Want to hear from a few graduates of Story Circles Narrative Training?  On Monday we held an hour conference call with folks from three government agencies — all graduates of Story Circles.  They range from a scientist (Mike Strauss, formerly of USDA) to a communicator with a science background (Michael Bart of National Park Service) to a communicator with no science background (Heidi Koontz of USGS).  It’s an insightful discussion.  And gratifying.

WARNING:  There’s a bunch of beeps at the start from people joining the call, but they stop after a few minutes.

STORY CIRCLES:  IT’S FOR COMMUNICATORS OF ALL SORTS

On Monday the USFWS folks in Portland hosted this conference call in preparation for the Demo Day we’ll be doing with them this fall.  I moderated the discussion involving three veterans of Story Circles as a large group listened in.  Each of them spoke for 10 minutes, providing specifics on how Story Circles has worked at their agencies.

Of particular note is Heidi Koontz of USGS in Ft Collins, Colorado.  She’s a communicator, not a scientist, and head of communication for the Central States Region.   She tells of how, as a long time veteran communicator, she wondered if the training might be superfluous — that she already knows it all from her years of experience.  She says it proved hugely valuable.

I’ve had Heidi speak at several of our Demo Days because of this.  She tells of how the other four members of her circle were scientists, causing her to groan at first.  But by the end, the four scientists had become such a valuable resource for her that she now uses them constantly for editorial input as they now have a language in common — the language of the ABT Framework.

It’s a great discussion.

My heart is with Bernie Sanders, but my head says he (and the Democratic party) are doomed.  When asked on Friday evening on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher about “the message” of the Democratic party he didn’t have a good answer.  Until they figure out how narrative works, they are doomed.

BERNIE SANDERS AND BILL MAHER BID FAREWELL TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S HOPES.

TRUMP KNOWS NARRATIVE (STILL)

Trump knows narrative.  That was the title of my draft editorial that the publicist for my “Houston, We Have A Narrative” book submitted to a large number of newspapers in the fall of 2015 as everyone was busy laughing at Donald Trump.  It was turned down everywhere — they already knew Trump didn’t stand a chance at the presidency.  I was left telling about the Trump/Narrative theme the morning after the election on “The Business of Story” podcast.

Two weeks ago on “Meet the Press” (May 27), Chuck Todd said, “… as President Trump showed once again how skilled he is at shaping a false narrative to his advantage.”  He’s talking about “shaping narrative.”  That’s what Trump knows how to do.  And the Democrats don’t.

What can be said about this?  The Democrats are utterly, utterly inept at mass messaging, which means narrative.  Here’s yet another article, just last week, with the same old headline of the Democrats, “need to have a message.”  Over and over and over again it’s being said to them.

My Democratic strategist friend Dave Gold had an excellent article in Politico last year laying it out clear as day — that Democrats are too much in love with polls and data, and too clueless about story/narrative.

It’s now at crisis stage.

HILLARY VERSUS BERNIE: QUIEN ES LESS MESSAGE SAVVY?

Hillary’s campaign, sadly, showed that they were both inept at messaging and uninterested in working on it.  The former was displayed by the candidate herself on May 22, 2016 with this exchange on Meet the Press:

CHUCK TODD:  Bernie Sanders has been talking about a political revolution. A future you can believe in. Obviously, Donald Trump with the Make America Great again, is one of these slogans that has taken off, for better or for worse. If you could sum up, what is the big idea of your candidacy?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:  Look, we are stronger together. We are stronger together, in facing our internal challenges and our external ones. We are stronger together if we work to improve the economy. And that’s going to mean trying to get the Republicans to do what will actually help produce more jobs, like we saw in the 1990s. We are stronger together when we have a bipartisan, even nonpartisan foreign policy that protects our country. And that provides a kind of steady, strong, smart leadership that the rest of the world expects from us.

I ended up seeing for myself how disinterested in messaging the Clinton campaign folks were when James Carville pulled all his strings (which were plenty) to try and get them to at least try working with my ABT Narrative Template, which I told about last year here.  

That was sad, but Bernie is no better.

CAN YOU PUT IT ON A HAT?

