[HN Gopher] Engage your audience: get to the point, use story st...
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Engage your audience: get to the point, use story structure, force
specificity
Author : ingve
Score : 197 points
Date : 2024-06-10 21:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (iandanielstewart.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (iandanielstewart.com)
| FredPret wrote:
| The recommended texts are way longer than the originals.
| Engagement decreases per word written.
| kamikaz1k wrote:
| WDYM? The slides?
|
| I actually thought they were quite good.
| FredPret wrote:
| For example:
|
| Original: "Survey results"
|
| Suggested: "Survey output indicates main root cause of churn
| is awareness of better value for money offering."
|
| My suggestion depending on the context would be: "Survey:
| we're too expensive" or "Survey: churn due to cheaper
| alternatives" which will be read by 5x more people.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > "Survey: we're too expensive" or "Survey: churn due to
| cheaper alternatives"
|
| I, for one, think the specificity is worth the extra couple
| of words.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's certainly better... if you can get people to read it
| bawolff wrote:
| Yes, but i don't think that is the only consideration.
|
| After all, if only number of words written mattered, the best
| thing to do would be to just have an empty slide.
|
| Being concise is better than verbosity all things being equal,
| but not at the expense of failing to clearly get your point
| across.
| kamikaz1k wrote:
| Almost two decades ago now, I came across a PUA book where the
| author emphasized the importance of telling good stories, along
| with some good practical tips on how to structure.
|
| I've used them regularly to great success. I tried to give this
| advice to some of my friends for interviews who followed STAR
| method a bit too rigidly. It didn't work out...but over time they
| organically became better story tellers through practice.
|
| This is a large tangent, but the post gives good business
| communication tips. I wrote a more succinct guide for my team,
| but I think I'll share this too. Our company suffers from slack
| disease, so stuff like this can really help.
| hmmmcurious1 wrote:
| Sounds interesting, which book was it? Im looking for more
| practical ways to improve communication despite the PUA label.
| Although you can find many similarities between dates and
| interviews heh
| skydhash wrote:
| My recommendations are On Writing Well and Made to Stick for
| texts. As for verbal communication, "How to win friends and
| influence people" helps with the cues and motivations.
| stevage wrote:
| For sure. I work as a freelancer, and I think there is an
| awful lot of similarity between dating and engaging new
| clients. Fundamentally, both sides are thinking "do I want to
| spend more time with this person", in addition to what they
| concretely offer.
| gumby wrote:
| What are PUA and STAR? Hard to search for them.
| SteveDR wrote:
| Pick up artist (I think?), and STAR is a technique for
| answering interview questions
| leetrout wrote:
| Pick Up Artist
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_artist
|
| Situation Task Action Result
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_task,_action,_res.
| ..
| mvkel wrote:
| Whenever a video about making a compelling story is per se not
| compelling, I wonder.
|
| The most powerful example would be a meta video that explains the
| concept within its own content.
|
| Like the acronym GNU (Gnu's Not Unix).
| hotdogscout wrote:
| As others said, that video bored me and so did the blog post.
|
| The hero's journey is not good Framework for a technical talk.
|
| Be interesting, create a hook, what do you find interesting? What
| style draws you in? Emulate that, then branch off.
|
| Conversation is a lot more complex and depends on reaction,
| audience, expertize. Every verbal interaction is a lot like
| writing.
|
| If you're gonna read a book about it it should be How to Make
| Friends and and Influence People.
|
| Corny title but a timeless working strategy for communication.
|
| On Writing by Stephen King is fine too but tldr; be honest.
| bawolff wrote:
| It depends on what you are talking about, but i actually think
| the hero's journey is actually a good framework for many (not
| all) technical talks. [I agree the blog post did a poor job
| selling it]
|
| A lot of technical talks are essentially a story on how you (or
| your team/company/whatever) solved some problem. Essentially
| you are the hero, and you are regailing everyone with the tale
| of how you solved some technical problem. That naturally forms
| a sort of narrative story, that isn't that different from
| fictional stories where the hero's peaceful life is interupted
| by some call to action, go through some hardships, and
| eventually slay the dragon.
| skydhash wrote:
| You're right. But people fails often to define the
| characters, build the scene, and structure the plot. I've
| been reading some of the books from "Write Great Fiction"
| series [0] and you can apply the advices to nonfiction too.
