Stories are collections of hundreds of moments. In the best stories, every moment plays a critical role everything that happens, both before and after. By studying specific story moments, we can understand the whole arc of actions that make a story feel inevitable, satisfying, and complete.
The Turning Point in Twelve Angry Men
It’s hard to imagine more drama coming out of a small room with 12 impatient, imperfect men than the 1957 directorial debut of Sidney Lumet.
Twelve Angry Men depicts jury deliberations in a capital murder case in New York City in the 1950s. Based on a play, the movie violates all kinds of storytelling rules. It’s about a bunch of people sitting around a table about a case for which no one has a stake. But it is surprisingly tense as the vote to convict the defendant goes from 11-1, moment by moment, till it’s 1-11.
The big takeaway, of course, is the power of one lone man–Juror No. 8, played by Henry Fonda–to stand up against the crowd for his principles. He does so by asking questions and showing empathy for the accused. Sh=lowly, the rest of the jurors become skeptical of the evidence against the Purto Rico kid charged with murder.
In a story fell of turning points, the one that also gets me comes when Juror 10 erupts against the nine jurors who have decided to acquit. Watch it here:
The scene starts with rail falling outside, always a harbinger of gloom and confinement.
Juror No. 1o expressed his worst prejudices as he lashes out against the others. He is a deep well of prejudice and resentment. “Look, you know how these people lie,” he says. “It’s born in them. They don’t know what the truth is. They don’t need any real good reason to kill someone. No, sir.”
With every line, he is confirming the deep doubts about the case.
The longer his harangue, the more he loses–and angers=–the others. One by one the stand and look away. They are so disgusted that they won’t even look at him, much less answer him.
Watch. It’s a sight to behold.
All the previous moiments in the story led to this moment. It’s the perfect capstone for a case that began in certainty and has unraveled completely. Now, only three angry men–each one deeply troubled–wants to convict the defendant. They’re all getting desperate.
Had the screenwriter gotten the other jurors to parry his rant, the scene would have been ruined. Instead, they stage a silent protest against him. They are in a completely differentnplace now.
After six of the jurors turn away, No. 10 falls apart. “What’s going on here?” he protests. After the eighth turns away, he says: “Listen to me: They’re no good.” Another stands. “What’s happening in here?” he says. Now only two other jurors remain at the table as he speaks.
“Listen to me,” he said.
“I have,” Henry Fonda says. “Now sit down and don’t open your mouth again.”
He stammers for a moment and then crumples into a seat.
With this harangue, it’s only a matter of time for the whole jury to join in finding the defendant not guilty.
Have you ever gone back to an old school? Driven past an old Little League field where you used to play? Or stopped by an old mall, where you once did all your shopping, and found it cluttered with Dollar Stores and fast-fashion outlets?
The experience is deflating. In your own mind, you imagined these places more exciting. One day, long ago, they represented promise and growth. But now, visiting the old dorm or ballfield, it’s a letdown.
Is that all there is?
That’s the feeling I got recently when I was sorting through old books and found Talk Like TED–a primer for wannabe spellbinders looking to enlighten the world with their mix of personal testimony and cutting-edge research.
Once upon a time, TED regularly delivered on its slogan: “ideas worth sharing.” My favorite was Ken Robinson‘s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Al Gore did a great talk on the climate crisis. Jane McGonigal explored how gaming can make a better world. Simon Sinek explained the importance of asking why. Brené Brown won fame with her talk on vulnerability. Amy Cuddy modeled how to use the Wonder Woman pose to supercharge your mind, body, and emotions. These, by the way, are all still among the top talks, a decade or more after their delivery.
TED, which launched in 2006, is still alive, with 27 million subscribers on its YouTube page. But somewhere along the line, it lost its mojo. Now, it’s a chore to find the mind-altering presentation among the 4,700 videos. With all the regional offshoots with TEDx, topics and speakers seem ordinary, sometimes even tedious.
And curious people have new options. Podcasts, from The Huberman Lab to The Joe Rogan Experience to Call Her Daddy offer sharper points through intense conversation. You can tell these people care about what they’re doing. They go deep on compelling topics.
