Multi-Narrative Storytelling

multi-narrative storytelling. How to tell a big story through multiple narratives. Why do people often struggle to find and tell their perfect singular story? How do the greats actually tell story? How do the best fiction writers build strong characters? How do effective brands and activists create massive stories that often last years? And important to us all, how do individuals communicate the value of our abilities? Finally, in general, what makes a story a big, powerful story? The answer to these and many other questions are found in and around the discussion of today's big idea. It's all about how you shouldn't try to find your one perfect singular story. But instead, tell a big story through many overlapping narratives. Welcome to Original and Powerful Ideas. My name is Troy Heddo Campbell and I use a scientific mind artistic heart approach to capture original and powerful ideas so you can apply them in your own pursuits. I've spent my life understanding the science and theory behind how humans think and behave and applying those ideas artistically and practically as an applied Duke, behavioral science PhD, former Disney Imagineer, Oregon professor, and consultant for Nike, Netflix, and many more. Across this podcast, we'll be exploring together original and powerful ideas captured in many different forms that are meant to be new and relevant to you, whether you are a world-class innovator, a scrappy upstart, or just a curious person with some headphones on. Today's episode is on the original idea of multi-narrative storytelling, and this episode is in the form of another book where the idea. A book where the idea episode is about an idea that I believe could be its own book or chapter in a book and is defined and applied in a very straightforward way to be understandable and useful to all. All the episodes so far have been in this format, the big identity net, portals, and every shade of blue, the latter of which is a good companion episode to this one. At hidukhouse.com, I write white paper book summaries of every idea I present like this on the podcast, as well as many others. I mentioned this format because future episodes will somewhat break from this form with the upcoming pitch episode for the logic show and an interview episode with Todd J. Pierce, but every episode will still stay strongly focused on a singular idea. Because that's what original and powerful ideas is about, trying to live up to its name one episode and one idea at a time. The Inspiration When we think of telling a great story, we tend to think of telling a big, long, singular, linear narrative. But if you look around at what the most widely praised storytellers actually do, you'll notice that often they aren't telling a story through one narrative. Nike sometimes has long, singular narratives, but in many of their most praised storytelling initiatives and commercials, they instead present fast-action montages of many athletes doing many different things each shown for only a few seconds, and then the commercial concluding with a singular core story, such as with the phrase "just do it." Songwriters sometimes tell long, linear stories, but they usually don't. Instead, they have a chorus that has a singular hook line, and then fill the verses with little narratives and metaphors and examples that do not often fit in a straight logical line, but all paste together to create a massive story. And on a more mundane but important to all of us level, the best job applicants don't have a single narrative of one work thing that they've done, but instead often start with a statement or almost slogan about their work, and then support that with many different narratives. When we look around us, there is this macro form of storytelling, where no one tale dominates. It's a collective story that is made powerful by all the narratives and examples that build and fit together, yet despite this form of storytelling being everyone, despite it being used by the greats intentionally or intuitively, this idea of storytelling has rarely been broadly applied and holistically defined. The idea. Multi-narrative storytelling is telling the story of a concept, character, person, or brand through multiple and complementary narratives that collectively bring more meaning than any one narrative could. This form has a core story or thesis that is often explicitly stated and then supported by multiple narratives. Each narrative or example swirls around that core story or idea, clarifying and expanding that core. The Applications. Brands like the tech company Apple, the athletics company Nike, and the construction materials company Owens Corning, build their brands by centering their storytelling around one core idea or value in a campaign, such as think different, just do it, or a material difference. And then, in those campaigns, tell many different narratives, often in the same commercial or across many billboards or social media posts with many different athletes, designers, leaders, scientists, or activists, such that the collection of those narratives bring fuller meaning to the core ideas. What's important to remember here is that with Nike, just do it is the big story. Every example is a narrative that both reinforces and expands, such that when done right, each narrative clarifies and complexifies the core story. Apply songwriters. Musical performers