The science and secret of the storytelling superpower

[Applause]

okay

so 1973 i’m sitting in a beanbag chair

in the basement of our split entry home

in fruit heights utah

eating a bag of doritos and watching an

episode of gilligan’s island

when all of a sudden i hear the front

door open and shut

and the next thing i know my dad doug

brian is standing right next to me

now that that might not seem like that

shocking of an event to most you but you

need to understand

my dad was a mechanical engineer and he

was starting his own business for as

long

as i can remember so if the sun was out

that guy was at work we looked down at

me and he said

michael you want to go grab some dinner

with me

i was stunned i’ve never been anywhere

alone with my dad let alone to dinner

so i jumped to my feet and i scrambled

out that screen door and jumped in the

passenger seat

of our green 1963 dodge d-100 truck

we actually called this truck the fodge

because it had a dodge hood

and a ford tailgate this thing was a

legend in our neighborhood

so we went to my dad’s favorite

restaurant it’s a little pizza place

called robentino’s

but what he really loved there was this

huge rockford blue cheese salad

now i don’t know about the rest of you

but to a 10 year old that’s like eating

a bowl of throw up

but i was having the time in my life

dinner alone with my hero

now after dinner was over we started

heading to the truck and when we were in

the parking lot he put his arm around my

shoulder and he said

so michael tell me about bigfoot

now in the 1970s bigfoot was kind of a

big deal

he was showing up all over the country

making his way on the news nearly every

night getting in sitcoms and movies

but what i didn’t know is that my mother

had had several other mothers in the

neighborhood call her and complain

that their kids would no longer go

outside and play because michael

bryant told them and convinced them that

he saw bigfoot in his backyard

well my dad asked me so i decided i’d

tell him the story

i said well dad a few weeks ago i was

feeding the dog

and i put the lid on the food can and i

was walking back across the grass

and i saw him out of the corner of my

eye he was standing in a grove of trees

at the edge of our yard

and i was home alone and i was really

scared so i didn’t want him to attack me

so i pretended i didn’t see him

and i slowly walked across the grass

until i got into the house

i grabbed my bb gun and i hid under my

bed until mom got home

he didn’t say a word to me the rest of

the way home

we pulled in our driveway he put on the

emergency brake turned off the truck

and then wham he hit both of his hands

on the dash and screamed

oh my gosh there he is and he pointed

out into the darkness

well i whipped over to see what he was

looking at when i looked back

that guy disappeared through the front

door and the screen door

slammed shut well i panicked i locked my

door

scrambled to the driver’s side locked

his door and i grabbed onto the steering

wheel and right then i looked up

and my bedroom light turned on and there

was my poor dear mother

with her hands cupped like this on the

window the look of terror on her face

five seconds later my dad jumped off a

boulder between two bushes on the corner

of our house

and landed on the hood of the truck

when i came to

[Music]

