Quotes About Narrative

You're right," he finally said. "You aren't living a good story." "That's what I was saying." "I see," he said. "What do I do about that?" "You're a writer. You know what to do." "No, I don't." Jordan looked at me with his furrowed brow again. "You put something on the page," he said. "Your life is a blank page. You write on it.

You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke.

To know there is a better story for your life and to choose something other is like choosing to die.

the human heart uses the tools of reality to create elements of story, and the human heart responds to climax in the structure of story, this means that climax, or point of decision, could very well be something that exists in the universe.

The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either.

Customers are not interested in your story. They are, rather, interested in being invited into a story that has them surviving and winning in the end.

finished. If you aren't telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. But my uncle died too soon. The next day, when I was walking with

The principle that characters do not want to change applies to more than just fiction.

Victor Frankl whispered in my ear all the same. He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.

A general rule in creating stories is that characters don't want to change. They must be forced to change.

I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.

people can't live without a story, without a role to play.

My only consolation was I wasn't alone. Most Americans aren't living very good stories. It's not our fault, I don't think. We are suckered into it. We are brainwashed, I think.

Identifying our customers' problems deepens their interest in the story we are telling.

The only reason our customers buy from us is because the external problem we solve is frustrating them in some way. If we can identify that frustration, put it into words, and offer to resolve it along with the original external problem, something special happens. We bond with our customers because we've positioned ourselves more deeply into their narrative.

Remember, the greatest enemy our business faces is the same enemy that good stories face: noise. At no point should we be able to pause a movie and be unable to answer three questions: 1.?What does the hero want? 2.?Who or what is opposing the hero getting what she wants? 3.?What will the hero's life look like if she does (or does not) get what she wants?

Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.

STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE ONE: THE CUSTOMER IS THE HERO, NOT YOUR BRAND.

The ambitions we have will become the stories we live.

The problem is the "hook" of a story, and if we don't identify our customers' problems, the story we are telling will fall flat.

Instead of telling your story, the first stage of your marketing plan should pique a customer's curiosity about how their own story could be made better.

I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story

in a story, there are three levels of problems that work together to capture a reader's or a moviegoer's imagination.

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