|
| [0]: https://www.writersdigest.com/wd-books/wgf-plot-
| structure
| hotdogscout wrote:
| For one the hero's journey includes resenting the call to
| action.
|
| That makes the hero relatable but is not a strategy you can
| always easily include in a corporate technical talk.
|
| "Just buy more of last year's product and let me enjoy my
| vacation, but no, you needed more features!"
|
| If you're horrible at communicating it'll help as it forces
| you to simplify yourself as a character of simple motivations
| but it's not a recipe for success or attention or quality
| content, especially when you kill most of what people found
| interesting about the Iliad/Odyssey as theatre plays:
| Violence, Sex, Death, Love, Hate.
|
| Death/Rebirth moment would best be embodied as a massive
| failure and some positions don't allow that kind of honesty
| or framing without risking your job, although it would indeed
| be more interesting.
|
| The hero's journey is a bread and butter narrative from stage
| plays from 8th century BC. I'm of the belief that the
| structure is useless and what engages us are the emotions at
| display.
|
| Even act structures are just an excuse so actors can change
| clothes during the play - there's no divine insight about
| writing there.
| bawolff wrote:
| > For one the hero's journey includes resenting the call to
| action.
|
| Which is super common in tech talks.
|
| Tech talks often have the form: there is some legacy
| solution we tried really hard to make work, but eventually
| we realized that despite all the hacks to make it work for
| us, it simply wasn't viable so we did something else.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I gave up on the video after about 40 seconds. Get to the point,
| Vicky.
| bawolff wrote:
| I found myself first agreeing with this, and then hating the
| examples used.
|
| I think the part i liked boils down to: have a thesis and be very
| upfront on what it is. Everything you say should build up that
| thesis.
|
| To a lesser extent, i also agree with the idea that presentations
| should (usually) have a narrative structure, but i wouldn't put
| it the same way they did.
|
| But at the same time, when they started to go into examples,
| everything started to sound click-baity. "One important thing you
| have to know about X" just feels like a click-bait headline. It
| also kind of assumes that i want to know one thing about X. Maybe
| i would rather know zero things. The "why" is left unadressed.
| logifail wrote:
| > everything started to sound click-baity. "One important thing
| you have to know about X" just feels like a click-bait headline
|
| _" X important things you have to know about Y. Number N will
| surprise you!"_
| ricc wrote:
| This comment seems misleading... The example used was "the one
| thing you must know about this topic is ...", and I would have
| agreed with this comment if they forgot the "is ..." part.
| another-dave wrote:
| > "One important thing you have to know about X" just feels
| like a click-bait headline. It also kind of assumes that i want
| to know one thing about X. Maybe i would rather know zero
| things. The "why" is left unadressed.
|
| Agree that the phrasing feels a little clickbaity, but don't
| think it detracts too much.
|
| There are scenarios that you can safely assume that someone
| does want to know about X -- maybe you're presenting at a
| conference or giving a lecture; asked a "Tell us about a time
| when..." question in interview or, as in her example, you're
| giving a report about what your team did to senior managers.
| bawolff wrote:
| > There are scenarios that you can safely assume that someone
| does want to know about X -- maybe you're presenting at a
| conference or giving a lecture; asked a "Tell us about a time
| when..." question in interview or, as in her example, you're
| giving a report about what your team did to senior managers.
|
| On the contrary, i think that is one of the biggest mistakes
| people make when talking at conferences. It is very important
| to justify why the audience should care about the specific
| aspect of the issue you are presenting on.
| solatic wrote:
| There's a latent bias here that any audience can be engaged.
| That's simply not true. Some stories are told in a medium that is
| difficult for specific audiences to agree with (I'm thinking here
| of the difference between people who learn by listening, reading,
| doing), but some audiences just won't care about the story you're
| telling. You could be Tolkien himself, but if people you happen
| to be telling a story to aren't interested in fantasy, they won't
| engage.
|
| Engagement is like dating: be attractive, don't be unattractive,
| and remember that it's a numbers game. "Be attractive" meaning,
| learn how to tell a good story. "Don't be unattractive" meaning,
| don't make stupid mistakes like not using a microphone and
| speaker in a large group, or hitting send at 7 PM on a Friday
| night. "Remember that it's a numbers game" meaning, don't spend
| all your energy on your first audience and get discouraged if
| they don't engage; just do you and tell your story to as many
| people as possible until you find those who _do_ engage with you.
