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storycodeX

~ The art of story in life, business and business life.

storycodeX

Tag Archives: conflict

The StorycodeX of Expectation, Surprise and Change; Introducing “Hero 2.0”!!!

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas, StorycodeX, Storytrain

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, conflict, corporate storytelling, drama, expectation, hero, hero 1.0, hero 2.0, life, Marketing and Advertising, narration, plot, Robert McKee, story arc, surprise, true story

A couple of months ago, I introduced a schematic, illustrative version of what I believe is the essence of any good, real story: the “StorycodeX”. A very basic how-to and what-to-include. A code with must-have elements, but also a code that allows “X” variations, no one-fits-all execution, but a necessary basis in order to reach your storytelling purpose; be it entertainment, information, infotainment, messaging, catharsis, action, … you name it.

It started off like this, with Story Arc Phase 1:

storycodeX_DHD_1a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isn’t that course almost every one of today’s so-called corporate or business “stories” is taking? It begins somewhere … and goes nowhere. Nuthin happenin. Boring! Like totally.

Gladly, there is always an end to this misery, but it’s not a story’s end, it’s an mpeg’s end, and sometimes this misery is a loooong torture. Such communication products are indeed a serious hazard to our mental and physical health, no kiddin, head injuries from falling asleep and banging your head on the table being just one of many to caution.

So, what we at least need is to rouse a little bit of EXPECTATION on the audience’s side, EXPECTATION that the above arrow is actually leading somewhere. And this somewhere needs to be a place we actually want to travel to:

storycodeX_DHD_1b

 

OK, now what happens when you create high EXPECTATIONS? Right: You’re gonna have to deliver. Deliver something interesting to the audience, something you ex- or implicitly promised in the first phase or your story arc. This suggestion can be made by means of story content (meaning the What, action or words) or story making (meaning the How of story creation, music, visuals, etc.). But if you create false hopes with cheesy, cheap special effects or bull-shit-bingo slogans, and then the above arrow goes on in an infinity loop of boredom, and there also goes your audience!

To avoid this mess, Story Arc Phase 2 kicks in:

storycodeX_DHD_2a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ideally, this something happening is something SURPRISING, but definitely it needs to be something meaningful. Meaningful not for you as producer or maybe even the narrator, if you have one, but meaningful for the immanent story logic and its hero(es):

storycodeX_DHD_2b

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Such an incident again needs to ignite a new sense of EXPECTATION, a hope that this SURPRISING development in scene or action will actually lead somewhere, somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere unexpected. Because: If just anything happens, expected or not, and the dotted arrow of boredom we started off with slithers on as before: There goes your audience, again. But this time it’s not only bored, now it’s also angry! Because you fooled them, lured them it into watching, listening or reading for longer than initially planned. And then (gee, you actually almost had them!): disappointment galore. Thank you for flying with Never Come Back Airlines!

What the audience was hoping, ideally even gagging for was: a turn in the story’s plot, in the hero’s life, leading him (or her, or them) to a different place (literally or psychologically, spiritually) as a consequence of everything that happened before. Hero and audience are confronted with a different world than when the narration commenced, and both need to deal with it:

storycodeX_DHD_3a

 

This altered direction is indeed a story’s (and in fact life’s) vital ingredient #1, an ingredient every good story ever told has (literally making story a metaphor for life). I’m talking about CHANGE:

storycodeX_DHD_3b

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But no CHANGE without life’s vital ingredient #2: CONFLICT. Corporations hate this beast, lock it up in a cage, try to kill it in every part of their shiny, the-world-is-perfect advertising and PR, but the son of a gun somehow always manages to escape!

Life is full of CONFLICT. CONFLICT is life’s spice, the only ingredient that really fosters CHANGE – as in story. So, if life or a story just steadily flows like a calm river without anything happening, without any CONFLICT occurring, the result might be great for meditation, but when it comes to purposeful, infotaining storytelling, what you get is one great big “YAWN”. This CONFLICT need not be explicit or even literally happening: inner conflict or narrations in retrospect are very often even more exiting modes of storytelling than the in-your-face alternative.

So, somewhere above (or below or in the midst of) every plot, every action (f)lies:

storycodeX_DHD_4a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONFLICT, however, should never be a self-serving element, a shocker, a special effect. It needs to happen to someone, this someone being (oh, quelle surprise!) a human being. Not a product. Not a solution. Not a service. Generally: Not a thing. So if anyone comes around asking you to create a campaign where “the product is the hero”: Fire him! And if you can’t fire him, cause he’s your boss, please argue him out of this idea. “The product is the hero” communication efforts are the most dangerous of all in regards to the afore-mentioned banging-your-head-on-the-table hazard!

Seriously, I know it sounds real wacky and kind of common sense, but decades of engineers and product managers becoming part- or full-time communicators, decades of one-way make-believe and hiding-lies-behind-effects advertising is over. Maybe not completely, yet. Maybe not today, completely. But soon, definitely.