Look at this exchange last Friday evening.  Bill Maher asked Bernie VERBATIM for “something that would fit on a hat.”  Why couldn’t he answer him with a 4 word slogan?  Donald Trump would have.

BILL MAHER:  … BUT an agenda is not a message.  They are different.  Trump is better at messaging.  His voters don’t care about an agenda except build a wall, lock her up.  What’s the Democrats message?  If you had to boil it down to something that would fit on a hat, which is about all that people can take in at this point — what’s the Democrat’s message?

BERNIE SANDERS:   The Democrat’s message is that we need a government that represents working families not billionaires.  (APPLAUSE)   An agenda that says health care is a right not a privilege.  An agenda that speaks to the young people that says that we should make colleges and universities tuition free and lower debt.

Where was the slogan that fits on a hat?  This is not silliness. Every facet of this country is now suffering the consequences of Donald Trump’s narrative skills.   How bad does it have to get until the Democrats admit they have a fundamental problem with narrative in today’s information-glutted world?

Look at this quote from last week:  Don Baer, White House Communications Director for President Bill Clinton, used to say that Democrats were really good at “coming up with 100 reasons to do something…but never just one.”

There’s your problem.  It’s called “the singular narrative.”  Trump eats it for breakfast as Democrats continue to argue back, “Well, it’s not that simple.”  Yes, it has to be, or there’s no hope for you.

HERE’S HOW SIMPLE IT IS

Last week Dr. Tullio Rossi of Australia posted this wonderful cartoon version of my ABT Narrative Template which so far has gotten several hundred retweets on Twitter.

It’s all so sad when looked at in terms of the presidential election.  Plain as day — Hillary was the left column in this graphic, Trump was the right column.  I showed it quantitatively over and over again using the ABT Framework.  I tried to show during the campaign how Hillary’s speeches were overflowing with the word “AND.”

The rest is Trumpian history.  Yes, it continues to be that simple.  This is a battle that the over-educated are simply not equipped to handle.  I started warning of this problem in 2009 with the first edition of, “Don’t Be Such A Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style.”  It’s incredibly frustrating to watch them continue to spin so aimlessly.  And with no signs of change ahead.

The Democrats are doomed.

Last week my good friend Park Howell, host of the popular podcast, “The Business of Story” presented an excellent webinar titled, “Your So-called Storytelling is Killing Your Brand.”  I have talked for years about the stampede of well intentioned zealots for “the power of storytelling” who appear to have minimal ability to actually tell a story, yet dazzle audiences by presenting the complexity of story analysis drawn from books about story structure.  I like to think of it as trying to teach football to little league players using the playbook of the New England Patriots.  You can do it, all the parents will brag about how their kid is using such a sophisticated playbook, but is it really going to work if the kids don’t even know how to throw a decent pass or kick the ball properly?  This really needs to stop.  Please, start with the ABT before you dive into all the exciting complex stuff.  It’s what we do in Story Circles Narrative Training.  Start with the simple.  You need to build INTUITION first. 

THIS FEEDS STORYPHOBIA.  The top diagram shows something called “story spirals.”  Why?  There’s already enough scientists who are suspicious and dismissive of story dynamics in science without confusing them with excessive complexity.  The ABT is the simple pathway to gaining an initial understanding of the narrative underpinnings of science and drama.  Start with the simple.  Please.

TAKE MY ABT … PLEASE

I’m sorry to have to single out one person, but a specific example is needed to make this point.  I’m sure that Anna Clemens has the best of intentions in writing this essay about telling a story in your scientific paper.  But the problem is you really do confuse and lose a lot of people by diving so quickly into the complexity of “plot spirals” (how have I spent 30 years in and around Hollywood and not once heard this term?).

Narrative is very, very, very challenging.  This is what I learned long ago in film school where I studied with one of the great legends of script structural analysis, Frank Daniel.

We know this well in our Story Circles Narrative Training program.  As a result, we hold off to the end of each hour session for the discussion and implementation of the full story templates of the Story Cycle (as developed by Park Howell, derived from the work of Joseph Campbell, Jonah Sach’s book, “Winning the Story Wars” and other sources) and the Logline Maker (as developed by Dorie Barton and presented in our book“Connection,” and derived from Blake Snyder’s book, “Save the Cat”).

