What Is a Story? | My 5-step brand story framework - Part 2
Continuing where we left off, I finish my 3-part definition of what a story is, and give you the long-awaited 5-step brand story framework.
This episode is packed with information, and I know you’ll get a lot out of it. I open up the door to some crucial story components, like theme, controlling idea, central conflict, etc. which are each worth entire episodes in their own right. And I’ll continue to dig into these concepts further in the future.
If you would like a copy of the 5-step brand story framework to easily reference, you can download it here. I am eager to see how you put it to use. So if you do use the framework as a guide for your stories, please send me a link so I can see the incredible work you’re doing.
You’ll Learn:
My complete, 3-part definition of a story
The importance of theme
The audience’s relationship to the main character
Why stories require conflict
My 5-step brand story framework
Key Terms:
Theme
The underlying meaning of a story that’s told under the surface. What the story is actually about. And it often pertains to either a worldview or identity issue.Emotional Delta
The perceived value of an offer established by the difference between the degree of felt pain from a problem vs the felt delight of the solution
Transcript
What's going on, Brand storytellers? Okay, so we're picking back up in part two of what is a story, the five step brand story framework. In part one, we covered these sort of the top tier of my definition of storytelling, the basic definition of storytelling, which is a character who wants something and endures a series of obstacles in order to get what they want.
The three C's of storytelling character, conflict change we're going to pick up now with the rest of this episode in part two and dig into the second and third tiers of the definition and finally get to the five step brand story framework. Enjoy.
Story is a character who wants something and endures a series of obstacles in order to get what they want. However, that while that's while that definition is a bit more accurate than the A Story is a series of events, it's actually still kind of similar. With only that definition, you may run the risk of still telling a really boring story of event event, event, event, event, event, event.
Because you could still tell a story that kind of goes off the rails. Because how do you know which conflict books are actually relevant to the story that you're telling? How do you kind of like provide some sort of clear focus, provide some sort of clear direction to your story? That's why you need that second tiered definition, which is a story makes a promise to the audience that it's going to take them on a journey in order to teach them a lesson and fulfill that promise.
This second tier definition, we're looking at the theme. We're looking at what is what this story is actually really about and what is driving this person. So when you're in the beginning part of the story, right, So within the first act, the first act is usually introducing us to the setting, the status quo, the current situation, the character.
But then they're also introducing the theme. They're telling you what this story is about. And when they tell you what this story is about, it's kind of offered to you as this promise as, Hey, this story is about someone's personal growth. It's it's got it. This is a coming of age tale or this is a mystery. A case needs to be solved or whatever.
Right. So if we look at Inception for as an example here, Yes. You realize that this is going to be some sort of a heist film that they're going to have to like sneak into someone's mind and drop an idea in there. But what you're also realizing is that this is a story about a character needing to face his his own guilt.
He's needing to confront his own personal demons because the whole act of Inception is prevented from doing that, because that is the the core of the pain. So Dom Cobb wants to get back to his kids. Well, he can't get back to his kids. Why? Because you later learn that his wife framed him for her own murder, and that's why he can't get back to his kids.
Why did she do that? Because he incepted her. So it's kind of like gets all the this way around of in order to get back to his kids, he has to confront the guilt of his own dead wife, perform the thing that made her kill herself in the first place. And only then can he get back to his kids.
You see how this that story Inception is complete Lee interconnected that all of the conflict that is playing out at the surface is directly tied to the internal turmoil that our main character is going through. There's our direction. There's our theme, right? It's about like facing your own fears and facing your own guilt and overcoming that in order to become who you need to become, like resolving past past pain.
That's inception, right? So that's that's the whole meaning. Is that the theme is kind of like your Occam's razor for your story. Your theme makes sense of the story, and it connects everything. Anything inside of your story that doesn't point back to and support the theme needs to be removed and needs to be cut out. And anything that does support the theme has to be included.
And then if you think about, well, how do we properly structure our story or start to tease out the information for this lesson that people are going to learn? How do we make sure that they actually understand what's going on? How do we properly organize our story so it builds to this climax? That's when you look at the third tiered definition of a story.
