Made to Stick - Key insights from the book

I recently read a summary of the book Made to Stick by authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

What is the book all about? How to tell your story so that it is Interesting, Actionable, and Memorable. Here are the key insights that I found particularly compelling.

A. Studying your audience

There is a concept called “The Curse of Knowledge.” The concept means that just because you understand and enjoy a particular subject, it does not mean your audience will find it easy to understand or enjoy in the same way. You inherently think that you and your audience are mirror images, i.e., having the same level of knowledge, experience, background, tastes, and preferences.

No! It is never like that.

The curse of knowledge is the reason we find a great many research papers by scholarly scientists that are completely non-understandable. It is the same case, why we find at times, that our audience is not finding our jokes as amusing as we found them to be. Have you ever experienced this phenomenon?

So, the very first step in crafting your story is studying your audience. Understand the audience thoroughly. What is their background, their level of understanding of the subject, and their motivation to listen to your story? Craft your story from the perspective of your audience and not from your point of view.

B. Mystery (Interesting)

We should always have an element of mystery in our story. One should keep the audience expecting something from the story. Create a hook at the beginning of your story that will make the audience stick to see how it unfolds.

For example, you could explain how a book described the Rings of Saturn, noting that three top universities (MIT, Stanford, and Cal Tech) came to three completely different conclusions about what the rings are made of. One university was convinced that it is made up of Ice. The other university gave a detailed study proving that the rings could have only been made up of dust particles. The third university finally concluded that the rings are dust particles, that were solidified because they are covered by ice.

See, there is a hook that makes the reader of the book speculate which could be correct and how three top universities of the same ranking could come up with three different conclusions.

C. Unexpectedness (Memorable)

Based on your study of your audience you will know what they would normally expect out of a given set-up of the story. Accordingly, run your story in a predictable fashion, and then, when they least expect it, introduce an unexpected turn to your story. This will make the story memorable for the audience and they would relish the same.

For example, let us say, in a story, the protagonist was shot and taken to the hospital. He suffered severe blood loss and a loss of consciousness. His friends and relatives and waiting outside the hospital and some of them are convinced that they are going to lose him. But the doctor came out and said that he had good news, bad news, and better news.

The friends and family were worried and asked the doctor to explain. The doctor says that the good news is that the protagonist of saved. When asked about the bad news, he said that he would not be able to walk back normally for the next 6 months due to the injury, but he would slowly but surely recover from this condition. And the best news is that, when the bullet hit the right side of his chest, the bullet also pierced and chipped away his cancerous tumor that was earlier diagnosed a year back. When the cancer was discovered last year, it was expected that he would not be able to survive the cancer and that he could die in a matter of years. The shooting is a blessing in disguise and the protagonist is now completely free of cancer.

I am sure none of the audience would expect such an unexpected turn in the story and this will make the story memorable to them. Were you also surprised?

D. Personal (Actionable)

If you expect your audience to take actionable steps after listening to your story, you must always make the story personal. You can give a few statistics that support your cause. This will make it dependable. However, this will not make them take action as, at the end of the day, this is just another fact/study that they came across.

Instead, based on the same statistics, you can further extend and give a personal example (it could be from your own life, somebody you know, or the life of an affected person because of the situation, who is one out of the large sample set that the study/statistics described). For example, you can say a statistic that says owing to the demand for exotic leather bags in the Western countries, x number of animals are being hunted in Africa every year. However, the authors suggest that you should go one step further (or you can replace this story in the place of the statistics/study) and give a particular example, say, an elephant that roamed around Africa, and faced a lot of difficulties in surviving throughout its life and at last successfully gave birth to a calf. However, suddenly, one fine night she died at the hands of the poachers. Now, the calf has to lead the same life under the same arduous situations that his mother faced in her childhood. Stories like this are more personal and will move the audience to take action based on your story.

These are some of the insights that I got out of the book's summary. I am planning to read the complete book, now. How about you? Please let me know your insights in the comments.