Tag Archives: Story Circles

#178) Play Along at Home: Our Story Circles Demo Session

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Yesterday, to enjoy 90 minutes of escapism, we ran a Story Circles “Demo Session” with 5 of our recent graduates.  It was fun, interesting, and a valuable thing to do in a time where the communication of science has never, ever been more important.  You can listen to the audio of the session here, and “play along” using the four abstracts and one narrative below to get a feel for how the training works.

STARS OF THE SHOW:  Clockwise from top left:  Michael Bart (National Park Service, Colorado), Andrea Taylor (School of Psychology, University of Waikato, NZ), Alison Mims (National Park Service, Colorado), Randy Olson (scientist-turned-filmmaker), Mevagh Sanson (School of Psychology, University of Waikato, NZ), Elizabeth Stulberg (Agronomy, Crops, and Soil Science Societies).

 

THE STANDARD ONE HOUR STORY CIRCLES SESSION

Story Circles Narrative Training consists of 10 one hour sessions of five people meeting, usually once a week.  The goal of the training is to strengthen your “narrative intuition” — a term I coined in my 2015 book, “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” which provides background on all of the concepts presented in the training.

The first half hour is Narrative Analysis where they are given 5 texts to analyze using the ABT Framework (for this demo session we only used four).  The second half of the hour is Narrative Development where each participant has an assignment.  For this session the assignment were as follows and the materials analyzed are below.

MODERATOR – Michael

NARRATIVE – Mevagh

WORD TEMPLATE /ARGUMENT – Andrea

SENTENCE TEMPLATE –  Elizabeth

PARAGRAPH TEMPLATE – Alison

 

NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract 1

Neuron:glial ratios were determined in specific regions of Albert Einstein’s cerebral cortex to compare with samples from 11 human male cortices. Cell counts were made on either 6- or 20-μm sections from areas 9 and 39 from each hemisphere. All sections were stained with the Klüver-Barrera stain to differentiate neurons from glia, both astrocytes and oliogdendrocytes. Cell counts were made under oil immersion from the crown of the gyrus to the white matter by following a red line drawn on the coverslip. The average number of neurons and glial cells was determined per microscopic field. The results of the analysis suggest that in left area 39, the neuronal:glial ratio for the Einstein brain is significantly smaller than the mean for the control population (t = 2.62, df 9, p < 0.05, two-tailed). Einstein’s brain did not differ significantly in the neuronal:glial ratio from the controls in any of the other three areas studied. 

Abstract 2

Tumor cells can spread to distant sites through their ability to switch between mesenchymal and amoeboid (bleb-based) migration. Because of this difference, inhibitors of metastasis must account for each migration mode. However, the role of Vimentin in amoeboid migration has not been determined. Since amoeboid, Leader Bleb-Based Migration (LBBM) occurs in confined spaces and Vimentin is known to strongly influence cell mechanical properties, we hypothesized that a flexible Vimentin network is required for fast amoeboid migration. Tothisend,here we determined the precise role of the Vimentin intermediate filament system in regulating the migration of amoeboid human cancer cells. Vimentin is a classic marker of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and is therefore an ideal target for a metastasis inhibitor. Using a previously developed PDMS slab-based approach to confine cells, RNAi-based Vimentin silencing, Vimentin over-expression, pharmacological treatments, and measurements of cell stiffness, we found that RNAi-mediated depletion of Vimentin increases LBBM by ~50% compared with control cells and that Vimentin over-expression and Simvastatin-induced Vimentin bundling inhibit fast amoeboid migration and proliferation. Importantly, these effects were independent of changes in actomyosin contractility. Our results indicate that a flexible Vimentin intermediate filament network promotes LBBM of amoeboid cancer cells in confined environments and that Vimentin bundling perturbs cell mechanical properties and thereby inhibits the invasive properties of cancer cells.