In that a story is an argument that leverages emotion in order to make its points stick. I look at story as as rhetorical entertainment. Okay. You have a series. Like I said, you're taking a character from point A to point B, You have A, you have a set starting point for that character. And then you usually have a set end point for that character.
And then you also have the audience journey. You're making a promise to the audience that you're going to take them also from point A to point B, So you're starting your audience off in a specific spot and then you're going to end having taken them to some sort of cathartic moment and some sort of understanding that they have to go through.
When you start organizing your story, you think about it in terms of crafting an argument or even building an essay that that you're you're teasing out the information and you're and you're building these aha moments into your story and these emotional points into your story in a logical framework, in a logical way. It's not accidental. It's it's very precise.
This is why you're going to if you watch a movie in a theater or you watch a movie with a group of people, you're very often responding emotionally to the same beats of that story because those beats and those reactions were designed into the story. It's not just a fluke that you laugh at the same time or that you cry at the same time, or you get scared at the same time.
Those are designed in there. It's not a fluke that you all suddenly come to the realization of who the murderer is all at the same time. That's built into the story. Story has a logical framework as a as a logical argument. And you're taking both the character and the audience from point A to point B, and you're you're teaching them something along the way.
So it's kind of like you're giving them the introduction point one to to kind of prove that theme. Hit them with 0.2. To build on that theme, hit them with point three, to continue to develop that theme. And then the end of your story is kind of like the conclusion to your logical argument. It's almost like an essay that's just playing out in front of you.
Keep in mind you're taking that character from point A to point B, you're taking that audience from point A to point B, The audience naturally identifies with the main character of the film. They become our voyeuristic car that we sort of ride along this rollercoaster in. All right, They are our focal point of empathy and understanding. It's through them that we will experience the emotional journey of the story.
It's through them that we will see the theme play out and build throughout the story. It's through them that we learn about the information through the story world. The questions they ask are most often the questions that we have. They're kind of like our our advocate and our representative in that story. They're very often written as someone who is new to a world who has a lot of questions about the world.
So that way the other characters explain that world to them. Okay. Because because that is a situation that we as the audience find ourselves into. We are very often new to this world. And we need to be we need that world to be explained to us. We're new to something we need to learn. It's a journey of learning.
So you have to understand that there's that tie between the character and the audience, and you are designing that character to be a either a reflection of the audience or a necessary vehicle for that audience to follow along with. So that way they can properly learn the lessons that you need to explain. That is a very convoluted way of saying that know your customer is not always the hero of every single story that you tell.
All right. So you kind of if you're if you come from the story brand school of thought, that's something that you kind of have to shake yourself out of because they're not. Sometimes you have to tell an origin story of a company. Sometimes you have to tell a story from a companies perspective, or you tell like an employee story, right?
Like sometimes you don't always put the customer as the focus, but you do have to understand that the customer is always the audience of your communication. And therefore you have to design your stories for that person from their perspective and have empathy for your audience and understand what they know or don't know. So that way you can properly craft the story in a way that resonates with them, that is meaningful and helpful to them and rewarding to them.
All right. We always want to reward we always want to reward our audience for their attention. So just keep that in mind. Know the audience is not always the hero. However, the audience needs a character. They can follow a character that will almost be an advocate for them, someone they can I can. They can identify with or advocate for them and guide them through the story.
All right.
The other thing I want to touch on as well is when we're thinking about putting conflict into the story, I have to kind of stress the importance of this. Very often as marketers, we are wary of really digging into problems and and kind of like stressing the problems that our customer faces because a lot of this has to do with good intentions.
We don't want to come off as a skeezy. Oftentimes you don't want to come off as like a skeezy, direct marketers tricking somebody and or making someone fearful or trying to force people to buy from you from a coercive standpoint, you don't want to trick somebody into then buying from you by making them afraid of stuff. That's often the the perspective.
There's a sort of like moral conflict there of digging into problems. The thing is, is that in order to tell stories, you need to dig into the problem because as I stated earlier, that problem and that conflict is required for holding attention. It's this constant value shift that you do throughout the story you keep. It's almost like you're teetering them on a boat where you're pulling them between the negative emotional pull in a positive emotional pull, negative emotional pull, positive emotional pull.
