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You just gotta tell a good story

kampheyapproved.medium.com

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Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#51

Post by Hoasi »

woolion wrote: post #34
waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

That style has became ubiquitous for TED-style talks and most American non-fiction books (even technical ones). The chapter uses an anecdote, if possible name-dropping a known case or famous person, then shortly expands supporting research to the general principle. That style is very persuasive but unscientific. It is precisely designed to lower psychological defenses against the idea, which can leave the spectators…

> That style has became ubiquitous for TED-style talks and most American non-fiction books (even technical ones).

Yes, you nailed it. This trend of books built upon a single idea backed by tons of anecdotal references is like intellectual junk food.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#52

Post by [deleted] »

waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

[deleted]

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#54

Post by badpun »

Octokiddie wrote: post #11

The author uses a one-sentence writing style ubiquitous in "long-form" ad copy. You say one thing. Then another. And another. See how it hooks you? And makes you want to read further? Me neither. But apparently it "works" very well.

For me, couple-words paragraphs like the above should be reserved for the most profound realisation. I.e., if you manage to nail the essence of some complex and novel thought in a couple of words, then they really deserve to stand on their own, in a separate paragraph. There should at most a couple of these in any given book (at most). But, in practice, books are peppered with them, which, to me at least, is very cringeworthy.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#55

Post by yesenadam »

yesenadam wrote: post #26
theturtletalks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato said it best, "Those who tell stories rule society." The art of storytelling is inherent in all of us and a skill we should all try to master.

> Plato said it best, "Those who tell stories rule society." Source? This quote appears in many places online, but never with any source, besides "attributed to Plato", or "as Plato once said" etc. Usually this means it's not something Plato said. The internet is full of fake Plato quotes. I got to the 6th page of google results before seeing anything like a source, and followed that trail - "Leadership Manipulation…

I think the quote must have come first: T Auvinen wanted to use the quote, which they'd seen online, but needed a reference, so searched for something mentioning Plato, stories, and rulers, and found this paper. That seems very likely. I think there's no way you could get the quote from the paragraph, but they share the same elements.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#56

Post by 55555 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #7

Aside: Was that blog post taken from Twitter? If not, Twitter has profoundly affected the way the author writes. Nearly every "paragraph" is a single sentence, and the longest of them is just 300 characters. I imagine it must be difficult to tell a story if you write it in a style where your paragraphs resemble bullet points! Perhaps, though, it might work if it's very dialog-heavy, and if the characters are noir-lac…

This is how sales copywriters write. Maybe he does copywriting. (I agree that it's annoying.)

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#57

Post by WA »

waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

And yet, the author of the article teaches board games by not telling a story, but by explaining the winning condition.

Imho, storytelling in a business/teaching/problem-solving context is overrated.

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#58

Post by smcin »

waprin wrote: post #14

The other day I was aimlessly browsing through Youtube, and I found a video by a man named Ira Glass. I had never heard of him but apparently he's a famous NPR journalist. He told a story about how in English class he learned to start with a theses and then explain facts. But, in broadcasting, he learned that doesn't work. Instead, you start with an anecdote - the purest form of a story. Ira pointed out that humans a…

The NPR/TED school of (audio) stories is really 'audio clickbait' for audiences with short attention spans and lower barriers to clicking away/skipping/changing the channel/losing interest; unlike book or print readers who already have more sunk cost. Moreover the audio clickbait school often cater to a middle-class, college-graduate audience; and their predilections (dating, career, social issues). It would be a brave person who would talk to that audience about (say) their passion for taking their kid hunting.

Not every concept needs to be sold welded to an anecdote, and not every anecdote needs to dominate the piece, not every anecdote must be happy or even self-complete, and not every story needs to be affirming inspiration porn.

One TEDSalon piece that really hits all these low notes of over-the-top self-congratulation success porn is Amy Webb's "How I hacked online dating" (TEDSalon NY2013 [1]), which boils down to merely combining a few fairly obvious pragmatic quantitative steps then drowning it all in unnecessary gallons of aw-shucks sentimentality and humblebragging and missteps (10:14..15:53). It's important to stop and introspect if/whether/why we're more likely to click on/listen to a title "How I hacked online dating" instead of "How to find someone genuinely compatible with you, in online dating", and if so to fight that tendency. Webb only really ends the preamble at 07:10 of a talk that's 17:14 long. Her thesis is 7:28-7:57. 11:23 is just overkill, can reverse-engineer these things just by asking other people what profiles they swipe on.

It really is time to take out the Gatling gun on the overuse of audio clickbait, or at least the people pushing its worst traits to 'maximize engagement', which oftentimes means spinning a 30-second truism into 10/15/20/30/60 minutes, which is diluting the density of concepts by 20-100x. Brevity shouldn't be a crime, either, although for advertising-supported media it is.

On NPR: Ira Glass is good, and 'The Moth' Story Hour is often pretty good, but then again 'Hidden Brain' with Shankar Vedantam is also good, in a more dry way that doesn't need to pile-drive emotional anecdotes to establish interest.

As to Kamphey, it feels like does have something to tell under it all, but his Medium post is laboring in very stilted LinkedIn 'broetry' (short staccato sentences, rhetorical questions, smug, sometimes infantile narrative). It's not thoughtcrime to have a thought that spans an entire paragraph, old-school, >300 characters.

[1]: https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_datin...

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#59

Post by smcin »

namaria wrote: post #47
feoren wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that this style is shoehorned into absolutely everything, though. I can barely stand to read most nonfiction books anymore, even highly regarded ones about subjects I'm interested in. The part of my brain that likes a good story is very different than the one that's ready to refine my model of the universe, and it's jarring to have Malcom Gladwell artificially stitching together unrelated events, people, and i…

Non-fiction is a vast universe and Malcom Gladwell is a famously superficial writer. The torrent of books getting to market each years is never high in average quality. But I never had a problem finding good factual content to read.

Has anyone attempted to analyze the NYT hardback and softback lists for superficiality, by year? As Po Bronson remarked, I fear we are getting superficial, but maybe even worse, we're (intentionally?) losing touch with any compass to objectively assess that. A lot of these titles feel like massaging people's egos to feel okay about doing bad or arbitrary things, while telling them how smart they are. Seems there's a growing market for that.

One example of massively overrated MBA-school schlock: "Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life" - Stuart Diamond (2012).

Re: You just gotta tell a good story

#60

Post by namaria »

smcin wrote: post #59
namaria wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-fiction is a vast universe and Malcom Gladwell is a famously superficial writer. The torrent of books getting to market each years is never high in average quality. But I never had a problem finding good factual content to read.

Has anyone attempted to analyze the NYT hardback and softback lists for superficiality, by year? As Po Bronson remarked, I fear we are getting superficial, but maybe even worse, we're (intentionally?) losing touch with any compass to objectively assess that. A lot of these titles feel like massaging people's egos to feel okay about doing bad or arbitrary things, while telling them how smart they are. Seems there's a…

I don't know the answer to your question, but reality is 'most things suck'.

It takes effort to make valuable things, and it takes effort to find valuable things. I don't think we are collectively trending either way.

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