In order to make sense out of anything -- analyzing the past, explaining the present, predicting the future -- the human brain relies on story.
Once, when someone at a party mentioned to me that they were not originally from Los Angeles, I asked, "When did you move here?"
A simple enough question, I thought, but I got a short autobiography in reply. The person framed their decision to move to southern California within (1) the context of the circumstances leading up to the decision to move, (2) the factors going into the timing of the move, and (3) the reason why they ended up where they did.
Far more information than I had sought, but I have to admit that I felt I had gotten to know this stranger a bit better through their story.
More evidence that a story's power lies in its emotional context.
And our strongest memories are those tied to powerfully felt emotions.
For example, I had the good fortune to drive across the country from New York to Arizona with my father at the age of eight. The memory of that trip -- nothing less than an emotion-packed, life-changing adventure for a young boy, especially when he gets to share it with his father -- is still fresh in my mind and I've always attributed my love of travel to that first journey.
And I retain what I call "snapshot memories" of specific happenings of that trip, still very clear in my mind:
* Scrambling into a darkened cave, a known outlaw hideout in the Old West, I can still see the stalactites and stalagmites in the shadowy light, still hear the drip, drip, drip of water onto the stone floor
* I can still hear the yowls of pain when seeing another young boy trip and land onto the spiny thorns of a short barrel cactus outside a motel where we had stopped
* I can still see a large, long-legged dog with half-closed eyes as he saunters up to me and displays a freshly killed Gila monster dangling from his mouth
In the last half century or so, the general sense of our society's "progress" has been largely based on technological achievements, from the moon landing to the invention of the computer, the Space Age to the Digital Age. In the process, science has seduced us with the allure of precise measurement, exactitude in a constantly changing world. As a result, facts have assumed a great importance in the Western world.
At the same time, stories have been dismissed as unimportant, even useless, yet stories remain how we transform facts into knowledge, how we give facts meaning. All explanations are stories. Stories are how we remember facts in the first place.
Oh, and Happy Holidays...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
A "LinkedIn Thing" and an End to the Suspense
Curious thing happened a couple days ago--as usual, when I logged on to LinkedIn I was confronted with a short list of "People You May Know."
Normally, I recognize most of the people that LinkedIn proffers, though my desire to click on the "Invite" button varies. This time, however, one of the names was an Assistant Production Manager (at the time) with whom I'd worked some years ago on the four MCA/Universal productions of William Shatner's "TekWar" telefilms.
The two things I've always remembered about Deb Patz was (1) that she is one of the flat-out nicest people I had ever worked with, and (2) that she is one of the most professional, most flat-out competent Production Managers with whom I have ever worked.
Talk about a narrative--try combining "nicest" and "most competent" in a business context without crashing your hard drive.
On top of that, she's a competitive sailor and has written an important industry book, FILM PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT 101. (Learn more about it at www.debpatz.com.)
I immediately invited Deb to link up and tonight she did. Then, in a quick, brief email exchange we began to catch up about the years we've not been in touch. Communication has been restored.
We're both at that point where we measure the passage of time by comparing our children's ages, but still it feels good. We're back in touch--no small thing in this hurry-up world.
And now, an end to the suspense.
My son's team did indeed win the finals of this year's Mock Trial competition put on by the Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) and, out of a field of more than 40 area middle schools, has been named the County Champion.
The finals were tense, with the large courtroom in the Los Angeles Superior Court building overflowing, but the defense team came through in the end. After the trial was over (and the judge had pronounced the fictional suspect "not guilty"), the nail biting began as we had to wait nearly an hour before we were readmitted to the room, desperate to hear which team had won the last round of competition.
But first, about an hour of awards presentations--at least my son's teacher/mentor was honored with the Teacher of the Year commendation--before the CRF spokesman announced the middle school and high school countywide champions.
As you might expect, when my son's school was named the middle school champ, we all went crazy.
After a frenzied moment of howls and hugs, though, I noticed that the kids on his team were as dignified in victory as they'd been through the whole series of court cases--they each made a point of approaching the defeated team's members and offering their hands in congratulation.
Nice.
Normally, I recognize most of the people that LinkedIn proffers, though my desire to click on the "Invite" button varies. This time, however, one of the names was an Assistant Production Manager (at the time) with whom I'd worked some years ago on the four MCA/Universal productions of William Shatner's "TekWar" telefilms.
The two things I've always remembered about Deb Patz was (1) that she is one of the flat-out nicest people I had ever worked with, and (2) that she is one of the most professional, most flat-out competent Production Managers with whom I have ever worked.