such as Eminem and Billie Eilish use multi-narrative storytelling. Eminem boldly stated, "It feels so empty without me, in a song that included many different narratives about his controversies with sensors, parents, and other artists." And Billie Eilish stated she was the bad guy and provided many examples of how she makes mom sad, makes girls mad, and many other things till it was just "Duh, so obvious, she's the bad guy." Apply activism. On a more serious note, activists use multi-narrative storytelling to change the world. The activist movement, Black Lives Matter, features the core story about modern inequality and injustice summarized in those three famous words, Black Lives Matter. That is united by the multiples of big, small, intersectional, common, and uncommon narratives to collectively bring nuance, depth, and a fuller understanding to the core idea. Each individual BLM narrative punctuates and expands the thesis of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is one of the most important and influential movements of our time, and it is inherently a multi-narrative story. Apply fiction. On a lighter note, great fiction writers use multi-narrative storytelling to powerfully establish characters. For example, the 1978 classic Superman introduces its iconic version of Superman through a multi-narrative. When actor Christopher Reeve first appears in costume, he engages in a narrative scene where he saves an out-of-control helicopter and Lois Lane who is falling off a skyscraper. But it doesn't end there. Instead, he takes off on an epic flight with the big John Williams score behind him to engage in a series of short narrative vignettes that will fully establish who the Superman character is. He stops a jewelry thief who is using suction cups to climb up a building and then delivers that thief to a police officer and takes the time to shake the police officer's hand and say his name, Officer Mooney. Next, he stops criminals who have evaded the police after an intense shootout and car chase, and then finally, in a quiet simple short narrative, he meets a little girl who is distress by her cat Frisky being stuck in a tree. Superman uses his power of flight, which he previously used to save lives and fight crime to get the cat down from a tree. Then, a few scenes later, he literally says his core story aloud. I'm here to fight for truth, justice, and the American way. Christopher Reeve's 1978 Superman is up there as one of the most classic cinematic portrayals of any mainstream character, and it is largely created through the most fundamental and straightforward form of multi-narrative storytelling that structurally overlaps with the best Nike just-do-it commercials, your favorite songs, and the most impactful activist movements of our time. Though I, in the broadest sense, multi-narrative storytelling works because it works with how the brain organizes information into networks of meanings. Giving people a core story, such as a slogan or a definition, can help the brain focus. It tells people what parts of each narrative you share to pay attention to and how to organize and activate the information in their brain through networks of meanings and associations. Consider apples think different campaign, in which in one of the commercials, they flash through many historical figures, such as the scientist Albert Einstein, the artist Jim Henson, and the athlete and social activist Muhammad Ali. Without the think different center, the many examples would be cognitively overwhelming, or nonsensical, or at least just less clear. But, with the think different language paired with many examples, the storytelling becomes cognitively fluent and focused. Your paying attention to the think different rebel part of each narrative. What is so great about multi-narrative storytelling is even though you often give people a literal sentence level definition or core, the multi-narrative makes it mean more. The multi-narrative thus both focuses and expands the meaning. One last application, you constantly need to tell your personal story. We all need to tell our personal story to explain our value to many different people, such as employers, employees, clients, customers, students, audiences, and acquaintances. Multi-narrative storytelling is a great and easy way to do this. To begin to tell your story as a multi-narrative story, you can start by writing yourself a story core plus three, which involves writing your core, your core story, and then having three example narratives to support that core. Some of my students' core stories for their respective job markets have been I love and excel at leading creatives. I elevate brands with distinctive, vivid, and theatrically staged photography, and maybe my favorite, I'm the Get Stuff Done Girl, but she didn't say stuff. Once you have your core, the next thing to do is define three examples that collectively tell your story that are ideally complimentary and compensatory. For instance, my vivid photography student explained how she created effective and distinctive photographic campaigns for an indie thrift shop. Second, she explained how she did the same for a very corporate brand. Lastly, she explained her goal-oriented yet artistically inclined thesis project in the learn by doing education she was doing at her academic institution. All together, these three examples combined with her core