The Job of the Storyteller

What am I even doing with my life?

I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately. Honestly, it’s not the first time, but it is the most recent time, so it’s that one that counts right now.

In a way, it’s a useful mood. Because yeah, I definitely believe it’s important to evaluate where you are in life and how you got there, what you’re doing with your time and how that makes you feel, really think about and even challenge the fundamental principles that guide your decisions and behavior. 

But being good and useful never stopped anything from being uncomfortable.

I don’t only ramble into the void. I do, in fact, exchange services for currency. In the real world, every job I’ve ever held over the last decade or so has had either “writer,” “editor,” or “communications” somewhere in the title. 

Makes sense, given my ponderous proclivities.

Perhaps an accurate summation would be something along the lines of “professional persuader.” 

Or, more succinctly, “storyteller.”

But, in a departure from my usual subject matter — but not as far as you might think — I do want to talk about persuasion. Or, rather, the lack of it.

I said that a story’s job is simply, “Behold, and understand.” Which I still believe is true. But that’s the story’s job. That is not the job of the storyteller.

The job of the storyteller is very different. The storyteller does not simply exist in a vacuum. She has ideas, opinions, insights, goals. She has a specific notion of what, exactly, her audience ought to understand because of her story (or she should, anyway). 

Her job is a subtle form of persuasion.

And this is what I do. It’s what I am. I am a storyteller. I persuade. Or try to, anyway.

But to what end? What has it gotten me? I look around and see the state of the discourse about the subjects I know and care an awful lot about, about the levels of influence that people like me have, about which ideas are actually getting attention and implementation, and I have to wonder: what’s the point? What have I actually accomplished?

What am I even doing with my life?

This moment of introspection has been going on for months now.  And it’s been hard. I’ve had to really examine a lot of the load-bearing pieces of my identity. That kind of self-reflection is not fun or pleasant or easy.

The good news (I guess?) is that I still think I’ve been right all this time. My purpose has not changed. I still believe in these ideas, these principles. And I still believe — perhaps more than ever — that what I’ve been trying to accomplish still needs to be done. I still believe that I can, and should, be one of the ones doing it.

But herein lies a problem. What’s a persuader to do when there is a general lack of interest by what feels like a majority of people to actually, you know, persuade?

I suppose it must be to persuade people that they should attempt to be more persuasive.

Look, there’s a lot of noise rattling around about every yelling-point du jour. It’s easy to find someone who is saying the things you agree with. It makes sense to you, so you pass it along. But some other people have the absolute audacity to disagree with you, which makes no sense because your stance and your argument for it are clearly the correct ones. 

So, what do you do? You tell them exactly that, in some form or fashion. Only to discover that this strategy has backfired. Not only do they still not agree with you, the bastards, but now you’re in a shouting match in the comments section regarding improbable scenarios involving mothers and assorted farm animals.

I understand the anger and argumentative impulse you feel when people suddenly pay attention to your niche interest and get it wrong. 

When you know a lot about a thing and the people you associate with do too, it can be very challenging when you’re suddenly confronted with people who not only do not know about that thing but also have vociferous opinions about it. I imagine this is very much how my racecar friends felt when The Fast & The Furious first came out. (UPDATE: I asked them, and yes, it is.)

I myself have fallen prey to this very same thing.

We’re all stressed out and scared and maybe a little bit desperate. We want solutions to our problems, and we’ve got a lot on our plates, so the simpler these solutions are, the better. So, when people we’re inclined to find credible — people who’ve been accurately identifying our pain points, who’ve been speaking our language, who’ve been promising to solve real problems for us — offer the solution to many of our woes (with bonus points for already conforming to our existing way of thinking), yeah, a lot of us are going to get on board with that. 

Something needs to be done, and this is something. Why wouldn’t we do it? Don’t you want these problems solved, too?

But that’s where the friction starts, because (humans being humans) not everyone agrees that this is, in fact, the solution. But the reasons for opposition vary pretty wildly, and because of that, the argumentation is all over the place.

Some come with the emotional appeal. Won’t someone think of the children (or some other tangentially relevant vulnerable population)? Have you no heart for the suffering of others? This is how the terrorists win. You monster.

The problem here is a reliance on the preexistence of the emotion they’re appealing to. Anyone else just feels attacked.

Others come at the subject from a more data-oriented angle. Because, well, actually, studies have shown that that’s not the way reality functions. Any idiot with two brain cells to rub together can clearly see that these crass emotional arguments are not coming from serious people. Educate yourself.

The problem there is that simply stating facts is not, and never has been, persuasive. People do not believe data. People believe other people. 

Now we come to the tricky bit. Because a lot of us like to believe that we are persuaded by facts and figures. We’re logical, reasoning creatures; it’s what sets us apart from other animals. When confronted with overwhelming evidence that a personal stance does not align with provable reality, of course we will change our minds. Obviously we will. We’re not stupid.

But do we? 

When was the last time you changed your mind?

Why? Why did you decide the way you did? Did you read a white paper and think to yourself, “Gosh, this chart completely disproves my current understanding of the world”? I’d wager not. 