Last week Park Howell presented a great webinar in which he told of how in his workshops he uses the ABT as the simple, intuitive, entry point for eventually crafting a more complex narrative using those templates.  Everyone interested in the use of story structure for their communication should listen to his webinar.

All of these people wanting to popularize the use of story dynamics in science communication need to realize it’s best to start with the simple before progressing to the complex.  It’s that simple.  It really is.  We’ve been watching it for 4 years now in the development of Story Circles.  And you can see the strength of it in this approach in the new video we’ve produced with the National Park Service folks in Colorado

THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE IN COLORADO STORY CIRCLES.  Last week we posted this short video with three of the participants of the 6 concurrent Story Circles recently concluded by the National Park Service staff in Colorado.

PS, ENOUGH WITH THE PAUL ZAK AND OXYTOCIN REFERENCES

Paul Zak (cited in the Clemens article) and his oxytocin storytelling has been discredited by Ed Yong in The Atlantic and ridiculed by John Oliver on his HBO show.  Is there really no consequence for having that happen?

Story Circles works.  That’s the simple conclusion at this point, 4 years after sketching out the concept at the end of, “Houston, We Have A Narrative.”  We’ve now involved well over 1,000 scientists and communicators. In a few days we’re going to post a short video that shows how successful, popular and valuable the 6 concurrent circles with National Park Service in Colorado were.  For now, have a look at our weekly update that Liz Foote puts together every Monday — it gives a little glimpse into the current level of activity.  We’ve run 27 Demo Days (DD) and 38 Story Circles (SC).  It speaks for itself.

RES IPSA LOQUITUR.  Story Circles speaks for itself

I dreamed of it at the end of, “Houston, We Have A Narrative.” Now they’ve done it.  Last year the good folks at the National Park Service in Fort Collins, Colorado (and Lakewood!) launched 6 Story Circles involving 32 scientists and communicators.  All 6 went the distance, with the last one completing their 10th session this week. Along the way they established a new tradition — the ABT Cake (or pie!) to celebrate the 10th session along with the completion certificates (important in a government agency). Of course, the training is not finished.  It never is.  Story Circles just orients you with the tools and mindset to start seeing narrative structure better and thinking more deeply about it. This is now a nucleus of 32 people who can speak the ABT Framework among themselves as they shape the narrative structure of all their projects and communication.  It’s a major accomplishment, with huge thanks to Larry Perez, the Communications Coordinator who masterminded the entire effort from start to finish.

THREE CAKES AND A PIE.  These are 4 of the 6 circles, celebrating their 10th and final session with ABT cakes and an ABT pie.

THIS IS MY DREAM

Here is it, in living color.  I started the last chapter of, “Houston, We Have A Narrative” in 2015 talking about the idea of what I termed, “Narrative Culture.”  It’s the concept of a group of co-workers being versed in the ABT Framework and the narrative tools we introduce in Story Circles.  If they all speak this common language of narrative structure, and have practiced the idea of working on someones narrative as a group, using the narrative tools, that they can begin to not only work together, but also set standards where they can spot AAA and DHY problems and work to reduce them. 

Here’s what I said about it:

Having a narrative culture within an organization or university department or research institution could mean you have reached a critical threshold of people who have undergone narrative training, have developed the basics of narrative intuition, and now the norms have shifted. They know the narrative templates. They speak with a shared narrative vocabulary.

 And there is now a certain level of expectation of narrative clarity and cohesion.  It’s not a lot to learn, there’s just a need to learn it well. 

Here’s what Story Circles Narrative Training provides, and why it’s so valuable:

1 THE TOOLS – introduces the participants to the ABT, the Dobzhansky Template, the Story Cycle and the Log Line Maker

2 NARRATIVE INTUITION –  it puts them on the pathway towards the ultimate goal of narrative intuition

3 SOCIAL ENTRAINMENT –  it gets everyone in the habit of developing narrative structure as a group, which is essential

SO WHAT’S NEXT?

