The Anatomy of a Turning Point
Brands, You’ve Been Doing It Wrong
In a lot of my posts I talk about the importance of turning points as the most irreducible element in storytelling. But what is a turning point?
My definition of a turning point comes straight from the writing of the best storytelling educator in the world right now: Robert McKee. Any of you who haven’t read his seminal text “Story” need to get on that. (Side note: He has a new book coming out on July 12— you should preorder it now!)
It’s really important to understand the anatomy of a turning point because you will begin to see where marketers fail in their brand storytelling. They don’t deliver fully cathartic turning points — they merely temporarily surprise us.
As an audience, when you experience a turning point, it’s always a byproduct of expecting one thing and getting something else (McKee calls this “the gap between expectation and result”). Imagine you knock on your friend’s door and instead of her answering, it’s a strange man you’ve never seen before.
The very first emotion you experience is Surprise. It’s the most visceral stage of a turning point. It can feel like the floor has dropped out from under you. Your head spins. You’ve lost your grip on the reality surrounding you. The rules of the game have changed — and you didn’t expect that.
The natural reaction to being surprised is a moment of Curiosity. “Why didn’t my friend open the door as I expected? Who is this stranger standing before me? Why is he in her house? Do I even have the right house?” Curiosity is always a question that seeks to restore the balance lost in your surprise.
Now imagine that after a moment of you and the strange man standing there staring at one another, you hear your friend’s voice call from the living room. “Okay. You have the right house and she doesn’t seem threatened by this guy.” She informs you that the man before you is her cousin visiting from out of town. You have just gained Insight, the third stage of dramatic turning points.
Insight comes from finding the answer to the question posed by your curiosity. To demonstrate how important the quality of the insight is to an audience, imagine if instead of the man being your friend’s cousin, it was a burglar! That’s a horse of a different color, indeed. No doubt that reality would inspire a different reaction from you than the benign family member.
That natural reaction you have to your newly gained insight can be called New Direction. In our hypothetical scenario, you extend your hand to the cousin and introduce yourself. This action is different from what you came to the house expecting to do when you thought it’d only be your friend. If the insight you give your audience doesn’t inspire them to act differently than they previously would have, then your turning point wasn’t dramatic enough.
You, the storyteller, control Surprise and Insight. They are the inspiration for the Curiosity and New Direction experienced by your audience, but you cannot make your audience curious or make them take action. Those are natural reactions they will have based on how surprised they were or how insightful your content was.
Surprise is the easiest thing to create, which explains the proliferation of “click-bait.” We’ve all seen the headlines on our Facebook timelines, so they’re easy to make up: Thirteen year-old girl punches a grizzly in the face! You won’t believe what happens next! [Link]
Where most brands fail is they provide a surprise like the one I just made up with no intention of delivering quality insight on the other side of the link. Cheap surprise is the tactic of choice when all you’re interested in is clicks. But if you want a deeper connection with your audience that makes them come back again and again, you can’t betray their curiosity. Deliver an insight that actually motivates them to take a new direction (like buying your product or contributing to your cause)!
If you succeed in delivering valuable insight to your audience following any surprise you give them (and if every insight isn’t pushing them toward a transaction), they will trust your next surprise more than those thrown out by your competitors. They will feel rewarded for clicking, and you will become one of their most trusted brands.
