Stories are powerful —
but only when they are Useful.
Useful Stories generate knowledge, enable predictions and inspire action.
Most stories are enjoyed for their novelty —
— we experience the emotions of a life we’ll never have or empathy for someone we never knew. Novel Stories produce wonder, catharsis and a brief escape from the reality of our lives.
But there are also stories we’re attracted to because they’re useful.
We learn how change happens, what might happen next and where opportunities lie. Useful Stories do this because they are the product of a model, a representation of the way you see the world — not a world only you see.
Creative Writing techniques are for Novel Stories: that’s why your audience enjoys your story — but it doesn’t result in action.
Story-Modeling™ is how you tell Useful Stories.
If your story isn’t working, the problem isn’t your story — it’s your model.
We learn to tell stories by studying them — which is ok for Novel Stories: if you have a novel idea and read a lot of sci-fi you can learn to write a sci-fi Novel Story.
But that doesn’t work for Useful Stories. If you use Creative Writing to mimic other Useful Stories you’ll just end up with a model of other Useful Stories.
A story is Useful when it represents a useful model of the world.
Story-Modeling™ takes a modeling-first approach to storytelling, because when your model is useful your story doesn’t need to sound like Jane Eyre — it just needs to sound like you.
FAQs
Isn’t every story a Useful Story?
No. The objective of a Useful Stories is to create a better understanding of part of the real world — which generates knowledge — which is useful.
The majority of stories that we love do the opposite — provide an escape from the real world.. We enjoy novel experiences, explore fictional worlds and imagine what it might be like to be a superhero, or an astronaut surviving Mars, or the President. These stories can also be used — for relaxation, catharsis, excitement — but the distinction is found in the story’s objective.
How is this different to persuasion?
Persuasion and narrative create opposite effects: division and alignment.
The objective of a Useful Story is to create a better understanding of some part of the real world, and generate knowledge that is useful to the audience. The effect is alignment built among everyone with shared knowledge from the Useful Story, however this approach does not require opposition to another point or view — they both can coexist.
The objective of persuasion is to compel an opinion in opposition to another point of view — if one is right the other must be wrong. Persuasion generates division.