PDF Summary:Unleash the Power of Storytelling, by Rob Biesenbach

You want to engage and persuade your audience when you talk about your work, passions, or values. But even when you care deeply about your message, you don’t always connect with your listeners. In his 2018 book Unleash the Power of Storytelling, speechwriter-turned-actor Rob Biesenbach asserts that you can make your message much more compelling by simply telling a story.

Biesenbach explains that stories affect us deeply because they have a unique power to captivate our attention, influence our perception, and shape our emotions. In this guide, we’ll explain how Biesenbach defines a story and explore the fundamental pieces that make up a story. (Hint: It’s not as simple as beginning, middle, and end!) We’ll also compare Biesenbach’s insights to other popular theories about stories and storytelling, and we’ll look at the research on how storytelling affects your brain—and how these effects play out in the real world.

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To illustrate why it’s so important to tell a story that gets your listeners to feel as well as to think, Biesenbach explains what happened to a patient who developed a tumor in an area of the brain that helps regulate emotions. After the tumor damaged this part of the patient’s brain, he could no longer make decisions. The research suggests that when emotion is impaired, decision-making is compromised as well. Without emotion, a story won’t push your listeners to act.

(Shortform note: The patient Biesenbach mentions appears under the pseudonym “Elliot” in neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error. Elliot’s tumor occurred in the frontal lobe, the same part of the brain of interest in the famous case of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who survived an accident that drove an iron rod through his head, only to have his personality completely change. From these two cases, Damasio hypothesizes that emotion and reason are interdependent and that one can’t function without the other. In that case, it makes sense that a good story should appeal to our logical brains and to our emotions.)

Though we think we make decisions by using reason and logic, emotions often motivate or even determine our decisions. If you want your story to motivate your listeners to make a decision, making sure that your story has a solid emotional core is just as important as making sure that you have all your facts straight.

(Shortform note: We do many things that aren’t rational, like relying on emotions instead of facts to make important decisions. Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction, explains that researchers continue to learn about the limits of human reason. Research shows that we deny scientific facts, dismiss new evidence, disregard weaknesses in our own arguments, and find emotion more persuasive than evidence because of the ways the human brain has evolved.)

The Power of Story Is Often Abused

Because of the way they engage our perception, attention, and emotion, stories are powerful—so powerful that people use stories to manipulate others. Biesenbach says that when you tell a story, you should resolve to “do no harm,” but many people don’t make such a commitment. Sometimes, people mislead their listeners by focusing their attention on sensationalized anecdotes that contradict the evidence or telling stories that appeal to their audience’s fear or vanity.

We should be skeptical of the stories that other people tell. Incentives exist for people, including professional storytellers like marketers, journalists, and political pundits, to exaggerate the drama of a story or to push an overly simplified narrative. It’s wise to check the facts, especially if a story sounds overwhelmingly positive or overwhelmingly negative.

(Shortform note: Stories are powerful, but there’s an ethical line between using a story to make people want to listen to you and telling them a story that’s not based in reality. In All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin draws a useful distinction between fibs and frauds. Fibs are stories that bend the truth in a way that benefits both you and your listener. But frauds are stories that deceive in a way that benefits only you and not your listener.)

How Stories Engage the Brain

We know intuitively that stories grab our attention, but scientists say this happens because stories engage our brains more fully than other kinds of information. Psychologists explain that it feels so natural to think in stories because we do it all the time. This is the brain’s natural form of information processing, one that brings more regions of the brain online than when interacting with other kinds of information.

Similarly, neuroscientists have found that stories capture people’s attention and make it easier for them to process new information. Stories help our brains imagine social experiences that we’ve never been through ourselves. When we become emotionally engaged in a story, our brains become less likely to critically evaluate the “facts” in the story. That means that stories based on exaggerations or even outright falsehoods are just as engaging to the brain as those based on truth, and it helps explain how stories can be used to deceive people.

How to Create and Tell a Great Story

After establishing what a good story is and why it’s so powerful, Biesenbach dedicates much of the book to explaining exactly how to create and tell stories. He explains that this is a process that anyone can learn.

In this section of the guide, we’ve divided Biesenbach’s strategies into two groups: strategies that can help you create a meaningful story and strategies that can help you deliver that story in an engaging manner.

Create a Story From Scratch

When you have a message to convey to an audience, it takes time to craft a story that’s perfectly suited for the job. Biesenbach outlines a process you can use to create a story that matches the audience you need to reach and the message you want to deliver.

