Category Archives: THOUGHTS

#205) Kamala Harris the Morning After the Nomination

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There are two age old elements needed for a compelling essay: PLOT and THEME. With the ABT Framework we have developed analytical tools for both. Here’s how she did.

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris accepts the nomination with a speech that was inspiring, yet weak on narrative metrics.

THE HARD COLD NUMBERS OF NARRATIVE

There are two age old elements needed for a compelling essay: PLOT and THEME. With the ABT Framework we have developed analytical tools for both. Here’s how she did. (Read the transcript of Kamala’s speech here.)

PLOT: Our tool is the ABT, from which we have derived two metrics. The AND FREQUENCY (AF) is a measure of dullness. The NARRATIVE INDEX (NI — the BUT/AND ratio) is a measure of narrative strength. The optimal value for the AF is 2.5. A somewhat dull score is over 3.0. A solidly dull score is over 4.0. She scored a 4.6 for her speech. A good score for the NI is over 20. Most politicians score in the teens. She scored a 9. BOTTOM LINE: She is weak on PLOT (narrative structure). Her other recent speeches are in these same ranges.

THEME: Our tool is the DOBZHANSKY TEMPLATE, which for a presidential candidate needs to complete the sentence, “Nothing in America today makes sense except in the light of … “ There was no clear answer to that from her speech. There has been for Trump from the start with his word being GREATNESS, a word which is ASPIRATIONAL, something to reach for. She had nothing of the sort. DO SOMETHING and NOT GOING BACK are not aspirational. Which means she has no clear singular central message to hang her campaign on. BOTTOM LINE: She has no clear THEME (message).

There’s no denying she has pulled the party out of its deep funk, and she is a figurehead to build something around, but she has very weak NARRATIVE INTUITION. The result of that is neither the ability to create her own narrative elements nor the ability to spot the absence of them in the speeches written for her.

I think the overall result, to me, is that she is like a ship headed out into rough seas that has very shallow draft and is lacking a keel. The ship may survive the journey, or it might capsize. Her opponent is a ship with a deep hull and lengthy keel for stability over time, but is now a ship with a LOT of holes in it that is taken on water and sitting very low (as even true believers like Megyn Kelly conceded last week). Not clear which ship will go the distance, but it looks like it will be close.

I desperately hope she wins, but the assessment above is analytical and objective, based on our analytical tools. There’s no denying the patterns. I wish I could say she scored a 2.6 AF and a 28 NI, and had a clear aspirational focus, but she just didn’t.

#204) Three Steps to CONCISION: The CHAT GPT/ABT Concision Tool

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One of the most important goals for communication is concision. By combining Chat GPT and the ABT you can achieve it in ways never before possible.

ChatGPT Answer

Enter the text of an article into Chat GPT, tell it to use the ABT, and this is an example of what you’ll get back. Not perfect, but close, and of course incredibly fast.

 

USING CHAT GPT TO TURN THE ABT INTO A TOOL

I gave a talk on this a year ago at a gene therapy meeting — basically how to use the ABT with Chat GPT to produce a concise statement of the narrative core of a text. It’s time to formalize it for everyone. It’s very simple.

1 ENTER THE PROMPT: Type this line into Chat GPT: Using Randy Olson’s ABT Narrative Framework reduce this text to a one sentence ABT with the words And, But, Therefore:

2 ADD THE TEXT: On the same line, copy and paste in the ENTIRE text of whatever you want reduced to its ABT narrative core.

3 BINGO: It gives you the one sentence ABT. Yes, it’s that simple.

 

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE:

This morning I randomly chose an article from the front page of the NY Times about “Strike Madness” in Germany. The article was 1,275 words in length. I ran it through the three steps above, here was the output (color coded so you can see the three ABT elements).

Workers at the SRW scrap metal plant in Leipzig have been striking for over 136 days, marking the longest postwar strike in Germany, AND while Germany prides itself on peaceful labor relations, recent widespread strikes across various sectors are challenging this notion, BUT the country faces economic difficulties with a shrinking workforce and rising living costs, THEREFORE, workers like those at SRW are demanding fair wages and better conditions to secure their future in a rapidly changing economic landscape.

Is this perfect? Of course not, but it did 90% of the job in just one second. From here you need to tweak it according to what you’re wanting to say and to whom.

For this particular ABT I’d be inclined to reduce it to this for clarity:

Germany prides itself on peaceful labor relations, BUT the country faces economic difficulties with a shrinking workforce and rising living costs, THEREFORE, workers like those at SRW and elsewhere are demanding fair wages and better conditions to secure their future in a rapidly changing economic landscape.