And you're creating that tension to kind of keep them on balance and build them up to the climax and boom, then it's positive again. And a lot of that that pull shift is necessary to help to provide a proper context for them to actually understand the value that you're providing. You really need to explain the problem that they're experiencing and dig into that problem, because as I was explaining earlier, that really draws them in, that that opens them up to begin to empathize and it helps them realize that you understand the depths of their problem, that you truly get them, that they don't just empathize with the story, that they understand that you empathize with
them. That's really critical for establishing that trust. It's also critical for them to understand the value, the true value that this offer or your company provides for them. Because the genius of the problem agitation solution framework is that what you're doing with that framework is you're kind of creating this emotional delta as you're digging into a problem and having them feel that when you then provide this solution, you've brought them emotionally down low and now you've provide this positive solution to them, this degree of emotional sensation.
That is how they're judging value. From that, I've got an episode how stories create meaning. I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. You should go back and watch that lays all of this out of how value is created emotionally through creating these emotional deltas. So you're trying to engineer an emotional delta into your story so that way they understand and feel the value that you're providing.
All right. So let's look at my five step storytelling framework. I love how it's my framework, and I don't even know if it's six or five steps. Good Lord. Five steps. Five fingers, five steps. Let's get going with this. All right. So number one is the status quo. We see a character in either a a humdrum life that they're just sort of bored with and they don't feel fulfilled at all.
Or our character feels restricted and limited. And they're in a mildly oppressive situation and they're they're frustrated, but they just can't quite put their finger on what is exactly wrong. Or we find our character is is threatened that they're they're at risk of of being harmed or having violence done to them. And they really need to get out.
Either way, they they catch this this bug, this vision of this ideal future. And armed with this vision of this ideal future, a strong desire begins to well up within them to change their situation, to venture out, move forward, leave this status quo, and go get their goal. Then you get down to the problem in step two. Now the problem is obviously the problem that prevents them from achieving what they want.
And you begin to dig in to this problem. Right. So a problem arises that disrupts their journey and they need to now obtain some sort of solution to help them. They've got to change their their initial plan. And they may need different tools or different skill sets in order to actually solve this problem. Then we enter into the crisis.
Suddenly this problem is become way bigger than we expected and it has overwhelm doomed our hero. They have exhausted all resources. They they are. They're at their end and ready to give up. And they are now in desperate need of of some sort of outside help, be it through a a another character or a tool or some sort of understanding that they have to come to.
Something's got to be different. There's some switch has got to flick on. Otherwise, they're about to be completely destroyed. Then you enter into step four, which is the solution. So the solution appears to our character in the form of a company representative, in the form of a a product or service or in the form of some sort of knowledge that they receive that empowers them to now tackle this problem.
And solve this problem. But it doesn't just help them solve the problem, it elevates them above the problem. It takes them from being. But I am at my lowest to I am now at my all time highest. And then you have the lasting transformation step five. So step five, they're now victorious. They have received their reward, but they themselves have have undergone a specific change.
They're different. They're they've they've matured. They've grown. They've they've exited this situation with a new understanding. And now their future is so bright because they have that new understanding.
All right. That's it. So a story is a character who wants something and endures a series of obstacles in order to get what they want. A story makes a promise to the audience that it will take them on a journey wherein they will learn something in order to fulfill that promise and a story is a logical argument that leverages emotion in order to make its points stick.
And then you've got your five steps of the framework, not six five. The status quo, the problem, the crisis, the solution, and the lasting transformation. I would love to see how you guys actually put this into use. If you take this and run with it, end up creating like a written case study or testimonial of a video that you produce.
If you map out an entire campaign that follow this framework, whatever, I would love to see it. I would that that stuff would just make me super stoked. If you're like price check this out, I made this. That would just be amazing. So you can always reach me at McNabb storytelling. Com And similarly there, send me a message there.
If you feel like you would like to go deeper and get more of an understanding of how to apply this framework to the stories that you're telling or if you would like to, to invite me to come and teach your team and elevate your your team skills to get them all equipped with this framework and take your storytelling to the next level and truly transform your brand into a storytelling brand.
I would love to help out. We provide group training, consulting and one on one coaching to help you tell more meaningful, authentic stories that actually move your business forward. You can reach me at McNabb Storytelling dot com and I'll see you in the next one. Take care.