Abstract 3

Thirteen-year-old Kayla hosts a YouTube series called “Kayla’s Korner” where she gives advice to an imagined audience of her peers. She picks topics like “Being Yourself” and “Putting Yourself Out There” and stumbles her way through a pep-talk peppered with “like” and glances at her notes. A glimpse of the subscriber count shows that Kayla’s Korner hasn’t exactly taken off. Kayla airbrushes out her acne, and swoops on heavy eyeliner. This is a young girl trying to understand what she is going through, and she does so by positioning herself as an expert and a helper to others.

Abstract 4

Four male friends who live an ordinary existence in Kentucky come up with a scheme to make their lives more interesting. After a visit to Transylvania University, they concoct the idea to steal the rarest and most valuable books from the school’s library. As one of the most audacious art heists in U.S. history starts to unfold, the men question whether their attempts to inject excitement and purpose into their lives are simply misguided attempts at achieving the American dream.

 

NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT

This is the narrative from Mevagh Sanson (a brief description of her dissertation research) that is the focus of the second half hour of the session. 

Narrative:

We can be mentally whisked away from the present, back to re-live our past, or forward to “pre-live” our hypothetical future. Re-living our negative past too intensely and frequently can impair us in the present, as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. But PTSD is conceptualised only as a disorder in which people are haunted by their past. Given that re-living and pre-living are closely related abilities, I propose that pre-living our hypothetical negative future too intensely and frequently similarly impairs us, as “pre-traumatic stress disorder.” I will investigate the ways in which people are haunted by their future.

#167) Our Story Circles Conference Call with National Park Service

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Here’s the recording of our conference call on Tuesday July 16 with National Park Service folks in Fort Collins, CO.  It’s a nice snapshot of where we are after 5 years that has produced 70-some circles and approaching 500 graduates.  The time cues for each of the speakers are listed below for what was a very vibrant and information-packed session.  By the way, if you want to hear the contrast between a rough, amateurish communicator full of “um’s” (me) and a smooth, precise professional communicator (Larry Perez) listen to the transition between us at about 10 minutes in.  It’s kinda awesome.

(Right click here to download audio)

TIME         SPEAKER
00:00      RANDY OLSON, Opening Comments on Story Circles Narrative Training    
10:14      LARRY PEREZ, NPS
13:43      MICHAEL BART, NPS
19:22      MARGARET BEER, NPS
21:21      SIMON KINGSTON, NPS
26:56      MIKE STRAUSS, USDA (retired), STORY CIRCLES Co-Developer
33:18      JEFF MORRISETTE, DOI

#157) 3 Gradients in Narrative Training: One Size Does Not Fit All

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If you’re a believer in the “one size fits all” model of training for the communication of science you might want to read this.  We’ve learned a lot in our 5 years of developing Story Circles Narrative Training.  There are at least three gradients you’re up against.  If you do the math you can make a clear prediction — that our best clients should be National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife, USGS and USDA.  And you’d be right.

DEMO DAY WITH THE U.S. ARMY ENGINEERS NATIONAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAM in Vicksburg, Mississippi two weeks ago.

 

Here’s three of the most important things we’ve learned when it comes to narrative training.

 

1) OLDER PEOPLE ARE BETTER

In the beginning, evvvvvveryone said, “Oh, today’s young people are the ones who are gonna get the most out of this program — they’re so good at communication.  The old folks will probably have trouble with it.”   Wrong.

These supposed “good communications” today’s young people are doing are mostly social media — texting, tweeting, Facebooking, etc.  The problem is, that stuff is mostly non-narrative And, And, And (AAA) material.  As in, “I went to school AND I talked to James AND we got some coffee AND he’s really stressed out …”

More importantly, what we learned the hard way is the youngsters don’t have any CONTEXT for narrative training.  There’s a few rare exceptions, but most of them haven’t had enough proposals rejected, papers declined, and talks that went poorly to have developed a clear context in which to grasp the need for good narrative structure and appreciate how hard it is to master. 

