Storytelling is in vogue in business and communications without people necessarily understanding the very deliberate process the very best storytellers will take in developing a story.
The magic of Pixar or Disney, the drama of Dickens or Spielberg, the romance of Austen or Shakespeare and their impact on our emotions can all be understood through looking at story structures.
Each of us has a story that we carry around with us that helps (or hinders) how we make sense of the world. This is a fundamental truth that helped those of us communicating the benefits of the Covid vaccines to an initially hesitant audience.
In the simplest form a story structure is as follows:
· A story begins
· Something happens
· A story ends
But in between, the start and the end, will be a series of events that will keep the audience engaged (or not) through connecting with and motivating through a range of basic human emotions.
This is the ‘what’ that is happening rather than the ‘why’ and professional writers refer to these moments as ‘beats’.
American playwright Ken Adams set out what he called a ‘story spine’ to map out the beats of a story:
· Once upon a time . . . (introduce situation)
· Every day . . . (add useful context)
· Until one day . . . (something that fundamentally alters the situation)
· Because of that . . . (consequence 1)
· Because of that . . . (consequence 2)
· Because of that . . . (consequence 3)
· Until finally . . . (the climax)
· And ever since then . . . (resolution)
Hollywood writers often advise students learning the skills of filmmaking to know where you want your story to end. For us communicating vaccines our story ending was simple:
To live in a world where we were safe from Covid-19.
Then we worked back from there so the story spine for the vaccine rollout looked something like this:
· Once upon a time a new killer virus that we didn’t fully understand swept across our planet.
· Every day infections, hospitalisations and deaths increased meaning we had to change the way we live to protect the most vulnerable in our country. We couldn’t go to school, work, the shops or even see our families without fear we might get sick or put our loved ones at risk.
· Until one day brilliant scientists discovered a way to make a vaccine to protect us, our loved ones, and our communities from the virus.
· Because of that discovery and the innovative way the vaccines have been developed help is on its way.
· Because of that it is up to all of us to come forward and take a vaccine when asked.
· Because of that if you or your friends and family have questions about the vaccines it is important that you get answers from trusted sources to help you make the right decision for you and your family.
· Until finally vaccines are our way out of the pandemic.
· And ever since then [one day soon promise…] we can return to the lives we knew and loved before Covid-19.
Stories can inspire, stories can calm nerves, and stories can be used to explain complex ideas or concepts that are beyond the understanding of many. The science of vaccines being one of them! The way we talked about vaccines – most of the time – achieved one if not more of these things.
Then there is the necessity to connect with the audience first, you must tap into what they care about, make your message relatable, and then you can take them where you want them to go. We did that by putting ourselves in the shoes of 56 million people.
The burden of telling this story day after day – adding colour, light and texture to the basic structure - lay with many of the brilliant clinicians and scientists who were our spokespeople but also on the shoulders of the talented content teams at the Department of Health, the NHS and others. They used story structures repeatedly to tell the story of the importance of vaccines.
A good example of this was the relentless pursuit of the nightly news bulletins by the NHS communications team who recognised that, in a world that is dominated by pictures, making sure that the TV news had the right images was essential to tell the story successfully.
Their understanding that providing access to images of ‘people like you’ having a vaccine, celebrating having had a vaccine, or talking about their excitement about having a vaccine soon dealt with many of the reasons for peoples’ genuine hesitancy.
The human brain loves stories.
It is one of the ways in which we have developed as a species with our brains wired to connect.
By knowing this and the way people needed to understand where their own story was heading, we were able to better support the vaccine rollout saving many thousands of lives.