Telling your story

One of the remarkable insights of cognitive science is that the brain is, by and large, a story-making organ. Being able to perceive patterns in our environment, interpret, categorise, memorise, recall, contextualise and communicate – all of these facets come together in the sense making of story and its telling.

For this reason, story telling is a very efficient way of conveying information. In the workshops I give, I ask participants to write down the story of their climate action group. The group is given a number of prompts that cue for the common features, roles and event structures of stories. These are:

What is the threat or problem?
Who are the victims?
What will be sacrificed? Lost?
Who are the villains?
Who are the heroes?
What will the heroes do to stop the threat?

The story that emerges out of this tells us the group’s reason for being, who they are, what’s at stake, who is responsible and their program for action. It becomes the basis for the messages that the group needs to convey to its community. The stump speech.

The process can also be used to elaborate around specific issues and aspects of the campaign, for example, discussing the merits of policy proposals such as the C.P.R.S.

In interview situations and casual conversations, you will often be asked, ‘so tell me about your group, what do you do?’ The narrative you’ve developed will answer this question.

I encourage you to carefully consider your answer to the ‘who are the heroes?’ question. The answer will tell your community who you are, and, the best answer, (in my view and…) in a nutshell is, to paraphrase, ‘just like you.’ That is, ‘we are parents and grandparents, teachers and tradies. We’re people from all walks of life and we’ve come together to stop the threat of global warming…’

Another suggestion is to make use of the words in the progressive value set described in the first post. Weave them into your story, for example, ‘our purpose is to protect our community from the impact of global warming, to preserve our life opportunities and call on our government to take responsibility and play its part in caring for Australia’s future.’

Tell personal stories of why you became involved in this group, this campaign. Personal stories express values and elicit empathy. For example, 'I fish in this estuary every summer with my grandchildren. I love this coast. All this will go when sea levels rise.' Take a moment to reflect on those thoughts and feelings that triggered your involvement.

Keep the language easy to understand. Try to avoid the ‘policy speak’ trap, using technical terms like ‘petawatt’, ‘parts per million’ or ‘biodiversity’. If you do need to do this, try to make sure you’ve grounded these statistics and terms in your story so people already know who you are and where you’re coming from because you’ve made clear value statements.

I welcome your comments on this post.