Make Your Story Unforgettable By Including These 4 Elements
Any time our fellow humans gift us with their attention is an opportunity to connect them to the story that only we can tell. Each of us is a unique, unrepeatable soul with individual life experiences and perspectives. A well-told story frames our singular reality in a way that has universal resonance. If we aim to illuminate something about being human, the specific time, place, and circumstance of our own story will connect with a listener. Through story, people feel less alone in their difficulties and more alive to the larger reality of which we are a part.
Four essential elements of a compelling true, personal story are:
1) Emotional authenticity.
2) Sensory details that engage the whole brain of the listener
3) Scenes with dialogue or interior monologues
4) Tension and stakes
Emotional authenticity makes a story unique to us and our take on life. What makes a story one that only we can tell is how well we define ourselves as a person. Through specific experiences we describe a world, a social background, relationships and interior life. The more specific we are about time, location, mindset, and behavior in the moments of the story, the more grounded in reality the story will be. And it is that grounded reality that opens the listeners’ imagination and empathy.
There are life experiences common to us all, but our story is still unique to our history and circumstances. Willingness to share our flaws, struggles, and mistakes galvanizes interest in how we overcame internal and external obstacles. The emotional risk of describing wants and dreams we deeply care about is rewarded with the listeners’ emotional engagement, because combination of creative confidence and emotional vulnerability makes listeners feel psychologically safe.
Personal authenticity provides a creative frame for commonly understood human experience that communicates our individuality. This is part of what makes it an essential and effective form of connection. “Storytelling is the sharing of stories with conspecifics,” — “con” meaning universally understood and shared — writes anthropologist Michelle Scalise Sugiyama. “Thus, storytelling is a form of cooperation involving information exchange. Stories communicate generalizable knowledge, or information that can be applied beyond the immediate context.”
Sensory details engage a listener’s whole brain.
To understand the importance of sensory details (and scenes, described in the next section of this piece) to make a story compelling to a listener, we need to know a little bit about the human capacity to pay attention. “Scientists liken attention to a spotlight,” writes neuroscience researcher Paul Zak in Greater Good magazine. “We are only able to shine it on a narrow area. If that area seems less interesting than some other area, our attention wanders.”
Sensory and emotional details sustain attention because they activate the sensory functions of the listeners’ brain and at the same time stimulate oxytocin, the “social bonding” hormone that signals a positive connection. As an example, when a storyteller says “my cozy, warm kitchen smells of strong coffee. I look through a frosty window to see a foot of fresh, untouched snow outside. The smooth, creamy texture of my latte combined with the slightly bitter hit of espresso makes me very glad to be inside right now, and I’m grateful for this peaceful moment before the demands of the day” the listeners’ sensory cortex signals the smell of coffe, the sight of freshly fallen snow, the creamy liquid so strongly it is as if the experience is happening to them. The storyteller’s description of cozy comfort and the possible stresses to come activates the oxytocin. As a listener, we are ready and willing to find out what happens next.
Sensory details are key to what neuroscientists call “neural transport” — which is what happens when our brains are fully engaged in an imaginary experience. Movies and plays, done well, “trick” our brains into having real emotional connections to a made-up world. Storytellers have no set, no props, and no costumes to assist with this neural “trick” but have just as much successful engagement when using these techniques.
Scenes and dialogue
Researcher Paul Zak’s work also shows that emotional connection is sustained when the listener is so fully engaged in the present moment they cannot tell what will happen next. “From a story-telling perspective,” he writes, “the way to keep an audience’s attention is to continually increase the tension in the story.”
Scenes bring the listener into a moment as if it is happening right now, e.g. “I’m in the front seat of my Toyota Camry, with a Lexus on one side, a Mercedes on the other, just super expensive luxury cars everywhere. I got the mid-size rental from LAX having no idea that Sherman Oaks CA was so high-end. Now I feel outclassed vehicle-wise, also under-dressed and under-prepared for my meeting. And I’m starving. My heart is pounding and I have a buzz in my head, which is either low-key jet lag, dehydration, anxiety or low blood sugar. It is impossible to tell but I don’t want a dizzy spell in front of these fancy people who have the power to fund my next big gig. I have no choice but to eat my turkey Subway sandwich behind the wheel of my car. “Everyone drives in LA, people must eat in their cars all the time” I tell myself. Another voice in my head says “no one eats in these cars, these people all have personal chefs. Do not put that sandwich in your mouth.” I have to decide between hunger and the potential humiliation of someone seeing me scarf this Subway sandwich. I choose humiliation.”
Dialogue is exactly that: conversations — including interior monologues — re-created as economically as possible, e.g. “My son says ‘I hope I get along with my roommate, I’ve never had to share space with anyone except you and dad.” I feel a sinking in my stomach. A tightness in my chest. I don’t even want to think about him going away to college. But I don’t want him to know I have this well of grief already rising up. I put on this super-cheerful face. I say “You get along with your friends so well. You’ve had sleepovers. It will be like a long sleepover” in a kind of sing-song voice. Immediately I’m thinking “ugh…a long sleepover??? What are you saying?” Inside I’m fighting tears, so that’s the best I can do.”
We should think of scenes and narrative sections of story as light bulbs on a string. The narrative is the string that connects events and advances to the next important moment. Scenes are the individual bulbs. Aim to have scenes with immediacy, sensory details and emotional truth dominate the story over narrative sections.
Tension and stakes
Researcher Paul Zak’s scientific studies of human responses to storytelling also emphasize the role of tension and a dramatic arc that make for compelling stories. “This structure sustains attention by building suspense while at the same time providing a vehicle for character development. The climax of the story keeps us on the edge of our neural seats until the tension is relieved at the finish.”
The storyteller’s task is to set the stage for the events unfolding and lay out what is at stake for the main character, so the listener cannot predict, but definitely cares, about how it all turns out. The combination of empathy and stress — because of the uncertainty — powerfully engages attention.
The fact that stories engage emotions and attention in this authentic and deeply human way makes them even more essential in the digital age. Live, local storytelling shows that feature people in our own community onstage, large-scale international shows like The Moth and RISK! are wonderful conduits of human connection, podcasts that feature true stories — like RISK! The Story Collider, Love Hurts and many others — are increasingly popular because they provide a way to access that dynamic neural transport and human connection. It may be that the attraction of creatively-crafted, personal accounts of universally felt fears, failures, and feats are a remedial response to the kinds of stresses we face at this time in history.
The immediacy and availability that iPhones and every other device provide also place demands on our attention in an increasingly complex and fast-paced world. Listening to a human being share a creative take on a real experience in their life is a powerful brain-to-brain connection that technology can never replicate.