| stevage wrote:
| No, the "be attractive" of story-telling is, have a story
| that's worth telling.
|
| The dark side of all this "how to tell a good story" stuff is
| teaching people how to suck up other people's attention on
| something that is fundamentally unworthy, like marketing
| drivel.
| hotdogscout wrote:
| The attention market is filled with things that are
| fundamentally unworthy.
|
| It's Darwinism at play not an attempt at science.
| danybittel wrote:
| Vicky is not talking about the a story structure. If you followed
| a story structure, you start with how you've been (I always loved
| windows), then what happened (I got an automatic update), then
| piles of problems (The computer wouldn't start, lost some data,
| couldn't reinstall windows) then the solution (until I installed
| Linux) the moral (use Linux).
|
| Vickys structure is sort of the opposite. Start with the most
| important part (You should use Linux), go deeper (for example
| Gnome, for desktop) or add surprise (it's very easy to install),
| open the conversation with a question (do you use Linux?) or
| close it with an answer (it doesn't have automatic updates).
|
| That's why this blog post is kind of a mess, with conflicting
| ideas.
| XorNot wrote:
| The second part is the structure I tell everyone to use in
| presentations - and yeah, its explicitly not narrative. I have
| a conclusion, so that goes up front - it's the most important
| part, it goes first. Then the second row rank of assumptions
| which support the conclusion go next, and only _then_ do you
| start doing the background on how some of those are reached -
| if it matters.
|
| I find it's as much a writing tool as it is useful for getting
| to the point quickly with presentations: the goal of
| presentation is not to surprise the audience, or have a clever
| twist. It's to be plain, open and honest.
|
| (Which is to say, anytime you don't see this structure in any
| context other then fiction, you're probably being market
| pitched and what you see _is_ fiction).
| hotdogscout wrote:
| >the goal of presentation is not to surprise the audience, or
| have a clever twist. It's to be plain, open and honest.
|
| Sometimes it is.
|
| >you're probably being market pitched and what you see is
| fiction
|
| Sometimes you are being market pitched.
|
| It's all Steve Jobs did yet he's the classic example of good
| Power Point presentations.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| That's how newspaper articles are structured (the second part
| you mention), start off with the important bit (there was a car
| crash no one was hurt) then add more details as paragraphs
| proceed, if someone wants to know more they keep reading.
|
| Of course the web has sort of ruined this, but I'm talking old
| school newspapers.
| kstenerud wrote:
| That's one annoying thing with modern articles. You have to
| wade through paragraphs and paragraphs of "John grew up a
| taxidermist's son and bla bla bla bla..." before you even get
| to what the article is supposed to be about.
|
| Then you get a couple of on-topic sentences followed by
| another deluge of fluff.
|
| Oldschool newspapers were great because space was at such a
| premium that this kind of garbage wouldn't happen.
| lencastre wrote:
| Try reading a recipe for a simple chocolate cake. You get
| the author's deep rooted trauma of being that weird kid
| shamed in HS for some reason as well as over sharing of
| political stances on the war in Ukraine ending with
| promoting penny stocks or some MLM pyramid scheme. FFS just
| give me ingredients and steps.
| kstenerud wrote:
| "We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our
| ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go
| anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry over to
| Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I
| decided to go to Morganville - which is what they called
| Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt,
| which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry
| cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of
| bumble bees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, they'd
| say. Now where was I... Oh yeah! The important thing was
| that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at
| the time. They didn't have white onions, because of the
| war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow
| ones."
|
| - Abe Simpson
| krisoft wrote:
| > FFS just give me ingredients and steps.
|
| The commonly believed reason is that a simple list of
| ingredients and steps would not be copyrightable. So they
| add fluff which can be copyrighted.
| unholiness wrote:
| I mean it's pretty clearly just to get you to scroll past
| more ads. You would not need nearly so much text just to
| qualify for copyright.
| vundercind wrote:
| I thought it started with the google algorithm rewarding
| more body text and high linger-time. Sites that just
| present info concisely are down ranked (then google
| extracts the concise info from long time-wasting sites
| and puts it directly on their search page--a whole
| thriving ecosystem of bullshit jobs, but at least now we
| can automate every part of that!)