Find Story Ideas

First, start cultivating a collection of stories that speak to your values and engage your areas of expertise. Coming up with a story in a pinch can feel difficult, so Biesenbach recommends noticing the stories that play out in your everyday life. It also helps to stay alert to stories in the books, journals, films, and other narratives you consume—you never know when you’ll run across a story that perfectly illustrates one of your core values. You can also interview people about their stories or plumb your own history for stories that relate to the message you want to convey, like calling on a childhood memory of building a treehouse to talk about collaboration.

(Shortform note: Looking for stories in your everyday life sounds great in theory but can prove challenging. In Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath agree with Biesenbach’s recommendation to stay on the lookout for great stories that speak to your work or your mission. Additionally, they recommend imagining that you’re wearing a set of core idea lenses that can help you look at everything from the perspective of the message you need to communicate.)

Consider Your Audience

Next, think about your audience and take an inventory of what you know about your listener. Without a specific listener in mind, you’ll have trouble crafting a story that accomplishes your goals. Consider who they are, what they want, what you have in common with them, and what they know about you or what you represent. Also identify what you’d like your audience to do after hearing your story—adopt your idea, purchase your product, get behind your cause—and any challenges that might stop them from doing so, such as limited time and resources or skepticism about your idea.

(Shortform note: Experts agree that you need to know your audience to craft a compelling story. Vanessa Chase Lockshin, author of The Storytelling Nonprofit, writes that telling a story about your cause or organization will only work if you get to know the audience who will be listening to that story. She recommends going through a discovery process, including talking to real people, to learn who your audience really is. You can even construct a fictional audience member to make the details more concrete in your mind.)

Choose Your Character, Goal, Obstacles, and Resolution

Once you have a story and an audience in mind, take some time to think about the character at the heart of your story. Because your character should help you overcome the challenges or objections you anticipate your audience having, the character needs to be relatable to your listeners. Plus, the resolution of the story—where the character either does or doesn’t overcome the obstacles that block the path to the goal—should drive your message home.

For example, let’s say that you own an apple orchard and need to tell a story that convinces people to buy your apples—but they find apples boring. So when you talk about your grandfather, who planted the orchard, you could explain how he envisioned an orchard full of odd varieties of apples: not Honeycrisp, Gala, or Granny Smith, but Black Oxford, Pink Pearl, or Mountain Rose apples. He likely faced many obstacles: Maybe he had trouble sourcing saplings, dealt with a rare beetle infestation, or felt doubted by other farmers. But when your story reaches the resolution of an orchard full of apples, your listeners appreciate the vision and the care it took to establish and tend that apple orchard.

(Shortform note: It’s crucial to take time to choose the right character because you can’t separate story and character. In How To Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster explains that the plot of a story is driven by the nature of the character. As a literature professor, Foster is talking about the character in the context of a book-length narrative. But he notes that to hold the audience’s attention, a character needs to grow or change—a useful insight for a story of any length. Without growth or change on the part of the character, the obstacles won’t feel challenging, the goal won’t feel worthy of the character’s pursuit, and the ending of the story won’t feel satisfying. The right character sets all of those pieces in motion.)

Structure and Focus Your Story

Once you’ve chosen a character and you know the basics of what will happen to him, you need to craft the structure of your story. Structure gives shape to the story so that it has conflict and draws the reader into the action. Stories can adopt many different structures, but Biesenbach suggests starting with a simple one that includes:

• Normal state (the status quo)
• Inciting incident (the event that upsets the status quo)
• Turning point (the action the character takes to respond to the inciting event)
• Conflict (the obstacles that complicate the character’s path)
• Resolution (the conclusion, where the character either gets what they want or doesn’t, but in either case learns something)

Understanding Classic Story Structure

Biesenbach’s basic story structure corresponds closely to a classic description of narrative structure. Freytag’s Pyramid, developed by novelist Gustav Freytag, describes a story in five key stages: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution.

In the Exposition, the writer builds the world of the story. In the Rising Action, the writer introduces the conflict. In the Climax, the conflict reaches its peak. In the Falling Action, the writer lays out the consequences of the conflict and its climax. In the Resolution, the writer shows how the character or the world is changed by the events of the story.

Of course, not every literary work follows Freytag’s Pyramid, and this might not be the right structure for every story you tell. However, this structure is worth understanding because it serves not only as an example of what story structure is but how structure functions as a conceptual framework for a story.