But the problem is more fundamental: The TED formula got flat and predictable. As obscure speakers marched to the big red dot, armed with their tales of exploration and challenge, they seemed to follow a script rather than sharing their passions
TED succeeded, at first, because its presentations with carefully curated, with strict time limits, an understanding of narrative, an effective interplay of words and images. Plus, presenters practiced their talks endlessly. When they got on stage, they were ready to rock.
More important, the speakers had a passion and an urgency.
About that book, Talk Like TED, a 2014 bestseller by Carmine Gallo. Consider its nine “secrets” for public speaking:
Unleash the Master Within (huh?)
Master the Art of Storytelling (duh)
Have a Conversation (duh)
Teach Me Something New (you don’t say!)
Deliver Jaw-Dropping Moments (really?)
Lighten Up (always?)
Stick to the 18-Minute Rule (how about one minute to start?)
Paint a Mental Picture with Multisenstory Experiences (natch)
Stay in Your Lane (OK, but even if I really need to tell you something else?)
All good advice, I suppose. It can be useful to know Colin Powell’s body language: Both hands spread shoulder-length apart … Makes circular movement … Right hand extends and clasps into a fist ,… Points toward himself …
And, yes, it’s helpful to think of stories as “just data with a soul” and to give the reader “one character I can root for.”
After this book came out, I watched as TEDster after TEDster followed Gallo’s advice. Problem was, the talks started to sound like stale paint-by-numbers presentations. The speakers weren’t brimming with excitement: Hey, there’s something I gotta tell ya. As the years went by, TEDsters spoke self-consciously rather than exuberantly or intensely.
To communicate well, sure, it makes sense to “Have a Conversation” and “Become a Master Storyteller.” Sure, follow certain do’s and don’ts. But before you do that, you need to care intensely about the topic.
Years ago, I sat in on the Dale Carnegie Training program in New Haven. Every week, participants delivered one-minute talks–without much preparation, without notes, but speaking from the heart. No one tried to out-perform Ken Robinson or Brené Brown. They just spoke about something that mattered to them.
The format was simple:
“So there I was…”
“And then, … And then, … And then, …”
“Until finally … when I realized …”
These talks were often emotional and revealing. Speakers described their fears, regrets, crazy moments, scary moments. They took us on a meaningful journey. At the end, we cared.
As you craft your stories–whether you’re in business, school, journalism, publishing, or just posting on social media–start there. Yes, you can and should use dozens of specific techniques to craft your story.
But the real energy a presentation comes not from a list of nine “secrets.” It comes from something you desperately want to share with someone (RIP, Ken) and willing to be vulnerable about (h/t, Brené). Find a puzzle you desperately want to solve (thanks, Simon and Jane). If you can, make it physical (props, Amy). If it’s socially important, great (thanks, Al).
The key word, I think, is authenticity.With it, you have a chance. Without it, you’re doomed.
I think TED has lost this basic truth. That’s OK. It was a nice run. Too bad it got so bland and predictable.
That’s my personal TED talk. (Bowing, waving.) Thanks very much.
TED’s Greatest Hits (IMHO)
Ken Robinson on creativity (pay special attention to the story beginning at 15:08)
To succeed as a storyteller–or as a musician, architect, scientist, or other creative person–you must work within a specific genre.
The story genre provides the style, rules, and expectations for the tale. What kind of hero and other characters will we meet in the story? What kinds of settings, struggles, and values will we explore?
A genre is a promise: If you read this detective/romance/action/whatever story, you will get what you’re looking for.
In recent years, the idea of genre has spun out of control. One recent analysis posits thousands of kinds of stories. That’s way too many. That’s why I decided to create a simple framework for understanding genre.
How Genre Got Out of Control
Virtually every reader or movie-goer will recognize a dozen or so genres. Besides the overarching categories of Comedy and Tragedy, most people will recognize genres like Romance, Love, Western, Crime, Thriller, Gangster, Horror, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Memoir.
So far, so good.
But in the age of the screen, people are overwhelmed with stories. Stories were once a means of standing back to observe reality; now stories are embedded into everything we do. As a result, we can bet bored with the standard sets of genres. Detective, ho hum. Horror, yawn. Romance, (eye roll). Gangster, so what?