Furthermore, there’s a syndrome that many professors have confirmed for me — that the students are raised to be “positive” and not criticize each other.  The core of Story Circles is not criticizing each other but critical thinking.  The result is discussion sessions with young students where they praise the ABT that was just read, then sit quietly with nothing to say (I think their parents taught them, “if you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at all”).  

Professional scientists are the opposite.  They have a clear context.  We saw this with the first session of the first group of scientists at USDA.  Before the session was even over they were listing all the projects the ABT could help with.

It’s just a constraint of experience, but it’s a very real and important constraint.  And the final clincher is the group of OLDER graduate students at U.C. Davis’s Bodega Marine Lab who right now are running three circles and doing a great job with it.

BOTTOM LINE:  the training works best for those with a little more life experience.

 

2) LESS ANALYTICAL PEOPLE ARE BETTER

There’s a major component to Story Circles that is meant to address Chapter 2 of my book, “Don’t Be Such A Scientist.”  Each week some of the material analyzed is scientific content (literal) and some of it is the synopses of movies (non-literal).  Most people love the inclusion of movies — they get the point we’re making — that the basic structure is the same ABT elements, but some rail against it, saying “We don’t want to be moviemakers, why are you forcing us to read movie synopses?”   That’s called literal minded thinking.  

In particular, it’s the heavily analytical people who have proven to be the most challenging so far.  We’ve found a number of molecular/biomedical researchers have chewed up the training, spat it out, and told us it doesn’t work.  I got the same thing with one person in the session I did with diplomats from the State Department and the same thing with some of the “quant jocks” (statisticians) at Deloitte Touche business consulting firm.

Heavily analytical people tend to be heavily literal minded.  They expect their communications training to deal with ONLY their subject matter.  

It becomes a downward spiral for them.  The very training they need is what they end up tearing to pieces, eventually saying that they know better than we do when it comes to communications training.

It can be painful to watch those in need dismissing what could help them.  Like a wounded animal rubbing the wound and making it worse.  

BOTTOM LINE:   It’s definitely more challenging to train heavily analytical people on the use of narrative structure, but they are an important audience and worth the effort.  Despite having the word “story” in the name “Story Circles Narrative Training,” the key word is “narrative” which is at the core of every paper, proposal and presentation every scientist gives, no matter how analytical they are.  It just takes extra effort for the analytical types.

 

3) MORE STRUCTURED ENVIRONMENTS ARE BETTER

Narrative structure is at the core of storytelling and storytellers write novels.  Do you know where novelists go to write their novels?  Writers retreats — usually cabins out in the woods where they can be isolated with no distractions.  Do you know why they do that?  Because narrative structure is really, really challenging and requires a great deal of focus.

Now compare that mode with the typical NGO communicator who is constantly jetsetting around the planet to save humanity, endlessly “swamped”, forever “up to my ass in alligators” and all the other fun metaphors to convey the lack of time to think straight.  Combine that with the fact that they live their lives on social media (which as I said is largely non-narrative) and you start to see why so much communication today continues to get worse.

Ideally, you need a quiet, sane, structured environment to work on narrative.  As a result, we’ve had a number of disappointing experiences with universities (vastly unstructured settings) versus wonderful experiences with most of the government agencies where they show up at a building each day from 9 to 5.

One of our worst experiences was a Demo Day for 50 environmental and forestry graduate students at a prominent university.  The night before the Demo Day a recent graduate warned me that the students are all so swamped with their overbooked schedules that the idea of a training program involving 10 one hour sessions would never work.

She turned out to be right.  We did the Demo Day.  Of the 50 students, 26 signed up for circles, but the next week the organizing professor said only 4 of them really meant it — the rest just signed up to be nice.

In contrast, again, look at the UC Davis grad students at the Bodega Marine Lab.  They might as well be off at a writers retreat.  They are in a structured environment, seeing each other every day, with minimal distractions.  No wonder they are doing so well.

BOTTOM LINE:  People who are running non-stop don’t communicate well.  They can’t.  There are physiological constraints.  It requires a certain degree of structure and quiet. 