Talk about a narrative--try combining "nicest" and "most competent" in a business context without crashing your hard drive.
On top of that, she's a competitive sailor and has written an important industry book, FILM PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT 101. (Learn more about it at www.debpatz.com.)
I immediately invited Deb to link up and tonight she did. Then, in a quick, brief email exchange we began to catch up about the years we've not been in touch. Communication has been restored.
We're both at that point where we measure the passage of time by comparing our children's ages, but still it feels good. We're back in touch--no small thing in this hurry-up world.
And now, an end to the suspense.
My son's team did indeed win the finals of this year's Mock Trial competition put on by the Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) and, out of a field of more than 40 area middle schools, has been named the County Champion.
The finals were tense, with the large courtroom in the Los Angeles Superior Court building overflowing, but the defense team came through in the end. After the trial was over (and the judge had pronounced the fictional suspect "not guilty"), the nail biting began as we had to wait nearly an hour before we were readmitted to the room, desperate to hear which team had won the last round of competition.
But first, about an hour of awards presentations--at least my son's teacher/mentor was honored with the Teacher of the Year commendation--before the CRF spokesman announced the middle school and high school countywide champions.
As you might expect, when my son's school was named the middle school champ, we all went crazy.
After a frenzied moment of howls and hugs, though, I noticed that the kids on his team were as dignified in victory as they'd been through the whole series of court cases--they each made a point of approaching the defeated team's members and offering their hands in congratulation.
Nice.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT
I'm happy to say that my son's prosecution team won three Mock Trial competitions in a row over the past month, sending the school into the final round. The original field of about 40 schools has been winnowed down to two, with the final contest to take place this Monday. The semifinals took place in one of the larger L.A. Superior Court courtrooms, as will the final round, so we know there will be no shortage of space to accommodate what we expect to be a big turnout of support for both schools.
The semifinal contest was, of course, close, but I believe what enabled our team to prevail was a solid week of practicing both objections and redirects. Objections can be voiced to probe the consistency of a witness' story, and redirects are an opportunity to repair your witness's credibility after the opposing side has tried their best to undermine it.
As such, objections and redirects are two of the most difficult weapons in a trial attorney's arsenal. They both demand an ability to react in the moment and instantly form--and articulate--a logical reaction to what has just been said. One must be able to nail the inconsistencies and immediately point them out to the judge.
Watching both sides verbally joust over the fate of the suspect in a fictional murder case, it was easily apparent that, on one level, that's what the legal system boils down to--keeping your story straight. The attorneys on both sides construct a narrative to explain a suspect's innocence (or guilt) with relation to a criminal act, and do their best to undermine the story offered by the other side.
And that is the essence of many forms of writing, as well, whether it's persuasive writing (like Op Ed pieces), traditional journalism, magazine feature articles, industry white papers, whatever.
Telling a story remains the best way to illustrate your point, report the news, explain an industry trend, or argue the need for a particular service or product.
Pardon my Shakespeare, but, "What can saying make them believe when seeing fails to persuade them?"
The semifinal contest was, of course, close, but I believe what enabled our team to prevail was a solid week of practicing both objections and redirects. Objections can be voiced to probe the consistency of a witness' story, and redirects are an opportunity to repair your witness's credibility after the opposing side has tried their best to undermine it.
As such, objections and redirects are two of the most difficult weapons in a trial attorney's arsenal. They both demand an ability to react in the moment and instantly form--and articulate--a logical reaction to what has just been said. One must be able to nail the inconsistencies and immediately point them out to the judge.
Watching both sides verbally joust over the fate of the suspect in a fictional murder case, it was easily apparent that, on one level, that's what the legal system boils down to--keeping your story straight. The attorneys on both sides construct a narrative to explain a suspect's innocence (or guilt) with relation to a criminal act, and do their best to undermine the story offered by the other side.
And that is the essence of many forms of writing, as well, whether it's persuasive writing (like Op Ed pieces), traditional journalism, magazine feature articles, industry white papers, whatever.
Telling a story remains the best way to illustrate your point, report the news, explain an industry trend, or argue the need for a particular service or product.
Pardon my Shakespeare, but, "What can saying make them believe when seeing fails to persuade them?"
Monday, November 23, 2009
NARRATIVE PROVIDES A HUMAN CONTEXT
The power of narrative is evident when dealing with a range of topics, from history to technology.
Back in my college days studying International Affairs at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, I had the good fortune to take a course called "Modern European History" with a certain Professor Christopher Dodd, now the respected Senator from the great state of Connecticut.
