Transcription
Today we're talking about storytelling. The easiest way to get your content to perform better is to tell better stories. And the thing is, most people just need a few small tweaks, and then their content explodes.
So, in this video, I'm going to break down the seven biggest storytelling mistakes to avoid. And as soon as you hear them, I guarantee it will change the way you think about storytelling. By the way, I'm Callaway. I've done billions of views, have almost a million followers, and this is all I do all day long. All right, let's dive in.
Now, the first storytelling mistake is a big one, and it will shock you. You've probably seen this visual: the story arc. We all learned this in school. It was touted as the best way to tell a story. You start with some background, initial conflict, rising action, some climax, falling action, and a resolution. This is the prototypical structure of a great story. Well, it turns out, in this era, that structure is completely wrong. It's kind of like the food pyramid. Remember when you were taught that 50% of your diet should be bread? Yeah, exactly. Turns out that was outdated thinking as well. Same thing here. The traditional story arc is not the best formula for telling winning stories in the internet era. And I want to tell you exactly what's wrong with it.
The story arc is basically a single bell curve. Start low, rise high, come back down. This is what Pixar does. This is what Hollywood does. This is how many of the greatest novels were written. But it won't work online. And that's because people have experienced time compression. Whether we like it or not, because of the internet, the storytelling pace required to hold someone's attention is much faster than we think. Our brains have just sped up. And this means the traditional story arc won't work because 80% of your viewers will bounce before the rising action even gets interesting. It's just way too slow to hold attention. That old story arc was built when the only options for entertainment were two-hour movies, 300-page books, or a drunk uncle around the fire at a family function. You couldn't leave, they had you captive. And if you don't believe me, when was the last time you were able to sit down for a full movie in theaters? Exactly. Now, the movies may have gotten worse, but it's really because subconsciously, you just prefer a faster speed. This is years and years of slowly increasing your baseline processing. So, as a storyteller in the internet era, you have to take a completely different approach.
The modern story arc, I debated calling it the Callaway story arc, looks something like this. First, its initial intro hook with context and characters. But it doesn't start at zero intensity. It starts at about 70 out of 100. The full intro has to be delivered at this level. Then, very quickly, in the first minute or two, there is some conflict or contrast introduced where the intensity graph spikes even higher to about 90 out of 100. This is actually the first major conflict moment and sets the stage for maximum attention capture. Over the next couple minutes, the tension finally releases, slowly heading back down to somewhere around 30 out of 100. This is like a wave. The tide is going out, finally releasing some of that tension. But then the story starts to build back up again until it peaks back with another conflict or head fake somewhere around 75 out of 100. And then again, release. And this cycle of peak and release continues on a two to five-minute cadence until the video is over. Now, the biggest peak can either be the first one with subsequent peaks ramping down, or the last one with all the peaks leading up. But either way, there are some massive differences between the traditional story arc and the modern one.
First, the intros are completely different. On the internet, you have to hook somebody initially, or the rest of the story doesn't really matter. None of the last 95% of the work is even seen if somebody bounces after the first 5%. So, in modern stories, that intro has to be above zero, and then you can release tension later. Second, the timing of that first conflict or contrast or stakes moment has to be earlier for the same logic as the intro. Because now, since there are infinite content options for people to choose, you have to give them a reason to stay immediately. And then, third, you'll notice that the rise and fall around the conflict is similar, but there are many more peaks in the modern version than traditional. This is called reh-hooking. It's super important. I'll explain more later how to do it.
So, in summary, stories have changed because attention has changed. You can no longer hold people captive. You have to earn the right to their attention in five-minute increments. And I got to say, there will always be room for the Pixars and the Hollywood classics that still follow that traditional story arc. But unless Christopher Nolan is watching this, and Chris, if you are, please leave a comment, the rest of us are not in the business of making movies. We're trying to hold attention on our content to help our viewer accomplish some task. So, mistake number one for beginner storytellers is not realizing that the strategy and arc of modern stories has changed because of time compression.
Now, for the rest of this video, I'm going to walk through six more tactical ways that you can reposition your story to take advantage of this.
