“Human thinking depends on metaphor. We understand new or complex things in relation to things we already know.” — Jonathan Haidt 1
“One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.”
- Every element in a story must be necessary, and if it’s not, it should be eliminated from the scene entirely.
Storytelling Engagement = Novelty × Resonance
The cat sat on a mat. → The cat sat on a dog’s mat.
Structure is everything
- Basic
- past → present → future
- setup → tension → resolution
- Advanced
- Dan Harmon’s story circle
- Kurt Vonnegut’s story graphs
- Gustav Freytag’s pyramid of storytelling
Footnotes
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Use more metaphors/analogy as linguistic tools to convey profound truths and complex ideas. ↩