For concision I reduced the set up and broadened the THEREFORE element. It is now a one sentence concise and powerful statement of “the story” that the article tells.

It’s more than just the subtitle that the NY Times provides with the article, yet it is still short enough to digest quickly. And again, is powerful.

You should use it for any text you have that you find yourself staring at, annoyed, wondering, “What in the hell is this thing trying to say?”

The New York Times really should have it as a feature in their daily email that lists all their major articles. There should be an ABT button next to each title that you click and it instantly gives you this nicely structured summary of “the story” being told.

 

NARRATIVE VS REPORTING

Narrative is about a journey. Reporting is about current events.

You can see this divide clearly by looking at what the newspaper provided as their subtitle for the article versus what the ABT produces. Here’s what the newspaper provided for this article.

THE NY TIMES SUBTITLE: A wave of strikes by German workers, feeling the sting of inflation and stagnant growth, is the latest sign of the bleak outlook for Europe’s economic powerhouse.

Their subtitle is static — saying the article is about “the latest sign” of a problem.

The ABT gives the SET UP (a past of peaceful labor relations), then introduces the problem that has arisen (economic difficulties), followed by the consequence (strikes). It provides a journey, making it more active and thus more powerful in communication itself.

The bottom line is that narrative is built around three act structure. Journalism is built around the Inverted Pyramid model.

They are not the same. At all.

#203) Testimony Debacle: The ABT Could Have Prevented It

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Ironically, as we were working with a biomedical company last week, hammering out delicately formulated and legally correct ABT-structured answers to common questions for their product, several university professors were imploding in front of congress. Sadly, they didn’t have to end up in such a mess.

LOST THE NARRATIVE. There was no narrative flow to most of what they said in their answers.

 

PLANNING FOR A ROASTING

How much planning do you want to do in advance of a grilling? If you do none, you run the risk of rambling wildly.  You do too much, you over-think and over-complicate. There’s a clear optimum, as well as an optimal level of complexity to the answers.

Last week three university presidents, tragically, secured their place in history with a catastrophically bad grilling session. It doesn’t matter how many hours the session was or how heroically they performed. When it comes to mass communication, perception is reality.

The perception was so bad one of them has already resigned from her position.

What should they have done?

 

ABT-STRUCTURED ANSWERS

Of course everyone will be engaged in literally Monday morning quarterbacking today (the Monday after the event). All I know is what we would have done to prepare them.

Here’s how you get ready for important and potentially dangerous questions.

1) EXPERT ADVICE – You bring together your subject and legal experts
2) QUESTIONS – You think up the questions you’re most likely to be asked’
3) DRAFT ANSWERS – You come up with first drafts of answers (using the ABT structure)
4) REVISION – You keep revising your answers until everyone is comfortable with them
5) REHEARSAL – You rehearse until the STRUCTURE is embedded in your mind (not the words)

The key element here — that was missing from their testimony — is the ABT structure.

 

WHY IS ABT SO IMPORTANT?

One of the cornerstones of our entire ABT Training program is what we termed, long ago, “The Liz Moment.”

It refers to Dr. Liz Foote who used the ABT for a presentation in 2014, found it to be powerful, then wrote to me, relating three main features. I wrote this up in my 2015 book, “Houston, We Have A Narrative.”

Using the ABT, she found her talk to be:

1) EASIER TO REHEARSE – the ABT structure locks into your mind better than any other structure
2) ENGAGED THE CROWD – she felt her audience more connected to her presentation than ever before
3) RETAINED FIDELITY – in the days after, as people regurgitated on social media what she had presented, she found their accounts to be more accurate than for any previous talk.

By coincidence, on Tuesday we did a session with a biomedical company we’re working with where we hammered out the ABT-structured answers to their three most common questions they get about their main product. It was a tremendous session. We were all so psyched with the results.

But then our hearts sunk on Thursday watching the three academics over-complicate their answers as they failed to get to the THEREFORE’s that were needed.

What can we say. As far as we know, there is no other model for narrative structure (which is the essential element to provide answers that are clear, concise, and confident).

It’s tragic to watch something like that hearing take place. The ABT could have helped a great deal. If you want to hear more, get in touch with us, we’ll be glad to walk you through it.