With many of the participants there’s a feeling of “That was great — what’s next?”   We’ve gotten that with other circles.  The Fort Collins USGS circle that took part in our AAAS video told about how they wanted to keep meeting after the ten sessions were done.

For now, it’s up to the circles to just meet on their own and view themselves as a resource.  For one previous circle there were four scientists and a communicator.  The communicator now speaks the ABT Framework language with the four scientists and is able to use them as a resource for analysis of press releases and papers.

We’ll eventually develop some sort of Story Circles 2.0.  We were talking about it at USDA three years ago from the start.  For now, the main goal is to just get large numbers of people through the training and let them continue to work and talk among themselves. We’re approaching 50 circles, and if you add up all the scientists and communicators who have taken part in the nearly 30 Demo Days, the total number of people involved is well over 1,000.  

Slowly, slowly, changing the way people look at communications training.  Getting them to realize, “Narrative is Everything.”

HERE’S THE VISION …

Plain and simple, as laid out in this figure on page 220 of “Houston, We Have A Narrative.”

On Saturday night comedian Michelle Wolf blew the doors off the White House Correspondents Dinner, besting even Stephen Colbert’s famous 2006 performance. Her Narrative Index (But/And ratio) was a sky high 47 — the highest I’ve ever measured.  I’ve been saying this for a while — it’s what you get with comedians — very dense, concise ABT structure.  Bill Maher’s monologues average 33. Imagine what would have happened if Michelle Wolf had been head speech writer for Hillary Clinton.  I’m serious.

NARRATIVE THAT BITES RATHER THAN BORES.

TWISTS AND TURNS

Hopefully by now you’ve at least heard about the stunningly hilarious “speech” comedian Michelle Wolf delivered on Saturday night at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Here’s the ABT Framework analysis. Look at her stats:

       BUT                                                                  21

       AND                                                                  45

       NARRATIVE INDEX                                         47

       AND INDEX                                                      1.8

The Narrative Index is just the ratio of BUTs to ANDs.  I’ve been studying it for three years now.  I’ve calculated it for at least 2,000 speeches.  None has ever scored this high. 

In general, dull speakers (GW Bush) score under 10.  Average speakers are in the teens (Hillary Clinton low teens, Bill Clinton high teens).  Good speakers are in the 20’s (Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr.).  Comedians are in the 30’s.  Richard Nixon reached the 40’s with his first inaugural address.

But Michelle Wolf … in addition to lighting the White House Correspondents Dinner on fire (even more than Stephen Colbert’s gutsy performance during the Bush years), she managed to ring the bell like no one ever before.  

These things go hand in hand.  For comedy to work, it has to be tight.  Her comedy was incredibly tight.  The Narrative Index reveals this quantitatively.

POLITICIAN, GET THEE A COMEDIAN 

I’m so serious about this it’s painful.  How dense can politicians be?  Get yourself a comedian for your writing staff.  NOT to write jokes.  Get a comedian because they have what I termed in “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” the essential quality of “narrative intuition” if they’re any good. 

Comedians get this stuff.  They bore easily.  That’s what you want in order to reach the masses —  someone who is not enthralled by your economic eight point plan.  

Form matters.  If jokes are long, boring or confusing they will destroy the performance.  Comedians understand form at an intuitive level.  Most politicians don’t, but they should.

Just to see how she uses the word “but” to turn so many of her lines, here’s the first five occurrences of it in her speech: 

I never really thought I’d be a comedian, but I did take an aptitude test in 7th grade,

People are saying America is more divided than ever, but I think no matter what you support politically, we can all agree this is a great time for craft stores.

I know there’s a lot of people that want me to talk about Russia and Putin and collusion, but I’m not going to do that because there’s also a lot of liberal media here and I’ve never really wanted to know what any of you look like when you orgasm.

Trump isn’t here, if you haven’t noticed, he’s not here. And I know, I know, I would drag him here myself, but it turns out the president of the United States is the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab.

Now, I know people really want me to go after Trump tonight, but I think we should give the president credit when he deserves it.