Meander, Spiral, Explode author Jane Alison notes that while Western literature adopted the convention of a causal arc—the movement from rising conflict to climax to resolution—fiction has taken very different shapes in other cultures. Chinese fiction, for instance, has long emphasized lyricism, pattern, repetition, and rhythm. One traditional East Asian structure called Kishōtenketsu de-emphasizes tension and instead highlights character development, with a four-act structure that includes an introduction, development, twist, and conclusion.

Use Emotion to Hook Your Audience

Then, when you’ve nailed down the structure, evaluate how your story can tap into listeners’ emotions. Much of a story’s power lies in its ability to make us feel something, and Biesenbach explains that you can use emotion to engage your audience in a few ways.

First, consider what motivates you: Focus less on “what” you do and more on “why” you do it to help center the story on things that matter. If you’re talking about a company or a product, identify the human element in the connections between colleagues or the ties between workers and their communities. You can also connect your story to the values that you and your audience share by emphasizing the importance of community, connecting the story to the values you share, or tapping into the history that unites the members of your audience.

For example, if you’re trying to get people behind an initiative to clean up a local park, you could focus less on the specific steps you’ll need to take and more on the reasons to take on the project in the first place (like preserving a public gathering space or ensuring the park continues to be a hospitable home for endangered birds). You can appeal to your audience’s sense of community by reminding them that all of you consider the neighborhood your home, and together you can take care of that home for everyone’s benefit.

Biesenbach notes that in some cases, it can work to highlight an emotionally resonant lesson in the struggles of a leader, historical figure, or athlete you look up to. (Just watch out for clichés.) And at points throughout your story, it’s OK to express your own emotions: When you talk about the people, memories, and values that you find meaningful, you reveal your own humanity.

(Shortform note: A story you feel passionate about can engage your audience—but only if you enable them to share in the emotions you feel. Essayist Rebecca Solnit cautions that when you tell a story that fires up your emotions, you need to stay conscious of not using up all of the emotion of the story by fixating on those feelings to the exclusion of all other perspectives. Especially when you feel strongly invested in the issue you’re communicating about, you have to leave room for your listeners to feel their own emotions about the story. Keep your focus on presenting a clear point of view, not only telling people how they should feel about an issue.)

Edit Your Story

Finally, it’s time to edit your story. Include only what’s necessary, or else extraneous details will detract from your message and mute the impact of your story. Biesenbach recommends that you stay on message, focusing on the point you want to make with the story and eliminating any details that don’t serve that point. It’s also a good idea to check that you’ve zoomed in on a single character and streamlined the cast of characters in the story as much as possible.

In order to establish a clear cause and effect, which helps the listener follow the logic of your story, make sure that your narrative has just one turning point. Eliminate any confusing twists and turns. Throughout the story, make sure that you’re using detail judiciously. A time and place can set the scene, and sensory details help make the events of the story more vivid, but you can simplify dates, round numbers, and eliminate proper nouns to sharpen the focus.

(Shortform note: Storytellers can learn something about the importance (and process) of editing from writers. Novelist Alexander Chee offers some advice that’s intended for writers but can also point you in the right direction when you’re preparing a verbal story. Chee recommends writing to the end of the story before making any cuts or edits. Then, revise your story on paper if you can. Or, refer to your printout and retype the entire story to see if a better arrangement occurs to you. Finally, redraft to add any missing pieces and cut anything redundant.)

Deliver Your Story

Creating the perfect story is one thing, but actually telling that story to an audience is another. Biesenbach believes that it’s not just the mechanics of the story but also your delivery of that story that makes it powerful. In fact, he considers the delivery of a story almost as important (though not quite) as its content. This makes sense to anyone who’s attended a meeting where someone presented dozens of slides without varying their tone of voice, which makes it difficult to engage with their message or remember any of it when the meeting ends.

Drawing on his experience as a speechwriter, strategist, and actor, Biesenbach explains how you can optimize the delivery of your story to keep your audience engaged. Most importantly, he recommends treating storytelling as a performance. Perhaps the most important way to do that is to practice your story ahead of time.

(Shortform note: “Practice makes perfect” because of how our brains respond to rehearsal. Scientists have found that each time you practice a physical motion, your brain continues to build myelin, or insulation, around the neurons your brain uses to perform that task. That extra insulation enables electrical signals to travel more quickly, so you get faster at recalling what you’re supposed to do and putting that action into motion. Connecting gestures or movements to your story as you practice it, or even simply pacing around the room while you rehearse, can get multiple areas of your brain involved and improve your recall and performance.)