 

IN THE BEGINNING …

We were a tiny bit naive at the start, five years ago.  I thought the training would flourish best with young people and academics.  It’s five years later.  Turns out its the folks who are a little older (advanced grad students on) and government agency workers who have taken to it best.  

There’s lots of exceptions — even a few undergraduates and plenty of professors on busy campuses.  But in general, one size does not fit all when it comes to communications training.  More communications programs should be aware of this and document it further. 

#156) STORY CIRCLES: We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

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We began developing Story Circles Narrative Training at the start of 2015.  We’ve now involved 7 government agencies and 8 universities in 36 Demo Days and 52 Story Circles (completed).   These are two of our WEEKLY UPDATES that Liz Foote assembles for our group every Sunday.  They paint the picture pretty clear.  In 1.5 years we’ve gone from a few participants to a whole bunch.  A lotta people are getting a lot stronger on narrative structure, and having a good time in the process.  

EARLY ON:   1.5 YEARS AGO

NOW:   THIS WEEK

PRETTY MUCH SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.  We passed 50 circles completed last fall.  We may double that by the end of this year.  This is how you move the needle in the communication of science.

#151) Not Even DHY: Is this really “science education”?

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What form of communication is someone practicing when they tell you what they did, then tell you what the topic they studied is, then tell you again what they did, and then that’s it — no hint of why they did it or what they were trying to figure out.  Have a look at the abstract of a paper that I just saw tweeted.  I would give this abstract a 2 out of 10 for narrative structure.  And they wonder why the education system is such a mess — one word:  obfuscation.

OBFUSCATION IN ACTION:  The ABT analysis of narrative structure involves color coding each sentence of a text — BLUE for agreement, RED for contradiction, GREEN for consequence.  Nothing like skipping the set up and problem as you go right to “here’s what we did.”

 

GREEN WITH UNENVY

The standard exercise for Story Circles Narrative Training is to read the abstract of a published paper and give it a score where 10 is perfect ABT structure, 1 is a mess.  Above is the abstract of a paper in this month’s issue of the journal Research in Education Science titled, “Epistemic Frames as an Analytical Framework.”  It’s a narrative mess, and gives you a little insight into the minds of academics who can’t think a simple thought.

It starts with what should be last, jumps back to what should be first, and never includes what should be in the middle.  It’s not that the content is wrong, it’s just that the form is terrible, making it more difficult to absorb the content.

You might wonder, is this just the obligatory style of this discipline?   No, it’s not.  If you want to see excellent ABT structure in the abstract of another paper in the same issue just look at this one.  It gets the ABT structure right.  And look at the name of the author — it might well be someone for whom English is a second language.  Which is impressive.

#147) Had I Coached the Democratic Senators Yesterday …

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They weren’t disastrous, they were only ineffective, as this article in Slate yesterday makes clear.  I found their performance exasperating.  Had I coached them I would have prepped them with three narrative principles:  1) the SINGULAR NARRATIVE, 2) the ABT STRUCTURE, and 3) the DOBZHANSKY TEMPLATE.  They didn’t have to be so scrambled.

 

AND YOUR POINT IS … ?

Yesterday’s senate hearing on the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court was supremely riveting.  I couldn’t take my eyes off either session — the painfully dramatic morning with the victim, the bombastic afternoon with the accused.  Throughout I was desperately wanting to cheer for the Democratic party senators, but by the end they left me feeling deflated.

The Democrats put on a performance that pretty much matched the entire party — rambling, unfocused, lacking a clear overall strategy.  This article in Slate does a good job of detailing the disappointments.  But it didn’t have to be.  Here’s how I would have coached them, using 3 simple narrative principles from our Story Circles Narrative Training program.

 

1 THE SINGULAR NARRATIVE:  LESS IS MORE

This is far and away the most important principle they seem to have no grasp on whatsoever.  It’s very simple — LESS IS MORE.