So, to complete the StorycodeX and give the picture both its frame and its core, I proudly present the conversion of HERO 1.0 (the one who started his journey on the left side of boredom arrow, lived through EXPECTATION, SURPRISE and CHANGE in one or numerous iterations, depending on the story’s epicness) into HERO 2.0 (a different version of the same person, altered, in a positive or negative way) through CONFLICT:

storycodeX_DHD_5

 

CONFLICT and business communications rejecting this phenomenon so fervently, refusing the acknowledgement of the negative is a great topic, definitely worth a blog post here … maybe some other day… 🙂

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“What’s IS story? And what ISN’T?” … Part 2: The Human Touch

29 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Bug's Life, brand storytelling, Business, business storytelling, change, conflict, corporate storytelling, digital storytelling, E.T., HD technology, Human, human element, human emotions, humanity, plot, Short Circuit, story, story dynamics, surprise, suspense, Toy Story, video formats, video storytelling

Just before tradition forced me to vanish into a (non-white, sometimes rainy, sometimes spring-like warm, but very nutritious) Christmas break, I had touched upon the human touch of stories. In my eyes one of the most amusing and annoying misunderstandings in today’s business communication, the “human element”, right …

A misunderstanding that started off with two seemingly positive and delectable developments, for privateers as well as inside corporations great and small:

  1. Technology (once again), especially the ubiquity of HD-ready devices:
    Just a couple of years ago you needed a real pro with a real pro equipment to produce a pro piece of film for you, privately or as a brand. But today: Camcorders, digital cameras, even smart phones, available at reasonable prices, easy to handle, one-button simplicity and … Tadaah! Here’s your great video! Or at least a moving image with an .mpeg or .mov or .whatever file ending. Or at least something that conforms to the minimum standards of standard video players and standard video platforms. But does that make it a good video, let alone a good, interesting, appealing, relevant piece of communications collateral? More on the nay side, I would say.
  1. Storytelling, the latest magical bandwagon for marketers (and bloggers, haha!) to jump on, mostly without a valid ticket, let alone a driving license:
    I remember, Hippocampus, here we go again: It was some time in the winter of 2008, I was invited to give a 15-minute impulse speech at a conference of top communications managers from all over the world, about the potential of storytelling in business-to-business communications. Very few slides. No flow charts. No processes. No figures. That already scary enough for advertising dinosaurs and communicator-wannabe engineers. Just a couple of quotes, trying to give them an idea of what the heck this humanist and literary scholar was a) doing here and b) talking about. After my 15 Warhol minutes and some drinks at the hotel bar: I thought they had gotten the idea, theoretically.

Unfortunately, I was wrong, I had failed. It turned out that the distilled gist they had taken away was not plot, change, suspense, surprise, conflict or other story dynamics of that kind; it was “the human element”. Not a bad thing at all, don’t get me wrong, and surely a valuable ingredient for a good story full of identification potential and stuff, but: If you think putting one or two humans onto screen, slide or paper turns messaging into story: wrong end of the stick.

Example one:
Interview your real Sales manager human being in front of his real product for a real product website talking about the product’s really great features: Ain’t no story.
Change of approach: Find out who this Sales guy person is, where his passion comes from, what he’s been through to get to where he is today, what he loves to do in his leisure time which might in a way be related to the benefits of his great product? More like it, story-wise, at least some potential story angles there.

Example two:
Show a real cute girl patient in a hospital climbing into a CT scanner, two grown-ups with concerned looks on their faces, underlay some emotional music and a compassionate voice over for a 30-second TV spot: Ain’t no story.
Change of approach: Dig deeper and tell that girl’s (hi)story, her ordeal, the ups and downs she and her family had to go through until they finally found a way to access this unique, life-saving medical device … Bang! There’s your story!

Let’s add another perspective to this human element thing:

Do you think you could lament for the fate of an ant?
http://youtu.be/jB8wKvI0_8E

Could you anxiously witness every minute of a toy’s story?
http://youtu.be/7MM1k1SSlWs

Or an alien’s?
http://youtu.be/_7-2PB4jj2o

Or a machine’s?
http://youtu.be/9rlI3Xg9g_A

Gee, took me long to get my thoughts together here, must be the turkey still weighing on my concentration … so, what I’m getting at:

  1. You don’t need a human being for a good story, you need an element of humanity. And there are many business communication products out there with many humans, but lacking humanity, hence: They don’t work.
  2. Whoever is the hero of your story – man, machine or animal: Whatever happens to him (or her) needs to resonate with human emotions, needs to offer human identification, needs to feel humanly familiar.
  3. Oh and – I may have mentioned it before: Something needs to actually HAPPEN, before you decide whom it happens to.

Yet, the good news at the end of a long post and year: There’s hope and quite a number of really interesting storytelling projects out there in the business world already, rays of hope in a dark, loud and boring corporate messaging world.

So, I’d like to start 2014 with my personal top 5 selection. Permitted that New Year’s Eve is gentle to me …

In any case:

The story goes on … here … soon.

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