Storytellers these days have to be ever more clever, so they stretch existing conventions of storytelling (e.g., Memento, Life’s Arrow) and mix-and-match different genres (e.g., The Godfather and The Sopranos as family/gangster tales). Think of the opening montage of The Player. After hearing a pitch for a movie about a TV star who gets lost on a safari, the producer says: “It’s like The Gods Must Be Crazy except the coke bottle is an actress.” “Right!” the writer says. “It’s Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.”
Eric R. Williams, a story and gaming guru based at Ohio University, has developed a rigorous system with three basic levels: Super-Genres (11 categories), Macro-Genres (50 story contexts), and Micro-Genres (199 specific story details). By mixing and matching these genre elements, Williams says we can come up with 187,816,200 distinct story types.*
Has the proliferation of genres–and the constant stream of genre theories–made the craft of storytelling overwhelming? Where is Occam when we need him?
Genre, Simplified
That’s why I decided to create The Simplest Genre System Ever.
I began with a simple idea: All stories are either comedies or tragedies. Comedies are struggles (often but not always ha-ha funny) that end with the hero getting what she wants. Tragedies are struggles that end badly, with the hero not only losing but often destroyed. That hero might gain a new understanding of life, but comes too late to save her.
But that’s just a starting point. To tell a good story, we need to answer two questions:
In what kind of setting does the story take place, ranging from someplace close to home to a faraway locale?
What kind of quest does the story depict, ranging from an inner, psychological quest to an outward, more material or transactional quest?
That’s what genre is all about. It’s about offering a distinctive kind of story, based on the setting and quest.
Inner Quest/Close to Home: These stories play out on familiar ground of the heart.
Love stories almost all take place close to home and always awaken the heart. For example: Romeo and Juliet, Poldark, Wuthering Heights, Sleepless in Seattle.
Memoirs are even more interior in some ways, often depicting the Hero’s battle with herself to overcome the problems of living close to other people. Think: Running With Scissors, Listening to Prozac, Educated.
Ha-ha comedies also tend to be close to home, since they rely on misunderstandings revealed by everyday fumbles. Such as: Duck Soup, Groundhog Day, Airplane!
Inner Quest/Faraway Place: These stories also plumb the mysteries of the heart but take place in strange places.
Horror stories often take place in the home, but also take place in mysterious and creepy woods, city streets, and even other worlds. For example: The Exorcist, Dracula, and Frankenstein.
Fantasy tales are set in whole worlds of invention and unreality. Think of the Harry Potter stories, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Game of Thrones, or The Hobbitt. Or if you’re old-fashioned, think of the enchanted forest of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
By traveling to whole new times and places–and even different dimensions of being–sci-fi goes deep on intimate or emotional issues. Think: Star Wars, The Bladerunner, 2001.
Outer Quest/Close to Home: In some takes, people are emotionally dead and battle exterior challenges.
Crime stories are all about solving problems, often with domestic characters, highlighting the power of logic and persistence. See: Anatomy of a Fall, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Thelma and Louise.
Thriller and detective tales do the same, but with the heightened tension of impending catastrophe. Think of Hitchcock’s oeuvre and the gumshoe tales of Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Outer Quest/Faraway Place: In these takes, the force and violence rules the untamed frontiers of human existence.
Action stories show characters clashing to the death, usually far from any domestic concerns. The goal is to vanquish a foe more than to find any inner child. Think Stallone and Ah-nold.
Westerns show the clashes of the good guys (sheriffs, cowboys, ranchers) trying to create order out of disorder–or to survive or thrive in that disorder. Bonds are based on opportunistic calculations, not emotional commitments. Think of Unforgiven, Tombstone, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Going back further, see Duke Wayne’s classics and James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Gangster stories bring the Western to the anarchy of city streets, where order is more dependent on a balance of power than a common ethos. For example: A Bronx Tale, Once Upon a Time in America, and Good Fellas.
This is just a starting point. We might debate the genres organized on the four-cell chart. But it offers a simple starting point for understanding the concept of genre. Ultimately, it’s up to storytellers to find the right place on that chart.
*That reminds me of Lewis Carroll’s story “Sylvie and Bruno Concluded,” in which people devise a map with “the scale of a mile to the mile.” It kind of defeats the purpose, no?