Stories Mean Business - Nick Warren

Yesterday, I talked about the importance of the "want" in storytelling. Without the 'want', there's never a story. In Roxanne – still a joy after 35 years – Charlie wants love. Specifically, he wants the love of the smart and beautiful Roxanne. But let's be clear... That's NOT the story, it's just the ENGINE of the story. Hitchcock famously called the engines of his films "muguffins" because he wa...

At the start of Ferris Bueller's Day Off , our hero tells us EXACTLY what he wants: "This is my ninth sick day this semester. If I go for ten, I'm probably going to have to barf up a lung. So, I absolutely MUST MAKE THIS ONE COUNT." At the start of Casino Royale , M reads Bond the riot act: You stormed into an embassy! You violated the only absolutely inviolate rule of international relationships!...

My favourite lines from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves comes (of course) from the scenery-chewing Sheriff of Nottingham: "LOCKSLEY, I’ll cut your heart out WITH A SPOON!" Moments later, when his dim, witted, cousin questions his choice of cutlery, the peerless Alan Rickman, answers with a snarl: "BECAUSE It's blunt, you idiot. It'll hurt more!" Funny, as these lines are, there's no hidden meaning h...

We all know that Love Actually is a political, instructional film. Among other things, we learn what drives the UK’s foreign policy: "I love that word, 'relationship.' Covers all manner of sins, doesn’t it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship; a relationship based on the president taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to, um…Britain." ......

In Toy Story 2, Jessie forces Woody to face a terrible truth – that he will be abandoned by the child he loves. Speaking as a parent, it felt pretty brutal: "You never forget kids like Emily or Andy. BUT THEY FORGET YOU. How long will it last, Woody? Do you really think Andy is going to take you to college... or on his honeymoon? Andy's growing up... and there's NOTHING you can do about it." ... E...

What's the most difficult decision you've ever had to make? In this series, we've talked about how action reveals character, but we've left out one critical piece of the puzzle: 🧵 PRESSURE. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett inhabits a world where a woman's security revolves entirely around men and marriage, but: Worse still ... she is one of five unmarried sisters. Worse still ... her fam...

Here's a weird storytelling truth that no one really talks about. In a lot of cases, we CONSUME STORIES FOR THE MIDDLE, not the end. Because we so often KNOW THE END. Sherlock will crack the case Harry will triumph over Voldemort Ross will end up with Rachel Once we know what we're watching, we usually understand what's going to happen. To demonstrate this, let's do a quick test. Here's a 3-stage...

I'm writing this from a hotel room in London although - to be totally transparent - I'm tired and would prefer to be down in the bar. So I'm going to keep this short and sweet. Two days ago we swept past an obvious 'secret' to business storytelling with barely a nod. Today, I want to circle back to make sure none of us missed it. And because it gives me a chance to talk about Bilbo Baggins. When f...

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day , it takes 80 seconds to drop Arnie into the steel. Let's talk about why... Because during that time, director James Cameron gives us a little #masterclass on #storytelling. In an on-set report, a journalist at the time talked about Cameron's ability to hold two things in his head at once – the big picture and little picture. • Where do we want all the extras in...

My business is built on the foundation of simple, powerful idea: People who tell better stories, get better lives ... Like most simple ideas, it scales well, from day to day decision making to ... yes, becoming a movie star: In 1976, Sylvestor Stallone created one of cinemas most enduring characters. Yes ... Rocky lost the prize fight, but he won the girl (and the Oscar for Best Picture) so I gues...

In 2009, Pixar's Up brought my gnarly heart to tears. (My BIG tearjerker is still ET of course – when the flower blooms – but I digress.) Yesterday we talked about Psycho , and the attention storytellers generate when they show us that the world isn't what we think it is. But it's more than attention that's being created; it's opportunity. Opportunity for persuasion. Opportunity for change. The op...

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock pulled his most famous trick. He hired a major movie star and placed her at the centre of drama about passion and escape. In Psycho , Marian Crane steals $40,000 and flees across the country to marry her lover in California. And you already know what happens next. She's stabbed to death enroute by a motel owner's mother. This is cinema's most famous mid-point twist, the P...