Telling a story like a performer also means staying present with your audience and staying connected to the details of the story. Make your voice, expressions, and gestures animated, and keep your storytelling dynamic by varying the words you emphasize, the volume of your voice, and the speed at which you speak. You can also use your body to tell your story: Match your facial expressions to the emotions in the story, use your hands to reinforce what’s happening in the story, and move your body to mark the passage of time.

(Shortform note: We’ve been honing our ability to deliver a story for tens of thousands of years. Researchers think that storytelling evolved as a method of sharing information, coordinating social behavior, and promoting cooperation. In fact, evolutionary psychologists think that storytelling gave our ancestors a survival advantage during the Ice Age. Though our earliest ancestors didn’t have written language, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they memorized their stories verbatim. In fact, experts today recommend against memorizing your whole story, which takes the spontaneity out of it. Storytelling organization The Moth advises memorizing just the first and last lines to stay more engaged in your telling of the story in between.)

Finally, making the most of the delivery involves choosing your language thoughtfully. Use sensory words to make your language more vivid and precise, use metaphors to make abstract concepts concrete, and use comparisons to impart a sense of scale with large numbers (for example, researchers reported that an iceberg “twice the size of Manhattan” separated from Antarctica, which for most of us is easier to visualize than a “600-square-mile iceberg”).

(Shortform note: More isn’t always more when you’re adding description or detail to your story. In On Writing, Stephen King suggests that you should aim to provide enough description to help your audience understand the world of your story, but not so much detail that your listeners won’t engage their imaginations to fill in some of it themselves.)

How to Craft Stories for Specific Situations

Telling a great story requires the same elements and calls on the same skills regardless of where you tell the story, and most of Biesenbach’s advice applies pretty much anywhere you’d find yourself in front of an audience. But in some situations, many of us could use more guidance. In this section of the guide, we’ll explain Biesenbach’s advice for using stories when you give presentations, explain the story of your company, tell your own story, or give a toast or eulogy.

A Presentation

Biesenbach thinks that stories have an important place in presentations, whether you’re pitching an idea, introducing a product, or giving a lecture. A story can capture your audience’s attention before they know who you are or what you represent and can persuade them to take the action you want them to take.

When you give a presentation, Biesenbach recommends that you should start with a story, end with a story, and tell more stories in between (interspersed with a variety of types of information that communicate your message). Begin your presentation with a story that speaks to a problem your audience cares about—a story that sets up and reinforces the message of the presentation.

Include stories throughout the presentation as needed, making sure to vary the kinds of information that you’re presenting to your audience. (For Biesenbach, this tends to involve one story for each section of the presentation.)

End your presentation with a story that reinforces your message. Biesenbach explains that it can be particularly effective to tell a story that continues the story you told at the beginning of the presentation by adding a twist, appending a postscript, or telling it from another character’s point of view.

(Shortform note: Experts agree that stories make a presentation more effective. In Talk Like TED, Carmine Gallo notes that listeners have an easier time understanding an idea if you use a story to tell them how it works in the real world. But not everyone agrees that you need a story at the beginning, middle, and end of a presentation. One design agency points out that when your entire presentation is built around a story, you only need that one story. But if you’re working on a presentation that’s about a bigger idea, then it makes sense to have two or three stories to provide examples throughout the presentation, perhaps at the beginning, middle, and end. You might even need more than three stories if you’re tackling a big question.)

A Company Origin Story

When you need to talk about your company and the work you do, a great story plays a crucial role in holding your audience’s interest. Biesenbach explains that businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations need an “origin story” that presents their history and purpose and humanizes the people behind the scenes. A story is more compelling and memorable than a dry corporate timeline, which typically just lists dates and milestones without a narrative arc to connect them.

(Shortform note: Not everyone thinks that a company’s origin story is the important one to tell. Writer John Hagel III thinks that a story is too self-contained because it has an ending. He suggests that in a corporate context, narratives should be about the customer, not the company, and advocates for creating a narrative where the resolution is dependent on the listener’s actions—which can create a compelling call to action.)

When you’re telling a corporate story, you need to tailor the story to what the company can do for the audience. Like any good story, this kind of story needs a relatable character and a clear theme. Biesenbach notes you should pick just one value proposition to focus on rather than trying to address everything the company does. Many company origin stories follow a familiar pattern, which you can adapt:

• The founder encounters a problem.
• They make a discovery or invent a solution.
• They turn their idea into a product or service.
• They grow their business.
• The business continues to operate on its original values.