i realized that i had both of my arms

locked down on the horn of the truck and

they were both my mom and dad banging on

the window trying to get me to stop

this might have been the first sleepless

night of my young life

you know the next morning really early

my dad came in and he sat on the edge of

my bed

he looked down at me and he said well

michael did you learn anything last

night

and i sat right up and i said yes i did

you saw him back there too didn’t you

this was the moment that i learned that

i might actually have the makings of a

superpower

not a supernatural power like superman

or wonder woman

more of a super human power like batman

or iron man

now i didn’t have the kind of money they

did but i didn’t let that stop me

i spent the next 30 years studying

researching and

cultivating the storyteller superpower i

work with fortune 100 company executives

and mom paw entrepreneurs

helping them find and craft and deliver

their stories with more

impact and greater success and over that

time

i conducted a bunch of research trying

to figure out

why do stories work so well and paul

zack

he published an article of a research

project that he did explaining this the

human brain releases chemicals

three specific ones when we hear a story

the first one is cortisol

and cortisol is designed to get your

attention it wakes you up

and gets you engaged in what’s going on

and focuses you

the second chemical is dopamine and

that’s the arousal drug

that gets our emotions involved the

third chemical is oxytocin

and when oxytocin is released these

three chemicals working together

ignite and fuel your imagination so

think about it

when i told you my story could you see

me sitting down in that basement

bag of doritos watching tv could you

envision my dad doug bryant standing

over the top of me

or the green fudge truck or the huge

ropeford blue cheese salad or my dad

flying through the air and landing on

the hood of the truck

you see i gave you enough specifics

details

to build a framework a structure but you

drew upon your own experiences in your

own background

to fill in all the blanks and color the

scenes

and by so doing you made my bigfoot

story

your bigfoot story another really

interesting article

was by jerome bruner he published an

article

expressing that messages delivered

within a story

are recalled 22 times more often than

facts and figures alone

and when it comes to behavior nearly 80

percent of the human decision-making

process

is emotions you know a few years ago a

company went to a university

conducted a presentation where they

talked to the students about

match.com and they told them about how

successful they were with charts and

graphs and

really amazing figures and they told one

story during this

presentation about gary creman he’s the

founder of match.com

and in this story he asked all of his

staff if they would create a profile

after all

match.com wouldn’t work without a

profile so everybody made a profile and

a few weeks later he realized how

powerful

his website was going to be when one of

his employees his girlfriend

found a new match on match.com

the researchers came back after a couple

months and they surveyed all the

students

and they found that only five percent of

the students could recall any of the

statistics from their presentation

while 63 percent of them remembered the

story and the details that were

delivered within the story

so now i figured like i understood why

stories work

i got that what i was really perplexed

with

is how do stories work how come some

stories are great and some stories

aren’t

and it happened for me sitting in a dark

theater in 1993 with a hoodie on

watching sleepless in seattle how many

of you have seen this movie

okay it’s not exactly my genre but it

was my wife’s turn to pick so i was

being a good sport and there i was

i vowed i wasn’t going to get involved

in this movie first of all i had

much bigger fish to fry so i’m sitting

there in the dark

all of a sudden halfway through this

movie i was in

hook line and sinker and i slapped

myself awake and said what how did that

happen

and that’s when i saw it the movie split

into three different pieces

the music and sound effects the action

the characters and the cinematography

and the storyline

well i went back the next three nights

this time without my hoodie

but i had a pad of paper and a pen and i

drew

the pattern of each of those elements

individually on a timeline

and there it was i laid them on top of

each other

and i could see a pattern and then i

couldn’t unsee it

every movie musicals plays books

music even really good comedians use

these patterns to tell their jokes

and i call these patterns cadence and

this

is the cadence of bigfoot now

i know some of you are sitting out there

thinking oh great well i’m never going

to be able to do that

well i’m going to show you how to do it

tonight and you’re going to be able to

do it

tomorrow so the first thing you have to

do

is document the story in a short story

you’re looking for these 10 basic

elements okay these are 10 things that

will help you guide your way through the

story but you have to document them

i use what i call a story grid it’s a

simple spreadsheet in excel or whatever

and i ca i create that sheet to capture

them so that i can record them

when you’re doing this you’re looking

for something that will help you

identify do i even have a story

there’s two elements that you need to

find the first one

is the climax or an apex of the story

without that you don’t really have a

story something amazing something

fantastic

or something terrible the second thing

you’re looking for

is going to be the lesson and the lesson

of that story is something that will

help you

teach something so in my story my dad

landing on the hood of that truck was a

climax of the story the lesson i was

teaching

is that storytelling is a superpower

then what you do

is you pull those elements once you have

them all crafted

and you put them on this document this

is called a cadence chart

now let me walk through this really

quickly first thing i do

before i put the ten elements on is i

give the story a name so up in the top

corner

i put the name something that you’ll

always remember like

bigfoot in the backyard okay the next

thing you do is put the category down in

the bottom corner

who or when would i use this story on

the other side

i put the lesson something that i

learned or something i can teach from

that story

right above that is where i put the

timeline

this is a percentage of time okay

stories are longer and shorter so

it’s better to use a percentage right

above that is where i put the emotional

status the feelings i want to generate

with the audience while i’m presenting

to them

in any given point throughout the

presentation right above that is a

little red line called

the emotional baseline this is the axis

that you use

to move the rhythm of your presentation

on the cadence

above that line is where i put the

details the little specifics

the things that will help you tell the

story and help people get their

imagination involved

then at the top of the graph along the

top i put those

other a elements right along the top and

then i drop

this cadence line on and it works every

single

time you know a few years after bigfoot

happened

my mom’s 44th birthday she just made a

birthday cake as mothers do to celebrate

and we were heading over to my sister’s

house to celebrate her birthday

and we were over there working on my

sister’s brand new house they were just

putting the shingles on the roof and

finishing up

right as we pulled in the wind gust

knocked a few bags off the top of that

roof

they slid down and swept my dad off the

two-story home

and we lost him but you met him tonight

you met him he lives on in those stories

in my life

in the life of my wife and my kids and

my grandkids

even though none of them ever met him

including remy

my grandson that was born at 11 o’clock

this morning down in arizona

stories are the bond of humanity

stories connect us throughout our lives

and i believe forever

so tonight i challenge you find

one story document it write it down

cultivate it and share it and then do it

again

and then do it again start tonight

and develop yourself so that you can

become

a storytelling superhero because you

and your stories can make a difference

in the world

but you have to share them good night

you