This document outlines 4 essential elements for effective storytelling: 1. Conflict - Stories require drama generated through conflict between characters or ideas. Even marketing messages can create conflict through comparisons. 2. Structure - All communication should follow a 3 act structure with a beginning, middle, and end to keep the audience engaged. 3. Be Visual - Stories must evoke vivid visual imagery to stick in the audience's mind. Setting the visual scene anchors the message. 4. Sex and Violence - All stories invoke emotions, even softly, through elements like action, sensitivity, or competition. High emotions bind messages to our thoughts.

1. The 4 Storytelling Essentials
Useful guidelines from an actual storyteller
and professional screenwriter.
!
Carl Hartman, Best Selling Author
President of Brand.gineering
www.brandgineering.org

2. 1. Conflict
“The secret source of
humor is NOT joy but
pain.”
Mark Twain

3. Text
No conflict, no story!
Conflict is absolutely required to create drama in
any story, including marketing!

4. Not all conflict is a fistfight!
Marketing drama can be
as simple as a product
comparison.
Break this rule at your
peril.
Bad stories have zero
conflict.

5. 2. Structure
“…that which has a
beginning, a middle,
and an end…”
Aristotle, Poetics

6. Text
3 Acts are a Requirement
Don’t break the rules. Good stories all have the
same structure. No argument.

7. Learn the structure first!
Act 1 - The beginning;
sets up the situation.
Act 2 - The middle; is
the complication or main
conflict.
Act 3 - The end; is the
conclusion, resolution or
catharsis.

8. Applies to all
communication.
A business letter, a blog or a movie script, well
conceived and written, should adhere to this structure.
Learn how to weave your message around a story with
great characters and plot.
All your ideas should have plenty of complications,
twists and turns. Those are what interests your readers
or viewers.

9. “In nature we never
see anything
isolated, but
everything in
connection with
something else which
is before it, beside it,
under it, and over it.”
Goethe
2. Be Visual

10. Text
Even words are pictures
The highest order of thinking is in pictures, even
your words must evoke visual imagery.

11. Visual sticks in the mind.
Stop! Before creating anything else, read Sergei
Eisenstein’s Essays in Film Theory: Film Form; the
chapter entitled A dialectic approach to film form.
Learn how imagery works. It is more than plopping
images in a slide show from a stock photo company.
The emotions imagery evoke are one of the keys to
having your message retained. Learn how to use
images properly.

12. NOTHING in the mind!
Set the visual stage for your viewer or reader, don’t
allow them to control the visual experience.
Stories need to play well visually and not just in your
imagination. We all need an anchor or hook so the
story sticks and that hook is always visual. However,
music can achieve the same outcome as both evoke
emotional triggers that cement ideas in our brain.

13. 4. Sex and
Violence

14. Text
Everything has sex and violence!
Sex and violence is a requirement of all stories or
use their softer side, sensitivity and action.

15. Sex and Violence!
Even your marketing messages require these elements.
Think of a foot race as high dramatic conflict or the
sensitivity of a puppy in the arms of a child. They are
just the softer side of sex and violence.
Focus on the emotional response. Emotion is the key
to cementing an idea or message, including a
marketing message, blog or song.

16. The 4 Requirements of Story
Conflict (generates drama)
3 Act Story Structure
Understand Visual Language
Feelings and Emotions Generated by Sex and Violence

17. The 4 Requirements of Story
Why? We said it already. Emotion.
Emotions, particularly high emotions, create altered
brain chemistry that binds a message in our thoughts.
This is why we attach memories to songs; like that
song that was playing when you met your true love.
These elements are classical and taught in most good
film schools or in art. This is why artists can move you
to do or feel things.

18. The 4 Requirements of Story
Most people that talk about “story” don’t know story.
The term is over-used in our culture of blogging and
content marketing. What most people call“stories” are
pure information; they lack the essentials mentioned
here. A true story has a plot and structure that includes
a visual and emotional conflict between characters
(even if those characters are products).

19. Go to our FREE Brandgineering
Content
Marketing
School
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