| mwcremer wrote:
| Recipes generally cannot be copyrighted. But the filler
| text, that definitely can be, and is. So if I wrap my
| recipe in a pointless anecdote, I make it that much
| harder for The Unscrupulous Gourmet to use a web scraper
| to steal my recipe.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Although people are talking about copyright, the _real_
| reason is SEO. If you write just the recipe, your site
| appears lower in the search results than those with all
| the fluff (or so it was believed).
|
| Ask most of the people who write those recipes - they
| claim to _hate_ writing all that fluff, and that 's why
| all of them have a "Jump to recipe" link.
|
| See this, for example:
| https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-explains-how-
| it-r...
| cainxinth wrote:
| Hence the classic newsroom refrain: "Don't bury the lede!"
| ajuc wrote:
| A historian I know rants a lot about the fashion to write
| historic books in anything but chronological order.
|
| There's a lot of machinery in our brains that automatically
| parse chronological stories for dependencies and correlations.
| If you break up the order you throw it all away and everything
| becomes manual. It makes it easier to force people to agree
| with your interpretation, nothing feels "off".
|
| It's like writing sequential imperative code vs a bunch of
| callbacks. Pretty obvious what's easier to debug.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Don't bore us, get to the chorus.
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| Most story structures start with exposition, i.e. the
| background info. However this is quite boring normally so to
| get you through that they often add a "hook". That's what's
| being suggested here. So normally a story is hook, exposition,
| conflict, resolution. That's what's being suggested here, just
| not very clearly.
| nottorp wrote:
| So... the content is irrelevant :)
|
| All that matters is presentation and then you'll have
| "engagement".
|
| No need to be talking about anything interesting.
| another-dave wrote:
| The post isn't saying that though. It's saying that
| presentation is important _too_ (which is most definitely is).
| I think a lot of people can relate to "I did good work, why is
| it not landing well?"
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
| Assume good faith.
| nottorp wrote:
| But what if my interpretation of 'engagement' (and 'content
| creation' while we're at it) excludes good faith?
|
| The way I see it, 'content creation' is all about quantity
| not quality or having any message/goal.
|
| And 'engagement' is about getting people to react emotionally
| (doesn't matter if positively or negatively) to get them to
| spam your 'content' to others.
| stevage wrote:
| I realised recently that many of the posts I see on social
| media that have the highest engagement achieve it
| through...ambiguity. People interpret the thing differently,
| then argue about their understanding, creating "engagement".
| Often the ambiguity isn't even intentional, it's just vague
| communication.
| czl wrote:
| "Strategic ambiguity" can help a political party capture more
| voters than they otherwise would for similar reasons. Useful
| because it gives flexibility in decision-making and helps in
| managing different expectations without committing to a
| specific course of action. By being vague, leaders can avoid
| conflicts and keep their options open, allowing them to adapt
| to changing situations and negotiate better outcomes.
| Effective in diplomacy and business, where clear, direct
| statements might limit possibilities or provoke opposition.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The only thing one should care about is to speak in your own
| voice. All these MBA cookie cutter slide deck presentation styles
| that introduce phrases or 3 part structures just mean you're on
| autopilot. I find nothing more off-putting than hearing someone
| give a talk and you can precisely pinpoint where they just start
| to borrow phrases or go down some generic list of items.
| jononor wrote:
| In my opinion that misses out on some critical steps: 1) Think
| about the purpose of the communication, the goals. 2) Consider
| the audience, their background and communication preferences
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the problem with focusing on the audience is that we're in an
| age where people are already over-obsessed with reception,
| it's no accident that the title of this post starts with
| "Engage your audience..." and deals almost exclusively with
| structure and how to say things rather than substance. Much
| more interesting these days to look for people who write for
| themselves and take an audience as it comes rather than
| trying to optimize for engagement.
| jononor wrote:
| "Engage your audience" is meaningless without a specific
| goal and audience analysis, imo. Goal: Is the goal to
| convince someone of an idea? Teach them a skill? Or sell
| them a product? Goal implications: What would be required
| to say sell them a product, right there and then? What
| level of trust is needed? What concerns would need to be
| cleared? How small or big could such a purchase be?