I remember it as being the most interesting course I took at GU, no small feat considering the rest of the faculty and the overall course of study. It was clear to me even then that Professor Dodd's great strength as a teacher lay in his ability to bring history alive, as though we were getting an insider's view of the larger-than-life characters and the great events that had helped shape our world.
Looking back, it's easy to see why his presentation was so powerful. Professor Dodd knew his subject so well that he was able to relate the ambitions and fears of people at various crossroads in historical events in a very immediate way. He knew their stories. The result was that, however one judged the actions taken at any given point in history, those decisions were at least understandable within an historical context. And that, of course, was the purpose.
With that in mind, I tried to personalize the narrative when I was recently called on by the Pasadena Educational Foundation to tell the story of the breaking of the German military's "unbreakable" Enigma I coding machine just prior to the start of World War II:
"On a brisk fall morning in 1932, Marian Adam Rejewski, a 23-year-old Polish mathematics student, carefully wiped off his glasses, then leaned over a growing stack of papers in his small office located in the Polish General’s Cipher Bureau.
While studying mathematics at Poznan University with an eye toward a career in insurance, Rejewski had attended a secret cryptology course for German-speaking math students given by the Bureau, and decided to accept a job offer after graduation. Over the next year, he would change the course of history.
One of his early assignments was to tackle the German Enigma I machine, which had baffled British cryptanalysts for six years.
Though Germany had been defeated in World War I, the Poles wisely kept an eye – and an ear – on its neighbors. To the east lie Russia, anxious to export its communist philosophy, and to the west Germany, which had ceded lands to Poland after its defeat and likewise seemed intent on someday taking them back.
The Enigma I was an electro-mechanical device with a 26-letter keyboard and 26 lamps, each corresponding to a different letter of the alphabet. Inside were a plugboard that swapped pairs of letters, and three wired rotors, or “scramblers,” that scrambled each letter as it was input.
What made the Enigma so difficult to crack was that the code was advanced with every keystroke. The only way to decipher the message was to set a second Enigma machine to that day’s code settings.
At the beginning of each message, however, the Germans added day and key settings to transmit a new three-letter (one for each rotor) message key. These message keys contained different scrambler orientations, though the plugboard settings and the scrambler arrangement remained the same as in the day-key settings.
Had the Germans not added the message keys, then each day’s messages – thousands of them – would have been encrypted in the same day key, and the sheer volume of messages would have revealed patterns in the letters, making the cipher much easier to break.
By adding a new message key for each message, it was as though sender and receiver had agreed on a main cipher key, but then only used it to encrypt a new cipher key for each message. No wonder it had cryptanalysts stumped.
Working alone and in secret, Rejewski focused on the one point of the Enigma’s weakness that he could identify – the three-letter message-key setting, which was always transmitted twice at the beginning of each message. The first three letters would establish the setting and the next three would translate the first three into that new setting.
Without knowing the day key or the message key, Rejewski could only track the relationships of the letters in the hope that they would reveal a pattern that might lead to the day key. The relationships he found established chains of letters, and he created tables to monitor and record these relationships, and note the links in each one.
Thanks to the successful efforts of espionage, he eventually received a replica of an Enigma machine, so Rejewski put together a team and assigned them the grueling task of checking – by hand! – each of the more than 100,000 scrambler settings and cataloguing every letter chain that was generated by each.
In the days before computers, it took his team more than a year to accomplish the task with only pencil and paper, but eventually Rejewski was able to compile a complete catalogue of Enigma’s scrambler settings.
Then, in a moment of genuine insight, an inspired Rejewski realized that the parts played by the scrambler settings and the plugboard settings could, to some extent, be disconnected. By removing the cables from the plugboard in the replica machine and entering intercepted ciphertext, Rejewski was able to recognize certain phrases that resulted. The plugboard settings were then easy to deduce.
Solving the mystery of the day/key settings and the plugboard settings together was impossible, but, by separating the two, each was solvable. In a little more than a year – without the use of a computer – Rejewski cracked the Enigma code."
The result, of course, was that the Allies, thanks to the efforts of one inspired Polish cryptographer, broke the "unbreakable" Enigma and were able to intercept and monitor German communications throughout the war.
Back in my college days studying International Affairs at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, I had the good fortune to take a course called "Modern European History" with a certain Professor Christopher Dodd, now the respected Senator from the great state of Connecticut.
