OPTION 1

Excerpts from The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate ur !rains" #y $eo Wi%rich &ec' () *+1*

Evolution has wired our brains for storytellingheres how to make use of it
We know we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. The still unanswered question is: Why is that? Why does the format of a story, where events unfold one after the other, have such a profound impact on our learning? The simple answer is this: We are wired that way. A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that is e actly how we think. We think in narratives all day long, whether it!s about buying groceries, whether we think about work, or our spouse at home. We make up "short# stories in our heads for every action and conversation. $n fact, %eremy &su found that 'personal stories and gossip make up ()* of our conversations.' +ow, whenever we hear a story, we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences. That,s why metaphors work so well with us. While we are busy searching for a similar e perience in our brains, we activate a part called insula, which helps us relate to that same e perience of pain, -oy, or disgust in a metaphor. .We link up metaphors and literal happenings automatically. /verything in our brain is looking for the cause and effect relationship of something we,ve previously e perienced.

Stop giving suggestions & tell stories instead

0o you know the feeling when a good friend tells you a story and then two weeks later, you mention the same story to him, as if it was your idea? This is totally normal and at the same time, one of the most powerful ways to get people on board with your ideas and thoughts. According to 1ri &asson from 2rinceton, a story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience. The ne t time you struggle with getting people on board with your pro-ects and ideas, simply tell them a story, where the outcome is that doing what you had in mind is the best thing to do. According to 2rinceton researcher &asson, storytelling is the only way to plant ideas into other people,s minds. Quick last fact: 3ur brain learns to ignore certain overused words and phrases that used to make stories awesome. 4cientists, in the midst of researching the topic of storytelling have also discovered, that certain words and phrases have lost all storytelling power: "Some scientists have contended that figures of speech like "a rough day" are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more." This means that the frontal corte 5the area of your brain responsible for e periencing emotions5can,t be activated with these phrases. $t,s something that might be worth remembering when crafting your ne t story.

OPTION 2

THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING: HOW NARRATIVE CUTS THROUGH DISTRACTION LIKE NOTHING ELSE
BY JO !"#! $O""S%#!&&
Humans live in a storm of stories. We live in stories all day long, and dream in stories all night long. We communicate through stories and learn from them. We collapse gratefully into stories after a long day at school. Without personal life stories to organize our experience, our own lives would lack coherence and meaning. Man is the storytelling animal. When it comes to marketing, a company like Coca-Cola gets this. They know that, deep down, they are much more a story factory than a beverage factory. No matter what theyd like us to believe, Cokes success isnt due to some magic in their fizzy syrup water. Coke excels because theyve been clobbering the opposition in the story wars for more than a century. People want to see themselves in the stories Coke tells. Coke understands that they will succeed or fail based largely on the power of their storytelling. Story is the answer for two reasons, both of them backed by compelling science. First, because people are naturally greedy for stories, they have a unique ability to seize and rivet our attention. Second, stories arent just fun escapism--they have an almost spooky ability to mold our thinking and behavior. You see, the human mind is a wanderer by nature. The daydream is the minds default state. Whenever the mind doesnt have something really important to do, it gets bored and wanders off into la-la land. Studies show that we spend about half of our waking hours--1/3 of our lives on earth--spinning fantasies. We have about two thousand of these a day (!), with an average duration of fourteen seconds. Our minds are flitting all over the place all the time. So how do we pin down the wandering mind? How do we override the natural tendency for a mind to skip away from whatever we are showing it? By telling stories. In normal life, we spin about one hundred daydreams per waking hour. But when absorbed in a good story--when we watch a show like Duck Dynasty or

read a novel like The Hunger Games--we experience approximately zero daydreams per hour. Our hyper minds go still and they pay close attention, often for hours on end. Why do stories grab our attention so well? Neuroscience of brains on fiction gives us a clue. If you slide a person into an FMRI machine that watches the brain while the brain watches a story, youll find something interesting: the brain doesnt look like a spectator, it looks more like a participant in the action. When Clint Eastwood is angry on screen, the viewers brains look angry too; when the scene is sad, the viewers brains also look sad. We know the story is fake, but that doesnt stop the unconscious parts of the brain from processing it like its real. Thats why the audience of a horror film cringes in their chairs, screams for help, and balls up to protect their vital organs. Thats why our hearts race when the hero of a story is cornered, why we weep over the fate of a pretend pet like Old Yeller. Stories powerfully hook and hold human attention because, at a brain level, whatever is happening in a story is happening to us. But this all leads to a bigger question. Most of us think of stories as a way to pleasantly while away our leisure time. Is there any evidence that story is actually effective in influencing us--in modifying our thinking and behavior? Yes. Lots. Thats the subject of my next post, Why Storytelling is the Ultimate Weapon.