| Audience background: Who will be there to listen to the
| message? Or - which venues can we find the relevant
| audience? Which subset of the readers/listeners do we
| actually _target_ with our messaging? What kind of personas
| do they trust/distrust? Are they most stimulated by
| intellectual or emotional appeal? What does it take for
| them to make an action - to get out of their chair
| (generally)? What does it take for them to buy a product
| (or goal)? Now one is maybe close to start thinking about
| what to say and how to say it...
| aubanel wrote:
| Something great I've specifically witnessed yesterday: when doing
| a small request, like ask for a feature request in the team
| channel, don't just describe a small use case.
|
| Instead, provide the bigger picture: e.g. "I'm currently trying
| to climb that benchmark, I'm close to the top and only need a few
| % points that I could get with this new feature"
|
| For me it worked wonders: a PR that I had been awaiting for some
| time was done overnight by an enthusiastic and helpful coworker!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This all seems quite ... _familiar_. I feel like it 's basic
| common sense. Almost all of my writing and presentation classes
| -all the way back to grade school- have advocated this kind of
| thing.
|
| Her video is pretty good, though.
| brainzap wrote:
| enrage your audience
| danielovichdk wrote:
| I was introduced to the STAR framework recently which lays it out
| like so : Situation > Task > Action > Result
|
| Situation: I was asked by my wife if we should sail around the
| world for a few years.
|
| Task: I agreed on the spot now we had to work hard towards
| looking for possible sail boats that could be our home for a few
| years and keep us safe while sailing.
|
| Action: We travlled around the continent looking at boats, at the
| same time we saved up as much money we could. When we found a
| boat we bougt it, sold our house and lived on the boat. We took
| sailing and navigational classes and used a lot of time
| researching where in the world we wanted to go.
|
| Result: We went sailing on May 17th 2023 and at the moment we are
| in the pacific helping environmental organisations de-plastic
| Hawaiian islands.
|
| I found it being a good framework getting to the actual point!
| stevage wrote:
| STAR is the standard thing people are expected to use for job
| interviews these days.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| So, wait, how long from never seen a boat before to yolo
| sailing around the world ?
| BeetleB wrote:
| STAR, though, is the antithesis of storytelling.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| This is near how I conduct business, as I cannot keep track of
| everything, nor can I have a non-stop scribe to note and
| catalog things.
|
| AWS and several others use this in interviews.
|
| I use STAR/SPAR:
|
| [S]ituation or context
|
| [T]ask or [P]roblem
|
| [A]ction or solution
|
| [R]esult or expected outcome
|
| Basically, tell me the background, tell me the problem or thing
| that needs done, tell me all the ways it was reviewed, and the
| actual picked solution or action, and finally what is the
| expected outcome or result. As an exec I can be a stateless
| machine and with that set of details, I can make a decision.
|
| Sometimes I dig into it a bit to see if proper due diligence
| was done, if there is real info & data is present, but once I
| am comfortable that the person distills it properly, it is a no
| brainer decision. I can say, "yes, go forth with your
| action/solution" or "no, because XYZ, go back and consider
| that" (usually from the T/PA/R areas).
|
| There _might_ be a way to craft this for story telling, after
| all, most things are stories.
| runamuck wrote:
| I find "subject verb object" prose, combined with avoiding all
| forms of the verb "to be" yields clean, active, and easy to read
| text.
| sebstefan wrote:
| I hate when something tries to sell me a framework, like,
| following the "stories in 8 steps" for making concise points,
| because obviously the question that follows is: Why 8? Why not 7
| or 9?
|
| If that's just an opinion then I'd rather have it backed by
| something more than "it worked for you"
|
| Did it work for you despite this, or thanks to this?
|
| Would somebody else's 9 step program work better?
|
| Did somebody distill it down to some other more elegant
| principles that you just happened to follow by doing the 8-step
| thing?
|
| There's never anything rigorous in the realm of marketing &
| communication courses
| czl wrote:
| > the question that follows is: Why 8? Why not 7 or 9?
|
| The reaction you may get:
|
| https://youtu.be/rnso4nfdM9w?si=YixDlKDmBXB7xrXc
|
| (From "Something about Mary" film.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The problem with any hard formula like this is: people twig onto
| it. When your presentation looks exactly like everyone else's,
| you've already lost, because you're boring.
|
| When Sting was being interviewed by Rick Beato, he said that when
| he listens to a new song, if he isn't surprised by _something_
| real quick, he loses interest.
|
| "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Oh wait! Everyone IS
| doing it."
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