Sept. 10 - Made to Stick - Ch. 6 - Stories

Sept. 10 - Made to Stick - Ch. 6 - Stories

This chapter details the various aspects of effective stories.  First, for a story to be effective, it must contain some sort of wisdom.  Heath and Heath use children's bedtime stories as a good example - and Samuel L. Jackson would agree - kids tend to request bedtime stories simply for entertainment rather than some sort of moral lesson or enlightened insight.  For the older crowd, however, Heath and Heath tell us that "stories are effective teaching tools" (205-206).  What does it take for a story to be an effective tool for teaching, then?  It must provide simulation - "illustrat[ing] causal relationships that people hadn't recognized before" - along with inspiration, as was the case of the underdog nurse who offered the right diagnosis rather than the chief neonatologist.  A story that provides both simulation and inspiration, Heath and Heath write, is "geared to generating action" (206).

The reason a story told just for entertainment would be an ineffective tool for instruction is because it involves  a passive audience.  An effective story, however, is both entertaining and instructive because its instructive potential in fact stems from its entertainment value.  Heath and Heath refer to studies showing that an instructive, entertaining story actually puts the audience more in the role of the story's protagonist than the detached observer.  One process that gets an audience more involved in a story is called mental simulation, and is "not as good as actually doing something," write Heath and Heath, "but it's the next best thing...  Stories are like flight simulators for the brain" (213).  Essentially, an effective story is a kind of simulation.  It provides the immersion necessary to get an audience to fully grasp a concept through a combination of entertainment and inspiration, and it requires them to actually get in the story and work through it in their own head as if they actually experienced it.  The story of Jared Fogel, told through Subway's famous advertising campaign, is a perfect example.  It is entertaining, inspiring, and immersive  - all of which are part of what makes a story stick.