I remember it as being the most interesting course I took at GU, no small feat considering the rest of the faculty and the overall course of study. It was clear to me even then that Professor Dodd's great strength as a teacher lay in his ability to bring history alive, as though we were getting an insider's view of the larger-than-life characters and the great events that had helped shape our world.
Looking back, it's easy to see why his presentation was so powerful. Professor Dodd knew his subject so well that he was able to relate the ambitions and fears of people at various crossroads in historical events in a very immediate way. He knew their stories. The result was that, however one judged the actions taken at any given point in history, those decisions were at least understandable within an historical context. And that, of course, was the purpose.
With that in mind, I tried to personalize the narrative when I was recently called on by the Pasadena Educational Foundation to tell the story of the breaking of the German military's "unbreakable" Enigma I coding machine just prior to the start of World War II:
"On a brisk fall morning in 1932, Marian Adam Rejewski, a 23-year-old Polish mathematics student, carefully wiped off his glasses, then leaned over a growing stack of papers in his small office located in the Polish General’s Cipher Bureau.
While studying mathematics at Poznan University with an eye toward a career in insurance, Rejewski had attended a secret cryptology course for German-speaking math students given by the Bureau, and decided to accept a job offer after graduation. Over the next year, he would change the course of history.
One of his early assignments was to tackle the German Enigma I machine, which had baffled British cryptanalysts for six years.
Though Germany had been defeated in World War I, the Poles wisely kept an eye – and an ear – on its neighbors. To the east lie Russia, anxious to export its communist philosophy, and to the west Germany, which had ceded lands to Poland after its defeat and likewise seemed intent on someday taking them back.
The Enigma I was an electro-mechanical device with a 26-letter keyboard and 26 lamps, each corresponding to a different letter of the alphabet. Inside were a plugboard that swapped pairs of letters, and three wired rotors, or “scramblers,” that scrambled each letter as it was input.
What made the Enigma so difficult to crack was that the code was advanced with every keystroke. The only way to decipher the message was to set a second Enigma machine to that day’s code settings.
At the beginning of each message, however, the Germans added day and key settings to transmit a new three-letter (one for each rotor) message key. These message keys contained different scrambler orientations, though the plugboard settings and the scrambler arrangement remained the same as in the day-key settings.
Had the Germans not added the message keys, then each day’s messages – thousands of them – would have been encrypted in the same day key, and the sheer volume of messages would have revealed patterns in the letters, making the cipher much easier to break.
By adding a new message key for each message, it was as though sender and receiver had agreed on a main cipher key, but then only used it to encrypt a new cipher key for each message. No wonder it had cryptanalysts stumped.
Working alone and in secret, Rejewski focused on the one point of the Enigma’s weakness that he could identify – the three-letter message-key setting, which was always transmitted twice at the beginning of each message. The first three letters would establish the setting and the next three would translate the first three into that new setting.
Without knowing the day key or the message key, Rejewski could only track the relationships of the letters in the hope that they would reveal a pattern that might lead to the day key. The relationships he found established chains of letters, and he created tables to monitor and record these relationships, and note the links in each one.
Thanks to the successful efforts of espionage, he eventually received a replica of an Enigma machine, so Rejewski put together a team and assigned them the grueling task of checking – by hand! – each of the more than 100,000 scrambler settings and cataloguing every letter chain that was generated by each.
In the days before computers, it took his team more than a year to accomplish the task with only pencil and paper, but eventually Rejewski was able to compile a complete catalogue of Enigma’s scrambler settings.
Then, in a moment of genuine insight, an inspired Rejewski realized that the parts played by the scrambler settings and the plugboard settings could, to some extent, be disconnected. By removing the cables from the plugboard in the replica machine and entering intercepted ciphertext, Rejewski was able to recognize certain phrases that resulted. The plugboard settings were then easy to deduce.
Solving the mystery of the day/key settings and the plugboard settings together was impossible, but, by separating the two, each was solvable. In a little more than a year – without the use of a computer – Rejewski cracked the Enigma code."
The result, of course, was that the Allies, thanks to the efforts of one inspired Polish cryptographer, broke the "unbreakable" Enigma and were able to intercept and monitor German communications throughout the war.
Friday, November 13, 2009
THE POWER OF NARRATIVE
Last evening found me in the L.A. Superior Court Building to watch my son's prosecution team in their debut effort at trying to nail a suspect accused of murder in this year's Mock Trial competition -- GO LIONS!
