Narrative Is Everything: The ABT Framework and Narrative Evolution Randy Olson Copyright © by Prairie Starfish Productions June 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except it the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the author at [email protected] Cover and interior design by Dante Cervantes Edited by Adina Yoffie ISBN: 9780463558256 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 6 1 BUSINESS - Branding is ABT 30 2 POLITICS - Messaging is ABT 47 3 ENTERTAINMENT - Story is ABT 96 4 SCIENCE - Scientific Method is ABT 137 5 RELIGION - The Double-Edged Sword 157 6 NARRATIVE SELECTION - The Future 163 APPENDIX 1 - Defining “Narrative” Versus “Story” 185 APPENDIX 2 - Story Circles Narrative Training 189 APPENDIX THREE 3 - Examples of Narrative Analysis 204 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 248 3 A Note About This eBook This book is just the nuts and bolts. If you want the detailed academic version of the ABT Framework read my 2015 book Houston, We Have a Narrative. It’s published by University of Chicago Press, which is … an academic press. I wrote this book initially for our Story Circles Narrative Training program as kind of a manual, but then I decided to make it more widely available. It’s still somewhat of a work in progress, so please don’t hesitate to send me notes and thoughts—all input is appreciated. - Randy Olson ([email protected]), May, 2019 4 Therefore ABT—it’s all about ABT—or so my friend asserts, Author, consultant to corporations, keynoters, This his mantra—ABT: And, But, Therefore— Just as ii—V—1 in jazz, A squared plus B squared equals C squared, The Trinity. E equals MC squared. Triune truths. Essence precedes existence. But back to ABT: And, we look out upon our world, And, know it was once fecund, diverse, intact: But, icebergs are melting, coral reefs whitening, But, arable land vanishing, water for sale. Therefore, fellow inhabitants, what shall we do? Therefore, my dears, what on earth shall we do? - Paul Cummins, 2018 5 INTRODUCTION “We have nothing to fear but boredom itself.” - Not F.D.R. This book is about a new approach to communication. It’s useful on two levels. At the practical level it introduces you to the ABT Framework—the one-sentence template involving the three words And, But, Therefore. If you’re interested only in improving your communication skills, it will provide plenty of help. At this point the ABT Framework is more than just a “neat trick.” We’ve been running our Story Circles Narrative Training program (which is built around the ABT Framework) for five years, with a range of government agencies, including the National Park Service, the US Department of Agriculture, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Institutes of Health and a number of universities. We’re approaching 500 graduates, and we recently posted over 100 of their stories of how they are using the training in the real world. Which means there is a very practical aspect to what is in this book. But on the larger, grander scale, the book is about a whole new approach to understanding how human culture changes over time. At the core is what I have termed “narrative selection.” It combines the simplest elements of what neurophysiologists are learning about the brain with what Hollywood has learned over the past century about narrative structure. For this pulling together of evolutionary theory and Hollywood knowledge, I ask you to keep in mind two things. First, I earned my PhD in evolutionary biology from Harvard University long ago, which gave me an evolutionary perspective on the world. Second, I left a tenured professorship of biology to spend 25 years in and around Hollywood, learning what I could about narrative. My learning about evolutionary biology began in my late teens, before my brain had completed its development. The result is a view of life through the prism of “evolution by means of natural selection,” about which Charles Darwin famously said, “There is grandeur.” 6 Here’s one simple example of what I mean about my view of the world: In our first semester of film school we had to take a wonderful class on the history of silent cinema. I was 38 years old, having just departed my science career. For my term paper I wrote an essay comparing the early oddball, one-and-done forms of silent movies to the early oddball, one-and-done forms of life seen in Cambrian fossils from over a half billion years ago. I compared the bizarre silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc, which had more close-ups of faces than any movie since, to the bizarre Cambrian fossil Hallucigenia, which had a form never seen since. (It looks like a cross between a hair braid and a picket fence; thus its name.) TWO FORMS NEVER SEEN AGAIN. The excessive close-ups of faces in The Passion of Joan of Arc and the spiny Hallucigenia from the Cambrian period. That was 25 years ago. The film professor loved it and gave me an “A”; he had never had his beloved silent films compared to ancient life forms. That’s how I view the world: through the prism of evolution. And so that’s what I ask you to keep in mind as you read this book: It’s a different approach to communication. I’m showing how the process of “narrative selection” has repeatedly produced the ABT narrative structure throughout our culture—from business to politics to entertainment to science to religion. You can think of it this way: DNA is the universal element that natural selection has produced in living creatures. The ABT is the universal element that narrative selection has produced in human culture. 7 THEREFORE … THE ABT IS THE NUCLEUS OF NARRATIVE Let me tell you how the ABT works. In 2001, my longtime marine-biologist colleague and hero Dr. Jeremy Jackson contacted me about the challenges he faced with communication. He had just published a powerful scientific paper that had made the cover of the most important scientific publication in the US, Science magazine. He wanted help with communicating his findings to a broader, non- science audience. His paper was about the collapse of ocean ecosystems. In it he explained how we are destroying the oceans through pollution and over-fishing. He said to me, “We have all the research we need and we know how to save the oceans, but what we don’t have is action.” What this meant is that he had figured out his setup (the oceans), had figured out the problem (we’re killing them) and now wanted to focus on implementing the solution (motivating people to stop bad practices). In the language I would eventually formulate, he knew his AND, he knew his BUT, he was now looking to implement his THEREFORE. This is the ABT. It’s the nucleus of narrative, and narrative is the heart of humanity. The THEREFORE is what everybody wants these days. We know our world, we know the problems, what’s needed is the THEREFORE—the actions that are actually going to fix the problems. We want this in all facets of life. In business, we want the THEREFORE of how your product will solve the problems of our daily lives. In politics we want the THEREFORE of how your agenda is going to solve the problems in our society. In entertainment we want the THEREFORE of how your media is going to solve the problem of keeping us entertained. In science we want the THEREFORE of how your research is going to make our lives better. And in religion … we want the THEREFORE of what it all means. THEREFORE … the title of this book—narrative is indeed everything. And, yes, I know this starts to sound like I think the ABT is a hammer and everything is a nail. All I can say to that is, “could be”; I’ll let you decide at the end of our journey through the ABT Framework. 8 FROM NATURAL SELECTION TO NARRATIVE SELECTION What I am presenting is the synthesis of my 40-year journey from scientist to filmmaker to “communicationeer” (can’t quite find the right term for what I do now). In 1993, I left a tenured professorship of marine biology and moved to Hollywood in search of a possible golden chalice for broad communication. I found it with the ABT. Which means it’s time for an introduction. Ladies and gentlemen … INTRODUCING THE ABT NARRATIVE TEMPLATE I call it the ABT Universal Narrative Template. I’ve been presenting it since 2012. I gave a TEDMED Talk about it in 2013 AND introduced it formally to the science world with my 2015 book Houston, We Have a Narrative (University of Chicago Press). BUT what was clear from the outset is that the ABT is present in all forms of communication. THEREFORE it’s time to show it’s pretty much everywhere. The ABT is this: _______ AND ________ BUT ________ THEREFORE _______ . You can use it to boil down the narrative structure of just about anything to a single sentence. You may feel it’s very familiar, AND that you even learned it in grade school, BUT in 2012, when I searched everything to do with “the ABT Template” on the internet, I found nothing, THEREFORE please consider the possibility that something so simple could have gone somewhat unnoticed, unexplored and undocumented.