#201) Using the right tool: A “HOWEVER HAMMER” for diplomacy, a “BUT BOMB” for the masses

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Scientists love their HOWEVERs. It’s the more diplomatic, less forceful word of contradiction with which to introduce the problem portion of your ABT. We have data to show how much scientists love it. BUT … the more powerful and more widely used word of contradiction is THE BUT BOMB. Keep that in mind in matching your content to your INNER CIRCLE versus OUTER CIRCLE audiences.

TONE DEAF? Okay, maybe this wasn’t the most tactful t-shirt for us to make for our World Bank friends given current world events, BUT … come on, have a sense of humor (please insert in your mind a smiley face emoji here). The term BUT BOMB was coined by the graduate students of Drs. Marlis Douglas and Keisha Bahr and first presented in our latest version of the NARRATIVE GYM series of books.

 

CHOOSING YOUR WORD OF CONTRADICTION

Narrative structure consists of three forces: AGREEMENT, CONTRADICTION, CONSEQUENCE. The ABT Narrative Template embodies these three forces. It uses the most common word of agreement (AND), the most common word of contradiction (BUT), and the most powerful word of consequence (THEREFORE). These three elements add up to AND, BUT, THEREFORE which is the ABT.

So here’s what’s fascinating about the central element. BUT is the most commonly used word of contradiction, but … there are other words that can work as well. The most common alternative to BUT is HOWEVER.

So why use BUT versus HOWEVER?

Here’s why…

 

BUTs OVER HOWEVERs

Last fall a group of us from the ABT Framework course compiled a few stats on our two Narrative Metrics (the AND Frequency and the Narrative Index of BUTs to ANDs). Early on, Marlis Douglas suggested that we also count the use of the word HOWEVER by scientists. Sure enough, there was a pattern.

We analyzed 25 articles each from three publications which we designated as BROAD (The New Yorker), RESEARCH (Molecular Ecology), and TARGETED (research reports from IUCN).

What we found was that writers in the New Yorker almost never use the word HOWEVER. Their average ratio of HOWEVERs to BUTs was 0.02.

The IUCN reports had a much higher usage with the average score of 0.53.

But the highest use of HOWEVER was the pure research papers of Molecular Ecology which averaged 0.78 — approaching 1.0 which would be using HOWEVER as much as BUT. In fact, a few of the papers did have more HOWEVERs than BUTs.

 

HOWEVER IS FOR DIPLOMATS, BUT IS FOR THE PUBLIC

In 2015 I did an ABT workshop with 15 diplomats from the State Department. They told me that one of the first things they are taught in their training is to never use the word BUT. The same thing happens with improv actors.

Why? Because BUT is so powerful, and is a word of negation.

BUT … they had nothing to say about HOWEVER, nor do improv actors. Why? Because it is a softer, less forceful word, which makes it perfect for diplomacy (or beating around the bush).

 

IMPORTANT PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE: THE HOWEVER HAMMER VS. THE BUT BOMB

So here’s the big point. Think about your audience. If they are your INNER CIRCLE they’re already listening closely to you. They don’t need to have their attention grabbed. In fact, they would appreciate if you’d respect their knowledge and be a little more gentle with them. That’s the whole idea of diplomacy — speaking softly. So you use HOWEVER as your word of contradiction in the ABT structure.

Think of it as THE HOWEVER HAMMER — a delicate tool for fine detail work. It’s a much softer tool than the BUT BOMB.

Now think about your OUTER CIRCLE — they’re not listening as closely, are not as clued in on what you’re saying, and more likely to need a jolt to get their attention. Writers at The New Yorker know this intuitively, and that’s why they use BUT almost exclusively as their word of contradiction.

So that’s what you need to learn here.

Chose the right tool for the right job. If you’re talking to scientists or diplomats, use more HOWEVERs. If you’re talking to the general public, you want lots of BUTs.

It’s a simple difference, BUT … is a fundamental element of effective communication.

You can learn lots more about narrative metrics in my 5th book, Narrative Is Everything.

#200) 2023 is the Tipping Point Year for the ABT Framework

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There’s lots of excitement around Chat GPT AND it’s clear Artificial Intelligence will soon put an end to human culture (as Maureen Dowd conceded yesterday in the NY Times), BUT in the meanwhile Narrative Structure is still everything, THEREFORE we’re hard at work in 2023 propagating the ABT everywhere possible.

Suddenly the ABT is being put to work in a lot of places. Yay.

 

OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

It’s taken a decade. From the World Bank to Pfizer to the Smithsonian to Cornell University … people are seeing the power and application of the ABT Framework as a tool for finding the narrative core of your material.

All we can say is yes, it works.