Mock Trial provides the opportunity for high school and middle school legal teams to both prosecute and, separately, defend a fictional suspect accused of a fictional crime. Each team goes up against another school, citing evidence, grilling witnesses on the stand, voicing objections and delivering final arguments. Ever since 1980 the Constitutional Rights Foundation has sponsored these yearly competitions, wherein students of opposing schools portray prosecutors, defense attorneys, suspects, witnesses and even bailiffs in the proceedings. Thousands of judges and attorneys volunteer their time to give students a direct lesson in our legal system.
Students prepare for weeks with teachers and volunteer attorneys, but in the courtroom they're on their own. The case is decided by the real judge sitting before them and, separately, their performances are graded by a small team of lawyers who score the individual participants. The total scores of each team determines who wins that evening's trial.
My son's team did well and won a guilty verdict, and today we learned that they had also won the evening's competition by outscoring the other team. Next week, on to the quarter-finals.
An impressive performance by all, and what I remember particularly well is that, in his closing remarks, one of the scoring attorneys complimented both teams on their ability to create and convey compelling narratives, noting that the ability to tell a convincing story is what a trial is, in essence, all about.
That was another reminder that the narrative is one of the writer's most powerful tools, and that a good writer always looks for ways to use it.
Even in many forms of business writing, narrative is useful.
For example, when I first began researching and writing industry white papers I quickly developed what I call a straightforward "challenge/solution" narrative structure.
By that I mean simply describing the issue to be addressed in a narrative form, then proposing the solution as a possible "ending" to the story. The deficiencies of inadequate solutions, or failing to address the challenge in the first place, can also be spelled out as alternate--and less satisfying--conclusions. The "moral" is simply contrasting the benefits of a satisfactory solution with the price of not dealing with the challenge successfully.
Before I sign off, I'd like to draw your attention to a great Profile of legendary (and award-winning) storyteller Horton Foote, who passed away in March of this year. It's in the October 26th issue of THE NEW YORKER, and it's by John Lahr, who at one point describes Foote's writing style when he was starting out in the 1940s:
"In Foote's plays, the big dramatic events happen offstage. Foote examined the ripple, not the wave. He was a quiet voice in noisy times."
I also particularly enjoyed a quote that Foote gave in an interview just this past January: "If I ever teach writing again, I guess the first lesson is to listen."
Mock Trial provides the opportunity for high school and middle school legal teams to both prosecute and, separately, defend a fictional suspect accused of a fictional crime. Each team goes up against another school, citing evidence, grilling witnesses on the stand, voicing objections and delivering final arguments. Ever since 1980 the Constitutional Rights Foundation has sponsored these yearly competitions, wherein students of opposing schools portray prosecutors, defense attorneys, suspects, witnesses and even bailiffs in the proceedings. Thousands of judges and attorneys volunteer their time to give students a direct lesson in our legal system.
Students prepare for weeks with teachers and volunteer attorneys, but in the courtroom they're on their own. The case is decided by the real judge sitting before them and, separately, their performances are graded by a small team of lawyers who score the individual participants. The total scores of each team determines who wins that evening's trial.
My son's team did well and won a guilty verdict, and today we learned that they had also won the evening's competition by outscoring the other team. Next week, on to the quarter-finals.
An impressive performance by all, and what I remember particularly well is that, in his closing remarks, one of the scoring attorneys complimented both teams on their ability to create and convey compelling narratives, noting that the ability to tell a convincing story is what a trial is, in essence, all about.
That was another reminder that the narrative is one of the writer's most powerful tools, and that a good writer always looks for ways to use it.
Even in many forms of business writing, narrative is useful.
For example, when I first began researching and writing industry white papers I quickly developed what I call a straightforward "challenge/solution" narrative structure.
By that I mean simply describing the issue to be addressed in a narrative form, then proposing the solution as a possible "ending" to the story. The deficiencies of inadequate solutions, or failing to address the challenge in the first place, can also be spelled out as alternate--and less satisfying--conclusions. The "moral" is simply contrasting the benefits of a satisfactory solution with the price of not dealing with the challenge successfully.
Before I sign off, I'd like to draw your attention to a great Profile of legendary (and award-winning) storyteller Horton Foote, who passed away in March of this year. It's in the October 26th issue of THE NEW YORKER, and it's by John Lahr, who at one point describes Foote's writing style when he was starting out in the 1940s:
"In Foote's plays, the big dramatic events happen offstage. Foote examined the ripple, not the wave. He was a quiet voice in noisy times."
I also particularly enjoyed a quote that Foote gave in an interview just this past January: "If I ever teach writing again, I guess the first lesson is to listen."
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