(Shortform note: A company origin story can communicate a message to audiences inside and outside your organization. Just Go With It author Mandy Gilbert explains that a company origin story can help a business attract both customers and talent. She recommends a few steps for crafting an origin story in a process that’s less focused on the chronology of the company than Biesenbach’s model. She advises that you start the story with the “aha” moment that kickstarted the company rather than the problem the founder encountered, be transparent about the mistakes you made along the way, and share your excitement with your audience.)

Company origin stories that follow Biesenbach’s template are everywhere, including behind some of your favorite products. For instance, here’s the story of Fender Guitars: In the 1940s, a radio repairman named Leo Fender saw that musicians needed an electric guitar that was more durable, more affordable, and easier to amplify than the archtop guitars they were playing at the time. In 1951, he introduced a solid-body guitar he called the Telecaster, which had a bright sound that made the guitar into a lead instrument. Inventions like the Precision Bass, Stratocaster, Jaguar, Jazzmaster, and Twin Reverb amplifiers followed. Each one was a new tool that changed how people make music, a mission that Fender still pursues today.

(Shortform note: A company origin story isn’t the only story that can help customers see value in your brand. In Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller outlines a seven-part formula for a marketing story, which casts a customer as the main character and tells a story about a product. The customer wants something and encounters a problem. The brand steps in with a plan to help and tells the customer how they can solve the problem. The negative outcome of not taking action becomes clear, and the positive outcome of following the plan is the happy ending.)

Your Own Story

When you interview for a job or introduce yourself to someone new, you should frame your career as a story. This makes it more memorable, reveals why you do what you do, and can even help explain an unconventional path if needed. Having a story is also useful when you’re facing a crisis or a decision and need help staying focused on your priorities.

Biesenbach cites the advice to find the “implicit narrative” of your life: Identify the values, character traits, and skills that have driven you through your most significant successes and challenges. Recall feedback that you’ve received from others, and articulate what you’ve enjoyed about your work.

(Shortform note: The “implicit narrative” is just one framework for using stories to think about the purpose you’re trying to fulfill in your career. In Find Your Why, David Mead, Peter Docker, and Simon Sinek recommend having a “purpose discussion” to identify your core values and purpose. They recommend gathering stories and lessons from your life that are meaningful to you, noticing the themes of those stories, and then drafting a purpose statement to articulate the action that your purpose compels you to take and the impact you want that action to have.)

Biesenbach recommends crafting your personal narrative with the same basic five-part structure he recommends for any story. At the beginning of your story, you’re enjoying your status quo. Then, an inciting incident disrupts that status quo. Next, the story comes to a turning point, where you respond to the inciting incident. Conflict occurs as you face challenges. At the end, you reach a resolution.

(Shortform note: Biesenbach’s emphasis on the “inciting incident” is grounded in a long tradition of thinking (and writing) about stories. In Story, Robert McKee explains that the inciting incident—the event that compels a character to action—functions as one of the key parts of a story’s structure. As you might notice in the change from “normal state” to “inciting incident” in Biesenbach’s structure above, the inciting incident throws the character out of their status quo and forces them to take action toward their goal. (Their goal might just be to return to the status quo!) The inciting incident poses a question—will the character reach their goal?—and later in the story, the climax or resolution answers that question.)

A Toast or Eulogy

You can use a story to frame your thoughts when you need to make a toast, speak on a special occasion, or deliver a eulogy. The sentiment you want to communicate can be more impactful in a story, and the momentum of a story can also help you get through an emotional moment.

When you know you’ll need to speak at an emotional moment, Biesenbach recommends practicing your story, bringing your notes with you, pausing if you lose your composure, and minimizing eye contact if it helps you get through the speech.

When composing a eulogy, Biesenbach recommends focusing on one character trait and telling a story that illustrates it. Then, you can explain the impact that that particular incident made on you. If you’re speaking about someone with whom you have a complicated relationship, focus on one thing that you find admirable about the person and speak honestly about it.

(Shortform note: If there’s one thing that writing advice on toasts and eulogies unanimously agrees on (other than the usefulness of telling a story), it’s the importance of specificity. Telling a story about someone who has passed away can help you write a eulogy that feels personal, truthful, specific, and memorable. In a toast honoring newlyweds or honorees at another special occasion, the right anecdote can illustrate the relationship you have with the honorees and relate their specific qualities to the context of the occasion.)