The second mistake beginner storytellers make is that they build their intros in the wrong order. I call this jumbling the W's. You have who, what, where, when, why, and how. I just mentioned how important the intros are to a modern story. While traditional stories build their intros like this: First, they use where and when. "It was a long, cold, windy night in December." Or, "Last month, I was at a conference in Miami." So, they start by setting the scene, context. Then they go into the who and the what. "Billy was walking down the street." Or, "I saw the CEO of Disney speak." And then finally, they go into the how, the why. "He fell because it was slippery." "He is worried about the future of entertainment because of regulation." That's the traditional story arc in this order: where, when, who, what, how, why. So, it sounds something like this: "It was a long, cold, windy night in December. Billy was walking down the street. He fell because it was slippery." Or, in a business context: "Last month, I was in a conference in Miami. I saw the CEO of Disney speak. He is worried about the future of entertainment because of regulation." And it sounds decent to our ear, but it's just not that interesting. And that's because you were leading with facts that don't matter to the viewer. I don't care that you were at a conference. Just tell me what the CEO said.
So, the modern hook stack looks more like this: First, it's what and why. "The future of entertainment is going to look super different." Then, it's who and how. "The CEO of Disney is worried about it." And finally, it's when and where. "He was talking about it at a conference in Miami." So, it reads like this: "The future of entertainment is going to look super different. The CEO of Disney is really worried about it. He was talking about it at a conference in Miami." Now, this seems like a really subtle change, right? But think about it like this: In your videos, you will lose 50% of viewers in the first 30 seconds. Think about all that work you did. After the first 30 seconds, half of your viewers will not see. Every sentence matters. The order of the sentences matters. You want to first start immediately with what is happening and why it matters to viewers. This is critical. They need to opt in to your story. If you don't start with this, they're still uncertain whether this is for them or not. And every second that goes by where they're uncertain, you're losing a portion of them. Next, you need to contextualize who it's for and how you know or how they should trust. Essentially, once you say what is up and why it matters, you need to prove that the information is coming from someone credible, you or some source. And then, lastly, you can use some personal details like where and when to add color. But that's all it is, color. The where and the when is the icing. You don't lead with the icing. You lead with the cake. You need to operate on an assumption that everyone listening to your story has an invisible timer in their head. Some are five seconds, some are summer 30. But when that timer strikes zero, if they don't understand what's in it for them, or at least the stakes of why they should care, they're bouncing, and you've lost. Don't jumble the W's.
Okay, storytelling mistake number three is that you get somebody to buy in with the hook, but then you don't get them to re-buy in. Think about poker. Remember in Casino Royale when James Bond initially loses the $10 million, but then re-raises and wins the game? Essentially, he could have bounced, but that re-raise saved him. He stayed hooked on the game. You want to think of your stories in the exact same way. You have an initial conflict or contrast moment. It rises, it peaks, you release. But you don't want to let the viewer off the hook right there. You need them to re-buy in with their attention, and to do this, you need to re-hook them. The way to reintroduce them is to tee up new stakes or reintroduce a new pain point after you've solved the first one. So, for example, let's say you're a marketing startup and you're trying to make content to educate startup founders on why they should run their paid ads a certain way. Maybe the most critical pain point you're talking about is the creative, and how if they don't have the creative solved, they're going to lose all this traction. So, you crescendo first to the solve for the creative, and then right as you tell them how to fix it, you say something like, "But the truth is, if you have great creative, it'll be underutilized unless you solve for this." See? So, you gave them something, but then you created a new problem that they have to stay to solve. This is called reh-hooking. You just keep closing existing loops and opening new ones until the end of the video. And after three to four loops closed, they will trust you more because it feels like you solved four of their problems in one. But the reality is, you just solved their one main problem and then created three new ones to then solve. But the whole time, they would have stayed watching. And this is critical because social algorithms push your stuff largely based on average view duration. How long did someone stay on the video? If you want AVD to go up, you need to re-hook throughout the video so they watch for longer.
