| How do I get people to care? | Tell great (and true) stories. |
My favourite movie growing up was The Neverending Story. In the story, a fierce wolf chases the young hero (Atreyu) around a land called Fantasia. You think the wolf is the villain, until you discover that he is also a victim. The real villain is a bigger, more powerful evil called The Nothing. This true villain is swiftly destroying all life in Fantasia.
Next, you find out that the hero of The Neverending Story is also not who you thought it was. The hero is not Atreyu; it’s Bastian the kid reading the story. Atreyu’s purpose is to go on an adventure and attract Bastian’s attention so that Bastian will save Fantasia.
Atreyu’s job is to make the audience care.
In social impact work, you are like Atreyu. You spend a lot of time trying to get other people to pay attention, care, and act. And the best way to do that is often with a story.
Effective stories make people care for at least three reasons. First, humans remember stories better than disconnected pieces of information. Stories connect pieces of information together and create an emotional experience that lasts. When you deliver your message as part of a story, you share it in a way that people are more likely to remember. The human brain loves stories because stories connect pieces of information together and create an emotional experience that lasts.
Stories also build trust. You reveal more of yourself when you tell a story than in reciting facts, which helps to establish a connection and elicit an emotional response. Plus, storytelling takes time, and time is essential to building trust.
Third, individual stories connect information to a larger worldview. Stories build on each other, adding layers of meaning to what people already know and believe.
To create a “story”, pick any event or activity. Ask “And then what happened?” Then keep asking and answering that question until there’s nothing left to say. That’s the basic formula for a story.
Easier said than sometimes. You may not know which event or activity to start with, or which details really matter. If a story isn’t coming to you easily, don’t worry. Focus on these four ingredients, and your story will come together naturally.
Every great story needs four things: characters, location, goals, and stakes.
If you’re trying to tell a story about a program, cause, or problem, start by collecting these four ingredients. If you’ve heard great stories and want to understand why, use these elements as a guide to help you understand and replicate it.
Part of storytelling is deciding which characters to focus on. Ideally, your characters are people your audience will react to emotionally. You’ll need two or three types of characters for your story:
One of the biggest mistakes in organizational storytelling is not focusing on any specific characters; we write about “an organization” without giving it any personality, or an abstract concept like “society” or “democracy”. Without characters, your work will read like an academic paper or a corporate quarterly report — informative, but plotless and dry.
For example, heroes in social impact stories are often the people who use the programs and services, volunteers, the species or natural space you are working to save, or the staff. Villains are typically a person, organization, or force that is trying to take something away from the hero, harm them, or interfere with them in some way.
For each story you tell, decide which users, members, volunteers, experts, or villains you are going to name. Then the story starts to write itself. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see that you can use the same formula over and over again.
[If the term “hero” makes your team uncomfortable, just remember that the label describes the function the character plays in telling the story and is not meant to elevate them above others. If the word is interfering with your planning and internal discussions, you can say “protagonist” instead. You can also replace “villain” with “antagonist”.]
Memorable stories to take place somewhere. Your location is a place, like a building (City Hall) or a city (London) or a natural space (Great Barrier Reef). The more specific you are, the better; this is how your audience develops a clear mental picture to go with your story.
In social impact stories, location is often especially important. Your audience may have an emotional connection to that place, which connects them to the story and your cause.
This is where the energy comes from that makes your story interesting. Your hero must have a goal. What do they want? Your audience wants the hero to achieve that goal, which is why they start rooting for them.
Your villain has a goal too, something that is contrary to the hero’s goal. In the beginning, it seems like your hero and your villain can’t both get what they want; that tension is what hooks your audience.
Don’t overthink the goal. It may be as simple as survival, being healthy, being able to pay rent, just existing without harassment. The hero wants something for themselves, or for the people they love, or for society at large. Name it.
Don’t over-explain your villain’s goal, either. You aren’t inside of other people’s heads. If you’re naming a real-life person or organization, don’t guess at why they do what they do. It’s enough to describe their actions and to know that their goal is to be able to keep doing what they are doing. Most of the time, you just need enough of the villain to show that the hero may not succeed. You don’t need to spend a lot of time demonizing others to make your point.
Stakes tell us what is gained if the hero wins or what is lost if they lose. Stakes also tells us what happens if the villain wins or the villain loses.
Stakes are the element that makes the audience care about the outcome of your story. They build the emotional connection and keep people paying attention until the end.
Global stakes are the big outcomes that interest groups of people, like the destruction of the planet. Personal stakes are the outcomes that affect the hero, like saving their child’s life or getting the health care they need. The more your audience cares about the stakes, the more interested in the story they will be.
If you find your stories aren’t connecting with your audience, it may be that you’re speaking to the wrong people, they don’t have enough pre-existing knowledge of the situation to care, or you haven’t shown them clearly what’s at stake.
You don’t need to be a master storyteller to tell great stories. Effective stories are built on facts about what you and your organization are doing every day.
Borrow the elements that authors, filmmakers, and playwrights have used for years to inspire audiences around the world. Harness their expertise so you can get on with changing the world.
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