Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

Believability

Storytellers often speak about the suspension of disbelief. But we don't want members of the audience to set their attitudes aside and suspend disbelief; we want them to engage with the character. We want the audience to believe the story. If you bring something into the story that doesn't already exist or that the audience hasn't experienced, you need to describe it and make sure it's consistent within the context of the story.

In the late 1990s many organizations were introducing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, with significant changes to their business processes. If you were developing a story about the introduction of ERP today your hero could be positioned as a veteran of ERP implementations in other companies. If instead you were creating the same story in 1995, your hero would have little knowledge of the problems to come with ERP implementations. To the contrary, putting an expert hero into a story about introducing a new technology, or a novice into a story where there is plenty of experience, reduces the believability of the characters, and the story.

When an audience stops believing, it stops caring. Characters must be positioned and behave consistently in order for the audience to believe in them.

If something is not believable — then it doesn't belong.

If you need a character to act in an unbelievable way, you will need to find a good reason for the audience to understand why. You can do this when information is added that the audience ...