Working with Doug Parsons, host of America Adapts: the Climate Change Podcast, we produced a 3 part series on the issue of climate adaptation for the state of California.  It’s sponsored by UCLA’s Institute of Environment and Sustainability, and features a half dozen of their faculty.  The mood of the piece is light, but the actual contents are pretty dark as 20 experts weigh in with a fairly grim prognosis.  The predictions paint a picture of a state that will increasingly look like Baja for vegetation due to wildfire, has an approaching, “freight train of pain” for the issue of drought, and ultimately will confront “the greatest crisis humanity will ever face,” with sea level rise.  We were hoping for a happier ending.  Oh, well.

AN OUTSTANDING CAST!   

TWO CAREER FIRES IN ONE YEAR

Last month Doug Parsons and I produced, “California Adapts” a 3 part special for his podcast, “America Adapts: The Climate Change Podcast,” that takes a close look at the state of California.  Given that most of America now accepts that climate is changing (check out the report released this week from the Yale climate folks arguing this), it’s time to focus more on the question of, “So how are you gonna handle it?”

The podcast opens with Jeff Mount of U.C. Davis doing a powerful job of telling about the great flood of 1861/62 that so devastated Sacramento the capital had to be temporarily moved to San Francisco.  From there, Mary Nichols (long time head of California’s Air Resources Board) and actor/environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr. tell the story of how Los Angeles solved the smog problem of the 1970’s.

These two stories set the stage for the journey Doug takes around the state in the second episode.  We divided the issue of climate adaptation into five main topics — fire, flood, drought, temperature and sea level rise.   For each one he goes out into the field with an expert, then we interview others in search of a clear idea of how prepared the state is for climate change.

In the final episode we go back to a few of the experts to ask them for their bottom line opinion on what the future will look like.  The answers range from somewhat unsettling to very unsettling.  

I have to say, it certainly opened my eyes to how serious the problems are.  One of the most disconcerting bits is when Fire Captain Tony McHale of the Ojai Fire Station talks about the term “career fire” which means a once in a lifetime-sized fire.  He says, “We’ve had two career fires in the past year — what does that say?”

The big problem is infrastructure.  The future is going to need new approaches, and while it’s clear that there are lots of plans and ideas on how to deal with it, what’s not so clear is where the resources are going to come from and when the major actions are going to begin.

PREDICTION:  A well written comic speech should have an exceptionally high Narrative Index (BUT/AND ratio) — meaning above 20, ideally in the 30’s as Bill Maher’s weekly monologues almost always have.  OBSERVATION:  President Trump’s Gridiron comic speech on March 4, 2018 scored a stunningly high 44.  There is a science to narrative structure.  

TRUMP DELIVERS A WELL CRAFTED COMIC SPEECH. Regardless of content, whoever wrote it for him did an expert job with the narrative structure, and the speech was well received.

GREETINGS FROM SXSW INTERACTIVE

I’m in Austin where tomorrow Jayde Lovell and I will present our panel titled, “Selling Science (Before the World Melts Down).”  Here’s a little tip for the science world on how to sell yourself — get to know these two narrative metrics I’ve been working with for the past 2.5 years.

NARRATIVE INDEX =  BUT / AND

AND INDEX =  AND / TOTAL WORDS (% of words that are “and”)

TRUMP KNOWS NARRATIVE

On March 4 President Trump delivered a comic speech to the Gridiron Club.  The Narrative Index was 44 which is extremely high (38 BUTs, 87 ANDs).  I’ve only found one other speech ever that was above 40 which was Richard Nixon’s first inaugural (a barn burner from the guy who was determined to get himself into the Oval Office at all costs).

Good comedy has a high Narrative Index.  It has to.  Comedians cannot afford to bore or confuse.  They need to hit story points that are clear, and emerge at a consistent pace. 

These metrics are clear and predictable, and yet all I get from journalists is, “yeah, we know.”  Really?  Where?  Show me one article you’ve written on this.  

To the contrary, just look at the upheaval last year at the World Bank when Chief Economist Paul Romer tried to implement the “Bankspeak” study by Moretti and Pestre of the Stanford Literary Lab revealing the problem with the And Index for World Bank reports.  The end result was a kibosh on the whole concept.

Minds are closed to these metrics, but they will open soon enough.  Our SXSW panel tomorrow will be the next effort.