Sometime in the mid-1980s, an episode of Cagney and Lacey blew my mind. Actually, I was furious. The writers DIDN'T bother to finish it! Inexplicably, we got to the end of the episode WITHOUT getting to the end of the story. The bad guy wasn't caught. Justice wasn't served. It was a ridiculous, shameful mess. ... and I COULDN'T stop thinking about it. Maybe that should have been a clue, but I've a...

Why does Rose Walker CHOOSE to go into the water? Yesterday, I described how two video games – animated pixels on a screen – stopped me like a slap to the face. They MADE ME care . How? Perhaps you cracked the case? I stopped because both those moments WERE ABOUT ME ... about who I was in that game (and in life). They were about identity. In The Icarus Deception , Seth Godin nails the connection:...

Meet Judy.  If the FIRST COMMANDMENT of storytelling is 'MAKE ME CARE', she's the bomb. She’s one of the cool, capable badasses from Cyberpunk 2077, and yesterday, she asked me the question that MOST MEN FEAR above all others. "You know exactly what I’m tryna say. What did it mean, like, to you?" The possible answers: 1) The beginning of something amazing 2) A pleasant distraction....

My favourite line from Jurassic Park is the god-level understatement that comes at the end. “Mr. Hammond, after careful consideration, I’ve decided not to endorse your park.” Alan Grant, Paleontologist But if there's one thing we learned from that epic movie ... life will find a way. Yesterday, we saw the power that stories have over attention, recall and reality – BUT WHY has evolution granted th...

For a long-time, Back To The Future was my favourite time travel documentary. It's just ... science. Marty McFly was short (like me), uncool (like me) ... but still had a great-looking girlfriend. There we differed. At 15, I had no girlfriend of any kind. The movie 'transported' me in the sense I mentioned yesterday. When humans encounter stories that resonate, they become the characters. This isn...

It's time to talk about our favourite Christmas movie. Yesterday, we heard that the first commandment of storytelling is to make people care ... and saw how Andrew Stanton did that with a 22nd century trash compactor. He made Wall•E like us. This matters, because we humans are generally selfish, self-obsessed creatures. Evolution made us that way. We pay more attention to stories and situations th...

For the first 40 minutes of Wall•E , we watch a menial robot – a trash compactor – trundle through an abandoned world. There is no almost dialogue, and yet we are filled with emotion. The robot is industrious, creative and desperately lonely. He gazes up towards the heavens, dreaming of ... what? Connection? Companionship? Love? Andrew Stanton, the film's creator and director, called this dialogue...

Three days ago, I literally jumped with joy ... but I'll get to why in a moment. First, I want to talk about Iron Man. In 2008, Jon Favreau's superhero-spy movie exploded into cinemas and lit the fuse on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How? With the exception of Sam Rami's Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 – the superhero genre had been patchy at best. But Favreau represented a different approach. He was...

I'm going to take a step back today, to focus on why storytelling is so powerful... In The Usual Suspects (1995), Special Agent Dave Kujan struggles to uncover the identity of mythic underworld monster, Keyser Söze. If you've seen the film, you'll remember its final reveal... It's a movie about the persuasive power of story. As the agent picks his way through the complex, conflicting accounts of a...

The Netflix juggernaut, Stranger Things , is built around the concept of the Upside Down – a dark, twisted reflection of our world. Yes – today, we're talking CONTRAST. In his first book, Maps of Meaning , Professor Jordan Peterson describes how contrast motivates us. "Our most fundamental maps of meaning – maps which have a narrative structure – portray the motivational value of our current state...

Business storytelling techniques: 6/30 ASK QUESTIONS Friends begins when a woman in a wedding dress stumbles into a Greenwich Village coffee shop... The huge bestselling novel, The Lovely Bones, begins with the line: "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Killing Floor, the first Jack Reacher novel, begins: "I was arrested in...

Business storytelling techniques: 5/30 START WITH THE END Most movies resolve their TENSION in the final act, but in 1999, a low-budget film swept to success by doing something different... The Sixth Sense had one of cinema's great, unexpected endings, but it didn't resolve all the tension. In fact, it created more. The audience kept talking long after they left the theatre, and word of mouth powe...

Business storytelling techniques: 4/30 - Tension Yesterday, we saw the power of FLOW in storytelling. Without it, we sacrifice momentum and persuasion. But what creates flow? According to award-winning filmmaker and creative consultant, Robert Fritz, it's the force that powers all change. Tension. "A basic principle found throughout nature is this: Tension seeks resolution. From the spiderweb to t...