Most people make decisions based on emotion. Yes, even you. We like to think we don’t. When we explain our decisions to others, we tend to offer up some form of evidence about why. But those explanations and justifications almost exclusively come after the fact. We decide, then we justify — not the other way around. The facts, such as they are, are only really useful insofar as they support the way we’re already feeling.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

This is why so much disagreement exists in the world. No data set is ever going to perfectly reflect reality. Outliers, imperfect methodologies, questionable sample sets, and a whole host of other confounding factors are inevitable. 

So, what do you do when that data set does not accurately reflect your lived experience? What do you do when it contradicts what you perceive to be a moral truth, a part of your identity? Do you automatically believe that you, a person, have been malfunctioning all this time? Or do you reject that data set as faulty or not applicable to your specific circumstance and move on with your life?

And before you tell me that you would change your mind based on the data, I have data that says you almost certainly won’t.

So, how do we resolve these disagreements? How do we get other people to come around to a different way of thinking? And I don’t just mean forcing compliance. That’s a different kettle of fish. 

I’m talking about persuasion. How do we persuade people to change their minds?

The good news is, smarter people than me figured this out a long time ago. The bad news is, most people don’t do it because it’s hard and — more importantly — time-consuming.

At the risk of being That Guy, you should probably read Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

I know. You didn’t come here for a homework assignment. But, in fairness, I did just warn you that it’s hard and time-consuming. But not because it’s particularly complicated.

Short version: Aristotle identified three key elements to actual persuasion. Logos, or the facts of the matter; pathos, the emotional appeal; and ethos, which is the credibility of the one making the argument. 

Technology may have changed the tools and terminology we use, but the fundamentals are exactly the same as they were thousands of years ago.

It’s easy to spot when someone is putting their emphasis on either pathos or logos to the exclusion of the other. Moby Dick ought to have been a rollicking sea adventure while we watched a dramatic descent into madness, but it got bogged down by whale facts so it’s tough to get through the book. 

Likewise, you might remember when Rep. Ocasio-Cortez boldly declared, “I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

There needs to be a balance. Just like it’s difficult to stay awake through a dull, date-filled history lecture, man cannot live on vibes alone. We need an emotional connection with the people we’re trying to persuade, but we also need to have our facts straight. 

But neither of these is as important as the most frequently overlooked aspect of persuasion: credibility. The real question is not whether or not we should believe. It’s whether or not we should believe you.

And I get it. It’s tough to establish credibility. It’s even tougher to maintain it. But neither of those is as tough as gaining it back if you lose it.

This brings us back to the current state of discourse in the world. So many people are digging in their heels and refusing to budge about it because, fundamentally, very few people are bothering to pay attention to the basic principles of persuasion. And, therefore, storytelling.

Whether that’s by intent, I couldn’t begin to tell you. But ultimately, intent — in all things, really — is irrelevant. The result is the important part.

Some are hurling vitriol at those who disagree with them, calling the other side stupid or traitorous or selfish or just plain evil. Others are gesturing broadly at tables and graphs while spouting academic jargon like it means something to the people they’re talking to. A lot are doing both.

Each side is speaking to an audience with whom they have no credibility, appealing to the wrong emotions, and supporting their claims with information that is (commonly, but not always) inaccurate. Not only is this not persuasive, but to an observer who is less inclined to assume purity of intent, it’s basically indistinguishable from performative chest-beating.

They have overlooked the job of the persuader. The job of the storyteller.

Step one to persuasion, before you ever begin to decide what data to cite or which emotions to appeal to or how to build any credibility with them, is that you have to know your audience. 

You have to understand them. 

You have to love them, at least a little bit.

That’s the hard part. That’s the time-consuming part. You can’t just drop a blasé “I feel your pain” and then resume ignoring the ones you said it to. You can’t just call someone an idiot and expect them to agree with you. But when you genuinely understand someone, when you love them, you don’t want to ignore them. You don’t want to descend into name-calling.

What you want is to actually help them. 

Maybe that help isn’t everything they need or take the form they thought it would. Maybe it isn’t actually help at all, but rather a different way of thinking about things. Or maybe all you achieve is giving them the tiny sliver of comfort that comes from simply being seen.

You’re not going to convince everyone. That’s okay. You can still convince someone. And the next time you have something to say, that someone will tell their friends to pay attention because this one gets it. 

And this, ultimately, is the job of the storyteller. Beyond word choice or color palettes or framing devices, beyond everything else, the job of the storyteller is to love. 

But if you decide to ignore Aristotle and call people names or talk over their heads or just not put your thoughts in terms they understand, if you decide that this is far too important to be faffing about with silly little stories, they’re going to tell you to go kick rocks, and it will be reasonable of them to do so.

Persuasion is very simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it’s not impossible, either.

So, you need to decide. Do you just want people to know that you’re mad and they’re wrong, or do you want to be persuasive? 

Do you want to continue to spin your wheels, or do you want the job of the storyteller?