Seven Questions About Story
with Dr. Troy Hiduke Campbell
In this FAQ, Dr. Campbell concisely answers seven questions he gets asked the most about story like “Why should I use storytelling” and “What is story?”
Troy Hiduke Campbell is the chief scientist at On Your Feet, a behavioral science PhD, former Disney Imagineer, marketing professor, and founder of Hiduke House
At the bottom of the page, there are links to the deeper dives into the science, theory, and models referenced in this FAQ.
1. Why should I use storytelling?
Story is the way the brain most easily processes and remembers information.
Some scholars have gone as far as to say that humans’ ability to think in cause-and-effect logic and process events narratively is the most distinct component of human cognition.
2. What does story do?
Story creates meaning.
Words and ideas alone do not have much meaning. The stories behind them create the meaning.
The reason something happens (“the backstory”) imbues the idea, product, event, or character with meaning.
3. What is story?
Story is “cause and character.”
Story is a series of moments that “cause” characters to change.
Great storytellers and story teachers, from Pixar, to the author of Narrative, Dr. Porter Abbott, to the world’s leading comics professor, Dr. Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, to the creators of “South Park,” all roughly define story as events causing characters to change. “Cause and character” turns information to into narrative.
4. What is the easiest way to tell a good story?
Use the story spine.
Formalized by the improviser Ken Adams and later popularized by the studio Pixar, this story form presents a fill-in-the blank “cause and character” structure that is widely useful for most stories.
“Once upon a time there was a __________. Every day, they __________. One day things change when, __________. Because of that, __________. And because of that, __________. Until finally __________. And since that day, everything has been __________.”
5. How do I tell a big story?
Tell a big core story through many narratives.
Be Nike or Apple who use the form “Multi-Narrative Storytelling” in their advertisements when they tell many different narratives that are conceptually united around their one core story of “Just Do It” or “Think Different.”
Don’t try to find one perfect long epic story, instead have a core story and tell many narratives that give more meaning to the core story than any one single narrative ever could.
6. How do I tell a story in a business situation?
Use Goal -> Insight -> Action.
This three part structure really is perfect for sales, data, strategy, design, and most everything in business.
In this form, the goals are calls to action, motivations, and reasons for being. They establish what needs to be done. The insights are ideas and discoveries (and often data) that guide and enable the action. They serve as the authority and the clarity. And, finally, the action is how one should or could use the insight to accomplish the goal. The actions make the insights real and useful in a goal-directed way. Use these three steps to pitch ideas, sell products, explain data, propose plans, and reccount case studies.
7. How do I tell really powerful story?
Give it a sense of destiny.
In the greatest stories of all time the characters change into who they already were “always meant to be.” We love seeing these Destiny Narrative types of stories in theaters, reading about them in books, and we are persuaded by these type stories that frame our change as changing to be “more of who we already are” and being more of our “true selves.”
Psychologically, the Destiny Narrative resolves the major conflict between people's desire to positively change and people’s desire to authentically stay the same. This power makes it immensely popular among fiction writers (who tell stories of “the hero who was destined to let out their inner magic”), change leaders (who argue “we were meant for this change”), and marketers (who make arguments like “release your inner goddess” or “discover your creative side”).
Dr. Troy Hiduke Campbell is the chief scientist at On Your Feet, an influential behavioral science researcher, former Walt Disney Imagineer, and Oregon business professor.
At Hiduke House, he hosts the podcast Original & Powerful Ideas and writes about many different ideas in science, business, and art.
