So, a story is hero's decision making process.
And you remember we need to help people to make better decisions in their lives.
This is our ultimate goal as presenters and
stories help because stories are about decision making.
They are about you know,
should I go this way or that way.
It's it's always a garden of forking paths.
So what is a story structure?
How do we structure our presentation as a story?
Somerset Maugham once said that there are three rules for writing novels.
Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.
And this is a charming quote but I would have to politely disagree.
I think that at the moment we already know what the three rules are.
And behold here are the rules.
Rule number one, have a clear goal.
Storytelling is about reaching the goal.
So, it's a hero's journey in search of well, truth ultimately.
It's about reaching some point where the hero is content and satisfied with his life.
Number two, the hero should have a motivation to move.
And more often than not,
this is negative motivation.
The hero should have a problem or as one of my friends once said,
the problem should be that the hero,
such that the hero cannot live with this problem.
And finally, the hero should at least attempt to
have a solution to the problem in order to reach his goal.
And the solution is of course the journey.
His plan never works,
this is what makes story interesting and unpredictable,
but he or she should have a plan from
the problem state to the solutions state to the desired state.
So this is what story structure is ultimately all about. Where are we now?
What needs to change?
And what's the ideal future and what's the journey from point A to Point B.
And here at this point,
I hear a voice in an audience usually during
my live seminars somebody stands up or raises his or her arm and says,
"But Alexy, all I want is to inform.
I don't need this whole you know problem solution thing."
And I'm sorry one more time,
rhetoric is the art of problem solving.
If you don't have a problem to solve,
there's no need for you to speak.
There's no need to communicate.
If you assume that there's a great amount of motivation on the part of the audience,
if they want this report from you,
you don't have to be interesting. This is their job.
But if you are afraid that you are going to be boring,
then you have to have a story,
and therefore you have to have a goal and a problem.
No problem, no need to communicate.
This guy's name is Lajos Egri.
He's Hungarian.
He's a very well-known theorist of drama and in his book "The
Art of dramatic writing" he says that there is
at least one thing that we all agree about,
a play should have a conflict.
That is, there should be a problem.
There should be a fight and opposition.
These are all of course synonyms.
No conflict, no action,
and therefore, no emotions.
The actor has nothing to play.
If there's no problem,
he has no where to move.
He just stands there or walks there.
It's not very interesting to watch,
so one should has a problem,
a conflict in his or her story.
And more often than not,
our slides look like this.
And try having a conflict here, right.
But actually there could be a conflict,
there could be a conflict between what we've planned,
the numbers that we were hoping to get and the numbers we're actually getting,
and this could be an interesting fight between our expectations and our reality.
So go ahead and identify problems and by identifying problems,
you begin to construct meaning and you know, this whole conversation.
And this is what I think is your ultimate job,
is to infuse more meaning in the discussion.
Finally, when your story is right,
it serves as a foundation for your delivery skills.
As Russian authority on theater,
Konstantin Stanislavski once said,
"Without a play, there is no theater.
You should have a drama.
Otherwise, the actor has nothing to do."
So if you give a very good actor a slide like this,
he will be dead in five minutes.
There is nothing to talk about.
There is nothing to play.
So identify problems.
There is this movie called An Inconvenient Truth which was done about 10 years ago.
And I don't know if you've seen it or not,
if you haven't, go ahead and see it.
It's a great movie. It's a documentary and it features Al Gore as the presenter.
Most of the film is just Al Gore talking about the problem of global warming.
And this is a very nice analysis done by the opponents
of Al Gore criticizing him that 93% of the time,
he's discussing the problem.
And just 7%, he's discussing a solution.
And they were saying, "Well,
all he does is just brings us bad news and what do we do with all that?"
But number one, look at the results,
two Oscars and the Nobel Peace Prize.
Not a bad thing for a PowerPoint presentation.
But look at this quote by Albert Einstein,
"If I had an hour to solve the problem,
55 minutes to the problem,
five minutes to the solution.".
So this is actually what you should be doing.
You should understanding the problem,
and reframing the problem,
trying to find an insight,
trying to find the solution.
So it might be a sensible thing to do,
to discuss the problem with the audience in detail.
Your solution is only as good as the problem it solves.
And this is another thing to remember.
So to summarize, where are we now?
What's the problem? Thing number two,
where we should be,
what's the ideal future?
What's the ideal result of this whole enterprise?
And thing number three and we're going to talk about this later on,
how do we go from point A to point B,
from where are we now to where we should be. Thank you.
Alexei KapterevLomonosov MSU BS