statement provided breath and complimentary nuance to communicate her value. A tip, a trick, a theme, and one more thing. A tip. Remember, what makes a multi-narrative story work is that it is a collection of narratives that all point toward one core story. It is not just a list of a bunch of qualities, even a bunch of positive qualities. A multi-narrative story has a distinct center, a thesis, a core story that unites all the narratives. A trick. If you are struggling with your core story or brand or your character or your big idea, just write down so many things about you or so many things that are relevant to your audience. Then see what unites them. Ask your friends for feedback or ask artificial intelligence to synthesize it all for you. You'll find something I promise. A theme. People often stress out about telling the perfect story or stories, but almost always perfection is not the goal. The goal is just to communicate something to your audience that your audience doesn't know and usually wants to know. Your audience first and foremost just wants to know something like, "Who are you? How can your brand help me? What is this character all about?" The multi-narrative form is here for you in these situations. All right, this one's a little odd, but let's go for it. One more thing. Write song lyrics about your multi-narrative. If you want to understand your own story or your brand story, it can be useful to write a classic I am song. Pop culture examples of I am songs include the core lines I'm a Savage by Megan the Stallion. I'm the girl who loves my island. I'm the girl who loves the sea by Disney's Moana. And I'm so three thousand and eight years so two thousand and late by the black eyed piece. Some of the examples of my students and clients in the past have been the B+ student saying, "I'm that 3.31 girl. I'm that get that stuff done girl. A poetry student singing I am clumsy brilliance and a company singing. This is how we build now." After the core story comes the multi-narratives in the verses. In the verses you find and creatively phrase your skills and accomplishments and values, such as Disney's Moana talking about the length of a journey she has gone on or a team of scientists talking about how they can make a material of theirs called pink to make real every brilliant thing that you think. So the partnership will be like wow, wow, wow, this is how we build now, now, now. This process is often cheesy and has an amateur feel to it but oh my gosh can it get to ideas quickly. Conclusion Whenever I'm teaching story and I ask my audience to define what makes a good story. They rarely verbalize or have a shared understanding of something like multi-narrative storytelling. Even if they often intuitively use it and even if it is present in so much of the most effective storytelling that they cite as their inspiration. Many people from organizations like Disney and Nike and from artists, collectives and creative studios that have been in my classes use this idea intuitively but don't have a firm understanding of what exactly it is they are doing or how to do it better, especially in a more precise scientific-minded way. This episode defines this storytelling as multi-narrative story and presents the idea as a unifying secret power behind storytelling that can be widely applicable to all storytellers. This analysis combines my work as a behavioral and psychological science researcher and an Oregon marketing professor where I refined this story form teaching it to many story novices as well as Nike and Adidas marketers and designers. Helping story novices take massive steps forward in their storytelling and even helping those who were already intuitively talented at the form see it in original and powerful ways. Narratively, Troy. If you want to learn more about this idea or many others, you can visit HyduKaus.com. You can also check the show notes where you'll find my email [email protected] as well as summary text and many links to help you remember and share the ideas of this episode. If you like this original and powerful idea, you may also want to check out some of these other original and powerful ideas. First, you might want to listen or re-listen to the podcast episodes of The Big Identity Net, which is about how to make people feel a meaningful part of something and usually involves some multi-narrative storytelling. As well as every shade of blue, a way of seeing all the different shades of an idea inspired by how Vincent Van Gogh could paint with every shade of blue, which is in many ways the intellectual or design sibling of multi-narrative storytelling. Also at HyduKaus.com, you'll find a lot more writing on different types of story forms in the white paper books. This of course includes lyrics about, a white paper book on the power of writing lyrics for innovation, discovery, and communication, which includes exercises and templates for writing multi-narrative storytelling lyrics and many more. And finally, the Destiny Narrow. Most great, multi-narrative storytelling, whether it is about a fictional character like Superman, an individual starting their career, or a business coming together, includes a Destiny Narrow. Thanks for listening, my name is Troy Hadu Campbell, and I created HyduKaus to engage with the most interesting ideas and the most interesting people always with a scientific mind and an artistic heart.