest and simplest number of steps.   Just like an elegant mathematical proof.

The way you get to this point of being able to see the simplicity in the story is through lots and lots and lots of experience.  No real short cuts.  You just have to get to work gathering experience and seeking the ultimate goal which is narrative intuition.

THE ABT OF THIS LITTLE TALE

And just to show you the eternal ubiquity of the ABT, here’s the story I just told you.  “We made our shot lists AND we thought we nailed it, BUT then they showed us we were making it 5 times more complicated than needed, THEREFORE we were humbled.”

Get to know the ABT, it’s your ticket to narrative intuition.