If you need an entire book to make this clear to you just read the 2012 bestseller, “The One Thing.”  If you want two absolutely tremendous short articles that convey it concisely and in practical terms it’s these workhorses that embody all that I preach:

“Nicholas Kristof’s Advice for Saving the World” –  Outside Magazine, November, 2009

“Data-driven Campaigns are Killing the Democratic Party” –  Politico, February, 2017

Each senator was given 5 minutes.  Each senator began their time as though they had a half hour to make a whole series of points.

As a result, each senator was eventually cut off when their time ran out.  Instead of building to a clear, single point, they mostly said things like, “I’ve got a lot more to say.”

The Democratic senators should have huddled up before the day began and chosen individual singular narratives.  Sheldon Whitehouse (who I felt came off best) should have said, “Okay, Hirono, you take TEMPERAMENT, Durbin, you take FBI, Harris, you take GORSUCH, …”

On and on — ten Democratic senators, ten single points — each one delivered clearly, succinctly, and with simple structure.  All fitting into an overall narrative.  Like this …

 

2 THE ABT TEMPLATE

When in doubt, just use the ABT (And, But, Therefore) template to make your point clearly and concisely.  This is how I would have scripted Kamala Harris.

KAMALA HARRIS:   Judge Kavanaugh, you have accused us of a left wing conspiracy against conservatives AND claim you are the victim of it, BUT you saw our hearings a few months ago for Judge Neil Gorsuch who was approved with no problems, THEREFORE don’t you think this is more about you than us?

She did do a decent job of presenting this, but it was buried in the middle of several other rambling points she was trying to make, with the result of “more is less” as nothing stuck out.

One point, argued clearly.  That’s what should have happened for each senator.

 

3 THE DOBZHANSKY TEMPLATE (ONE WORD)

The Dobzhansky Template is one of the central tools of our Story Circles program. It’s simply this fill-in-the-blanks sentence:

Nothing in _____ makes sense, except in the light of _____ .

They should have agreed among themselves on this before the hearing, and I think they should have followed Mazie Hirono on it as she was basically arguing this:

Nothing in KAVANAUGH’S QUALIFICATIONS makes sense, except in the light of TEMPERAMENT.

She brought up the key word of TEMPERAMENT and that’s what they should have hung their entire narrative on.  They should have argued, from start to finish, the following ABT:

ABT:  To be a supreme court judge requires a specific temperament AND because the appointment is for life we have to make sure a nominee has it, BUT what we are reviewing here today for Judge Kavanaugh shows he does not have it, THEREFORE his nomination needs to be withdrawn.

That was it — plain and simple — the singular narrative of what they needed to accomplish.  All day long, the word TEMPERAMENT should have kept resurfacing, over and over again — as frequently as Donald Trump says the word GREAT in any given day.

Durbin should have said an FBI investigation will reveal whether Kavanaugh has the right temperament.  Harris should have said Gorsuch was approved easily because he has the right temperament.  Booker should have said that Kavanaugh’s well documented excessive alcohol problems in his past show he doesn’t have the right temperament.

It’s called messaging.  It’s what the Democrats are so incredibly bad with.  Yesterday’s hearing was a one day demonstration on how hopelessly bad they are at it.

I’m still rooting for them, but they are never, ever, ever going to regain power if they don’t figure this narrative stuff out.  It was what sunk Hillary Clinton.  It’s what plagues them every single day.

#135) The Colorado National Park Service Story Circles Video

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“That one hour that they got together every week was the most enjoyable hour of their work week.”  That’s how Larry Perez, Communications Coordinator for National Park Service in Ft Collins, Colorado, opens this new video about Story Circles.  The video speaks for itself — Story Circles works.


COMMUNICATIONS TRAINING doesn’t have to be boring and dull.

#109) Good Stories are Rare

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The sad news: Most of the world and life in general is not that great of a story. In fact, most of it isn’t even a story. It takes A LOT of hard work to either craft a great story or find one. Don’t underestimate how tough the challenge is.

THERE’S ACTUALLY ONLY A COUPLE INCREDIBLE STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY.