OPTION 3

WHY STORYTELLING IS THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

BY JO !"#! $O""S%#!&&
Until recently weve only been able to speculate about stories persuasive effects. But over the last several decades, psychology has begun a serious study of how stories affect the human mind. Results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by stories. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that is specifically designed to persuade through argument and evidence. What is going on here? Why are we putty in a storytellers hands? The psychologists Melanie Green and Tim Brock argue that entering fictional worlds radically alters the way information is processed. Studies show that the more absorbed readers are in a story, the more the story changes them. Highly absorbed readers also detect significantly fewer false notes in stories-inaccuracies, missteps--than less transported readers. In this, there is an important lesson about the molding power of story. When we read dry, factual arguments, we read with our dukes up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally and this seems to leave us defenseless. This is exactly Gubers point. The central metaphor of Tell to Win is the Trojan Horse. You know the back story: After a decade of gory stalemate at Troy, the ancient Greeks decided they would never take Troy by force, so they would take it by guile. They pretended to sail home, leaving behind a massive wooden horse, ostensibly as an offering to the gods. The happy Trojans dragged the gift inside the city walls. But the horse was full of Greek warriors, who emerged in the night to kill and burn a whole city. Guber tells us that stories can also function as Trojan Horses. The audience accepts the story because, for a human, a good story always seems like a gift. But the story is actually just a delivery system for the tellers agenda. A story is a

trick for sneaking a message into the fortified human mind. So there are two big lessons to take from Gubers book and from the new science of storytelling. First, storytelling is a uniquely powerful form of persuasive jujitsu. Second, in a world full of black belt storytellers, we had all better start training our defenses. Master storytellers want us drunk on emotion so we will lose track of rational considerations, relax our skepticism, and yield to their agenda. Yes, we need to tell to win, but its just as important to learn to see the tell coming--and to steel ourselves against it. We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world begins with Once upon a time.

OPTION 4
Excerpt from Australian Science article, From Fables to Facebook: Wh !o We Tell "tories#$ b %a&re' F&(e It seems that na at!"e #an$%a$e an& #!te a ' te(hn!)%es (an st!m%#ate the ent! e * a!n+ ,h!(h !s ,h' st- 'te##!n$ (an ma.e %s /ee# a#!"e+ as !/ ,e0 e ea##' !n the a(t!-n1 Th!s th- -%$h menta# !mme s!-n sh-,s that -% * a!n+ at #east+ &-esn0t ma.e m%(h &!st!n(t!-n *et,een ea&!n$ a*-%t s-meth!n$ an& a(t%a##' e23e !en(!n$ !t1 E"-#%t!-na !#' s3ea.!n$+ h-, ha"e ,e ma&e %se -/ th!s4 The ans,e ma' #!e !n the ,a' st- !es !nhe ent#' 3 esent (-n/#!(t1 Ke!th Oat#e'+ 3 -/ess- -/ (-$n!t!"e 3s'(h-#-$' at the Un!"e s!t' -/ T- -nt-+ has 3 -3-se& that &%e t- -% #a(. -/ ne% -#-$!(a# &!st!n(t!-n *et,een /!(t!-na# an& ea# e23e !en(es+ st- !es (an 3 -&%(e a "!"!& s!m%#at!-n -/ ea#!t' !n -% m!n&s1 St- !es (an $!"e 3e-3#e e23e !en(es the' (an0t ha"e !n ea# #!/e+ s%(h as h-, n-"e#s $!"e /%## a((ess tan-the 3e s-n0s em-t!-ns an& th-%$ht 3 -(esses5as ,e## as s!t%at!-ns that ,-%#& *e &an$e -%s - 3 -*#emat!( !n ea# #!/e1 F!(t!-n 3#%n$es %s !nt- !ntense s!t%at!-ns that ,e see 3a a##e#s -/ !n -% -,n #!"es+ a(t!n$ as /#!$ht s!m%#at- s an& 3 e3a !n$ %s t- &ea# ,!th s!m!#a 3 -*#ems !n ea# #!/e1 At the! "e ' s!m3#est #e"e#+ st- !es a e t-#& !n the ,a' that -% * a!ns a e ,! e&: (a%se an& e//e(t1 We (-nstant#' th!n. !n na at!"es5!/ ,e &th!s+ then th!s ,!## ha33en5,hethe ,e0 e th!n.!n$ a*-%t 3#a'!n$ s-((e - as.!n$ -%t a ( %sh1 We0 e (-nstant#' 3#a'!n$ -%t s(ena !-s+ an& st- 'te##!n$ a##-,s %s t- s!m%#ate these s(ena !-s an& &ete m!ne (a%se an& e//e(t ,!th-%t ha"!n$ t- &ea# ,!th the ea# th!n$1 O#&e st- !es 6s%(h as m'ths an& 3a a*#es7 a e !(h ,!th m- a#s+ 3 ea(h!n$ t- the! a%&!en(es n-t t- $!"e !nt- tem3tat!-n+ n-t t- t %st #!a s+ n-t t- %n&e est!mate -the s+ n-t t- eat th-se 8%!('9#--.!n$ *e !es *e(a%se &!& '-% hea a*-%t '-% $ eat %n(#e :-hn ,h- &!e& / -m eat!n$ 8%st a s!n$#e -nean& these ha"e se "e& an !m3- tant s-(!eta# an& e"-#%t!-na ' /%n(t!-n: a%&!en(es #ea ne& h-, t- a"-!& s%(h s!t%at!-ns ,!th-%t e"e ha"!n$ t- e23e !en(e them1 ;:%st as (-m3%te s!m%#at!-ns (an he#3 %s $et t- $ !3s ,!th (-m3#e2

3 -*#ems s%(h as /#'!n$ a 3#ane - /- e(ast!n$ the ,eathe +< D 1 Oat#e' n-tes+ ;s- n-"e#s+ st- !es an& & amas (an he#3 %s %n&e stan& the (-m3#e2!t!es -/ s-(!a# #!/e1<