Story-Modeling™

Story-Modeling™ is an approach to storytelling that views a story as a model.

Strategic storytelling uses stories to share information, to share an experience and to generate knowledge through simulation learning. When a story is produced for the purpose of generating knowledge — as. a tool for learning — it is a Story-Model™.

Modeling & simulation is an established scientific discipline that has already developed solutions to the kinds of questions raised by the storytelling boom:

  • How do we make sure people don’t take actions that cause harm because they incorrectly interpreted the model?

  • How do we build models that are simple enough to be easy to understand, but don’t oversimplify an issue so as to be dangerous

Modeling and simulation practitioners have developed industry standards and best practices that we can use to guide us in the production of stories used to generate knowledge about the real world.

A Story-Model™ is a simulated scientific model of relational events about the real world.

  • Simulated: occurs over a period of time

  • Scientific: for the purpose of learning or generating knowledge

  • Model: representation of something else (“this represents that”)

  • Relational events: events that are related to each other

  • Real world: observed (not imagined)

Frequently Asked Questions

  • No.

    Persuasion sits within a binary framework: there’s a “right” and “wrong” point of view, and the persuader’s effort is to shift the audience’s point of view to the “right” one. 

    Story-Modeling sits within a plurality framework: there are multiple points of view that are coherent or incoherent — and useful or not.

    Persuasion is successful when the audience’s opinion is aligned with the persuader’s; Story-Modeling is successful when your audience is able to generates useful knowledge from your story.

  • Story-Modeling uses knowledge from narrative theory, modeling & simulation, and neuroscience to enable simulation learning.

    The science is not new, but combining knowledge from these disciplines into a storytelling method is new.