THERE’S ACTUALLY ONLY A COUPLE INCREDIBLE STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY.



THE NAKED (AND MOSTLY BORING) CITY

When I was a kid (a looooong time ago) there was a show called, “The Naked City,” which opened with a wide shot of New York City and the narrator saying, “There’s eight million stories in the Naked City, this is one of them.” The eight million referred to the population size of NYC at the time, suggesting that, “Everyone is an interesting story, just waiting to be told.”

Nope. Sorry. The truth is most people don’t have a story to tell. If you doubt this, try going to film school and being forced to see it played out in all your classes where students are forced to make films, even though they have nothing to say. It’s like being called on in a conversation by someone saying, “What do you think?,” and replying, “Blaaaaaah, buh, blaaaaaaah, bluhbluh.” Just because you made a noise didn’t mean you said something.

In fact, one rather heartless friend used to say, “Just because it happened to YOU, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s interesting.”

At USC they were smart enough to have all 50 students in each class pitch their story ideas on a single day, then the faculty chose four — literally the cream of the crop for each cohort — to actually be given the funds to make their films. I sat through five semesters of those pitches.

The proportions pretty much followed the subjective graph above. Most of the pitches didn’t have a story to tell. Kinda like, “I’m gonna make a film about this guy, and he breaks up with his girlfriend, and he goes to Arkansas, and he gets a job cutting trees, and he’s making some money, and he tells his friends he’s not sure that’s what he wants to do with his life, and he sits out at night looking at the moon, and he gets depressed, and he keeps chopping trees, and finds a new job at a restaurant, and he …” Not a story, dude.



ARE YOU CRAZY?

Actually, I just remembered this — here’s a terrible story. One young guy the semester after me was a real quiet introvert who was a Dungeons and Dragons type of kid. He pitched a sic-fi “story,” where he started telling what his film would be about.

It was like he was in a trance explaining it to the audience, with his eyes glazed over, looking far away, spewing out all this terminology he had come up with, saying, “So the Zorgons on planet Skartan go into battle with the Keerjops and they’ve got these special Shootoo rods that can put their enemy into the ninth dimension, but their leader Dalius doesn’t think they should use them while his son Varlin does, and every time they visit the planet Gnipgnop …”

For fifteen minutes he wound out this bizarrely intricate yet utterly confusing “story” of the film he wanted to make which you could see he stayed up late every night laying in bed staring at the ceiling figuring it out. He was completely off in his own bonkers world. By the end of it people were avoiding eye contact with each other out of awkward embarrassment for him. Needless to say, he didn’t get chosen. BUT …

The next day the Chairman of the department asked him to stop by for a chat. The kid showed up thinking he might be offered support for his film from a different department. Instead, the Chairman gave him a number to call. It was the mental health services program on the campus. Seriously, his pitch was that much in outer space it was a reasonable suggestion.



LIKE CROSSWORD PUZZLES

You want to be good with story, it starts with developing a strong feel for what is not a story. Having a good story takes a lot of work. And I mean A LOT. We see it now with our Story Circles Narrative Training. They’re seeing it every week with the 6 circles that are running with National Park Service in Colorado.

Every week one member of each group offers up their narrative of a project to work on. Most of them start their session thinking “what I’m sharing here is pretty good.” By the end they’re left thinking, “Wow. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Here’s a way to look at it. Imagine you take the Sunday crossword puzzle from the LA Times, work on it for ten minutes, solve about ten out of a hundred clues, then proudly show it to your friends, saying, “Hey, look at my solution to the crossword puzzle.”

They would look at it, look at you, then say, “Um, yeah, nice start, get to work.” That’s exactly what you’re getting with most films — their final version is like that puzzle that’s only started to be solved.

Look at my breakdown of the HBO Real Sports segment on the Great Barrier Reef a couple weeks ago and you’re looking at essentially the description of a completed crossword puzzle. They have a whole team of story folks who make sure it is well polished. But then you look at most amateur documentaries on the same subject and you’re looking at that version of a puzzle with ten out of a hundred clues completed.