And guys, it's easy for me to talk about these frameworks confidently because I've done nothing but study storytelling over the past few years. Even with these videos, knowing what to do is one thing, but doing it consistently and making it second nature, it's super tough. And I know how hard this was to learn. Actually, I took the challenge of trying to distill this thinking, all these frameworks and formulas, into a product that made it automatic for people to use on their own videos. And it's called Sandcastles. If you struggle with the storytelling and scriptwriting side of videos, Sandcastles takes all the time to go from idea to script and does it automatically. 60 minutes a day of work compressed down to 60 seconds. And the reason it works so well is because I've spent months trying to figure out how to compress all these formulas and bake it into the DNA of the product. There's really nothing like it. So, if you think that might help you, check out. We have a massive waitlist, so make sure you're on it. Sandcastle.ai.
Okay, so far we've talked about the general arc of the story, the hook, layering with the jumbled W's, and then reh-hooking throughout. Now, let's get into some specifics around character and plot that can help improve your stories.
The fourth big storytelling mistake that beginner creators are making is that they're missing a villain. Stories are great when they have contrast. The hero alone is cool, but the hero versus the villain, now that's blockbuster. And it's better with a villain because the distance between hero and villain is bigger than hero and nothing. This is contrast. Now, you don't actually have to have a character villain in the human sense. The villain can be anything. For example, if you make videos for startup founders, the villain could be corporate America. If you make videos for one career path, the villain could be the other. You want to pick the thing, person, group, or brand that is the antagonist of your hero and paint them as the villain accordingly. You could use frames like, "They do this, but we do that." This contrast makes it easier to build up the hero and get people more interested.
And this speaks to the fifth storytelling mistake: you're not giving the viewer something to root for. Stories are great when they have stakes. The more likable the hero or relatable the situation, the more people have something to root for and get invested in watching. You want the viewer to see themselves as the protagonist, whether it be a character or a movement. The best way to do this tactically is to make the hero subject likable by building common ground. The more you can contextualize why your story matters for the target viewer, the more they're going to root for the hero. For example, I make these videos because I genuinely want entrepreneurs to be able to make more money from content. Because of that, I can share examples in my videos that directly relate to entrepreneurs. And when they hear this, that makes them want to root more for me as the creator and for the formulas and frameworks that I'm sharing that can help them. When people root for you, they get optimistic, and optimism always wins. So, give the viewer something to root for.
Now, the sixth biggest storytelling mistake you're making is a massive one as well. If you can solve for this, you are golden in the internet world. And the mistake is that you're lacking atomic sharability. So, what does this mean? Atomic sharability is the ability to condense a story or idea or plot down to a single unit so small that a viewer can take it and go share with their friend after just a single watch. I think of this as the Paul Revere effect. Think about it. Paul rides through Massachusetts and he's screaming, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" A full story in just four words. Immediately, I imagine everyone in the town is scurrying around. "The British are coming! The British are coming!" That is 1700s OG virality. Now, the reason this message and that story was able to spread so quickly is because it was said in the most concise unit possible, the atomic form of the message. This means others can pass it on super easily. So, when you tell stories, cut all the unnecessary fluff. Simple words, simple ideas, punchy sentences. Tell your stories in a way that others could retell. Now, I find a tactical way to do this. If you're talking about a complex or niche topic, is to say your points twice. The first time, explain it like you would explain to a colleague. But then, the second time, restate the point and use a metaphor like you were explaining it to a child. This will help contextualize the point and reframe it in an easier way to digest.
The last mistake I see beginner storytellers making is that they're not doing a good enough job painting the picture. You really need visuals. If you don't give a visual to help someone absorb the point, then you have to paint that visual completely with words. They have to try to imagine what you're saying. And this can be fun, but in most cases, it just causes comprehension loss. It is so much harder to make a point without also visualizing that point because the human brain was designed for visual input. I say this a lot, but a picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a thousand pictures. So, use video visuals to help contextualize the message. Now, with my videos, I have Charlie and Eek, who are absolute wizards at this. Hiring them was the greatest thing I could have done as a content storyteller. I can't emphasize it enough. If you're trying to scale up your story quality and you feel like what you're missing is killer visuals, I'd recommend exploring teaming up with an editor like this. If you want to find editors at the quality that I have, I have a link in the description.
All right guys, that's all I've got for this video. Let me know what you guys want to see next. I use the comments to guide what videos I create. So, if you, if you have a pain point or a struggle with content, drop it in the comments so I know where to focus. And until that next video, we'll see you guys on the next one. Peace.