Using Stories To Persuade

August 2, 2012

Interview with Lisa Cron, author of the book Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

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Mike Carruthers:
When you want to persuade, make your case or sell an idea the tendency is to present facts and figures but here’s the problem…

Lisa Cron:
We’re not wired to make sense of facts we don’t really know what to do with them and they don’t tend to penetrate.
 

Lisa Cron, author of the book Wired for Story, says you’ll always be more convincing if you tell a story.

That feeling you get when a story grabs you, that feeling where you just really are lost in the story is actually a dollop of dopamine of the neurotransmitter for pleasure. And it is your brains reward for being curious and then satisfying that curiosity because it was crucial to our survival.

Everyone loves a good story.

Watch in any kind of a presentation if we’re talking about business and when someone says, “Let me tell you a story” the body language in the entire room changes. People relax they lean forward because we all know how good story makes us feel.

So if you want to be convincing you’ll always do better by telling a story than presenting concepts.

When you put facts into story they stick they penetrate concepts don’t penetrate because we don’t know what to do with them – it’s hard to wrap your mind around a concept.