One of my film school classmates worked for Real Sports for a couple years. He told me about it. They work HARD, scouring the landscape for possible stories. They don’t say, “This month we’re going to do a segment on football, a segment on boxing, a segment on car racing and a segment on skiing.”

That is a recipe for bad storytelling — saying, “We don’t care if there’s no good stories for each topic, we’ll find some bunch of stuff on the subject and present it.”

No, they scour the world for stories, eventually taking the handful on the end of the graph above — the “good stories” — then working to present them as tightly and cleanly as possible. Every once in a while they strike pure gold as they did with the Rod Carew heart story in that same episode as the reef.

Storytelling, when it works, is indeed magic. But that’s incredibly rare.

The fact that “most movies are bad” is a reflection of how tough it is. A few years ago a friend and I were watching the Oscars in our separate homes, texting between speeches and following a Twitter feed for it. A presenter said, “Movies are magic!” Someone tweeted immediately in response, “Bacon is magic, movies are crap.”





#107) STORY CIRCLES NARRATIVE TRAINING: Ready for Universities

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We’ve cracked the nut for Story Circles and universities with one simple realization: it needs to be EMBEDDED within an existing course.

DEVELOPING AND SPREADING. Government agencies have been the major site of Story Circles so far, but now it’s ready for universities.

DEVELOPING AND SPREADING. Government agencies have been the major site of Story Circles so far, but now it’s ready for universities.



THE NEED FOR STRUCTURE

While the good folks at USDA are running their eleventh Story Circle and in two weeks we’ll be presenting their sixth Demo Day, it’s been a challenge to figure out how to make the training work at universities. The problem is schedules.

Government agencies have everyone at the same work environment day after day, making it relatively easy to schedule the 10 one hour sessions. But universities have student schedules all over the map. As a result, the set of Demo Days we ran last fall at three universities produced no Story Circles.

Solution: Embed the training into an existing course.

That’s what will happen this fall at University of Northern Colorado. They have a weekly two hour graduate student training course. For ten weeks, Story Circles will take up one of the two hours each week. Very simple.



THE THREE SACRED RULES OF STORY CIRCLES

There are three inviolable rules for Story Circles: 1) You may never stop the hour-long cueing video during a session, 2) You must stop mid-sentence when the cue goes off, and 3) You must always have all 5 members of the circle for a session. It’s been that last one that’s been the challenge. This will fix things for universities.

For inquiries contact us at the website: http://storycirclestraining.com/

#106) “Inconvenient Truth” Sequel: We needed Empire Strikes Back, but we got Clone Wars.

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Al Gore is such a tireless worker and a truly good soul, but he continues to surround himself with people who don’t really know what they’re doing. As a result, his new movie isn’t bad, it’s just middling. He is the proverbial “And, And, And” voice — not that there’s anything wrong with it. My brilliant cinematographer buddy Paul Wojciak nailed it on the movie, saying, “We needed Empire Strikes Back, but we got Clone Wars.”

MUCH RESPECT. The theater rises at the end of Al Gore’s Q&A.

MUCH RESPECT. The theater rises at the end of Al Gore’s Q&A.



AN INCONVENIENT AND, AND, AND-ER

On Saturday I attended a screening of Al Gore’s new movie in Hollywood followed by a rather rigidly controlled Q&A in which the only Q’s came from the host. As expected, the movie was a little bit better than the first one in narrative structure, but not much.

Once again the movie could have told a clean, SINGULAR powerful story, but … alas, it missed. Where does he get these filmmakers — didn’t they ever take any writing classes?

There was a great potential SINGULAR over-arching narrative sitting there waiting to be told which was Gore’s efforts to bring around the India delegation at the Paris Accord on their climate negotiations. The story of them going from “no way” to “yes way” covered about twenty minutes late in the film, but it should have been stretched for the entire movie as the central narrative thread. It was powerful enough.

Instead the movie is largely an “and, and, and” exercise, ambling from exploding glaciers to flooding Miami streets to our democracy being hacked by big money (complains the guy from the party that out-spent their opponents for the past three Presidential elections) — the usual shopping list of climate topics.

I guess they feel like they’re conveying the global aspect of the issue by visiting so many places, but the problem is, if that’s the point you want to convey, then convey it in a single sequence about how global the problem is, not through an ambling narrative structure.

Furthermore, stick to the narrative. Just before the Paris climate meeting the huge terrorist attack took place. It was powerful material, but it was also “off the narrative” of the movie. Yes, Gore gives a very heartfelt speech to the journalists about it, but it’s still OFF THE NARRATIVE. Powerful for powerful’s sake is not the way to tell a clear, focused story. There’s just too many amblings and diversions throughout.

Didn’t these filmmakers read the editorial in the NY Times on January 19 pointing out that the Democrats have been sidetracked by trying to accommodate the various needs of a diverse America and thus have failed to promote a unifying narrative.” The movie does the same thing — pursues some sort of “more is more” agenda and ends up with failing to bring home a clear singular experience.



BUILD YOUR CHRISTMAS TREE, THEN PUT SOME ORNAMENTS ON IT

Political strategist Dave Gold — one of my newest heroes — has a very simple way to convey narrative structure. He published a great article in Politico in February telling the Democrats to lighten up on the metrics, focus more on story. He says your central narrative is the Christmas tree, the issues are the ornaments.

Gore’s Christmas tree should have been the India challenge. The movie should have opened in Paris — the Ordinary World — all the nations coming together to solve the climate problem. Then it should have made clear WHAT’S AT STAKE — why Paris mattered, what will happen if there’s not an agreement — who the major players are. It should have made us feel like everything is on track, just fine, BUT THEN … the India delegation says basically you people had your 150 years of burning fossil fuels, now it’s our turn.

That moment should have happened about 15 minutes in. We should have then gone to India to see the consequences of global warming, heard from some of the people behind that attitude, learned about why their delegate would have said that and what it might take to change it. So much that could have been so logical and made for a great journey.

Instead the movie doesn’t even go to Paris until about halfway through. The India storyline emerges around an hour in. What are they thinking — that telling a story is as simple as, “And then, and then, and then …”?



GET THEE TO A STORY CIRCLE

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a few nice little moments such as the reversal of the India delegation at the Paris meeting, but it all weaves so ineptly back and forth, all over the place. And then ends with narrative poop as we see Gore walk into Trump Tower, obviously for the pathetic meeting he and Leonardo DiCaprio gave the newly elected Trump back in December where Trump clearly was just arrogantly toying with them.

It cuts from Gore entering the building to a close up solo shot of him speaking to someone which obviously must be Trump. This is called THE OBLIGATORY SHOT in filmmaking parlance. If you show us the guy walking into Trump Tower, then Gore blabbering for about a minute, we will connect the dots and know he must be talking to Trump as we get ready for the money shot which is the reverse on Trump. At that point, the Trump shot is obligatory.

BUT … they did nothing of the sort. It was just Al pontificating for too long. No Trump. No money shot. As the Irish commentator on my iPad FIFA game would say after a poor shot on goal, “That’s a complete let off.”

Gore and his filmmakers really should do our Story Circles Narrative Training. Their circle would have figured all these structural elements out. It’s what the story circle does.



EVERYBODY’S A CRITIC

Last year I ripped poor old Marc Morano’s climate skeptic “documentary” on Andy Revkin’s NY Times blog (btw, Doug Parsons just posted his interview with Morano for his America Adapts climate podcast where I join him for the analysis). I criticized his film for the same basic problems — a lack of compelling narrative structure. In his case there were also production shortcomings that were an inevitable result of his limited budget.

For this movie they clearly have all the money in the world for their visual elements, but as my buddy Paul would point out, “Clone Wars” also had the stunning visual effects. It just didn’t have a good story.

Why couldn’t they make “The Empire Strikes Back” for global warming?