To learn more:  ATBFramework.com

#199) Al Gore’s “Wrong Problem” 16 Years Later: Wants vs Needs

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Hollywood screenwriters like to talk about wants versus needs for characters. In 2006 Al Gore announced his “want” with his landmark movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” He pointed to the ultimate problem of global warming and announced that he wanted very much to stop it. But then the question to ask (that he never really did) was, “What do we NEED to achieve this goal?” The specific answer was 60 votes in the U.S. Senate for significant climate legislation. And even more specific would have been a plan for how to change minds to achieve those votes. That was never addressed. Lots of science, very little politics. And now, on Meet the Press this week, he was once again blaming the right for everything and calling them “deniers,” but not addressing that fundamental question of how to change minds. Still.


For decades Al Gore has talked about how he wants to end global warming, but he’s never answered the question of how to change minds. Still.

 

HOW DO YOU CHANGE MINDS?

One of my best friends from my science days, now a senior scientist at NIH, sent me an email yesterday asking me this simple question. He, of course, asked it in reference to all the work I’ve done with narrative structure, the structure of stories, and the anti-science movement in general. My answer was basically I don’t know.

This is the same question that Al Gore should have been addressing in 2006 with, “An Inconvenient Truth,” but he didn’t. He hosted a movie that presented a huge amount of scientific evidence, wrapped in a moralizing tone of shame on us if we don’t fix this.

The result, 16 years later was his appearance yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press where host Chuck Todd seemed to call him a visionary for having foretold all the climate mess we have today.

 

BUT … DUDE, WHERE’S MY “WOW INNOVATION” AWARDS?

Yes, Al Gore foretold disaster, but he failed to provide a realistic plan to avert it. What happened?

Why wasn’t a couple hundred million spent on experimentation to see how to actually change minds on the climate issue?

At the core of changing minds is communication. Why wasn’t there an explosion of experimentation and exploration on communication, sponsored by the major foundations who by 2011, when I gave my, “Dude, Where’s My Climate Movement,” talk at the 50th anniversary of World Wildlife Fund were already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on climate. Why wasn’t there a gigantic initiative underway to answer this most important question of changing minds?

But there never has been. The climate movement has spent a fortune throwing science at the public, but where have been the experimental, exploratory projects on communication? At the end of that 2011 talk (at 22 minutes) I told the story of the group at CDC who created the Zombie Disaster Preparedness Kits project that won the “Wow, Innovation” Award from a professional advertising society then asked verbatim, “Why isn’t the climate community winning Wow Innovation awards?”

 

SERIOUSLY, WHERE IS THE INNOVATION?

More important to me — as we prepare this fall to run our ABT Framework Narrative Training program with major organizations like Pfizer, Genentech, the World Bank, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Georgia Medical School Consortium, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, and lots and lots more … I have one over-riding question, still.

Why are none of the foundations interested in even talking about the ABT, and why is there not an initiative to address the real question that Gore never has been able to answer.

How do you change minds?

#193) Elegant vs Clumsy: Why Climate Communication Fails

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Sorry, but somebody needs to point this stuff out. Last month the U.N. released a Public Service Announcement (PSA) in advance of COP 26 that had almost all the same narrative elements of the greatest television commercial ever produced. All but one thing — NARRATIVE INTUITION. Dummies. Boring dummies. Worse, LECTURING boring climate dummies. Since when do we need a lecturing dinosaur?

Two Short Pieces intended for the entire planet. One, concise and smart. The other … a lecturing dinosaur who went on and on and on with a confused lecture. Why?

Here’s what the dinosaur (sadly, voiced by comic genius Jack Black) said. White is off the narrative. Blue is set up. Red is problem. Purple is sidebar. Green is solution.

 

WANNA SEE HOW CLUELESS THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT IS?

Who wants to be lectured to in this day and age? Not me. Not anyone young who isn’t a climate worshipper.

Once upon a time there were leaders with powerful NARRATIVE INTUITION who roamed the planet. One of them was the great innovator Steve Jobs.

 

THE APPLE COMMERCIAL (1984)

In 1984, Steve Jobs’ company, Apple, produced a television commercial that many experts point to as the great television commercial of all time (though important to know that his board hated it). It had simple narrative structure which was basically this:

AND – gray zombie workers lifelessly view a giant screen giving commands
BUT – a rebellious woman in red shorts runs in and throws a hammer that shatters the screen
THEREFORE – tag line, “Apple is introducing MacIntosh, 1984 won’t be like 1984”

 

THE UN DINOSAUR COMMERCIAL (2021)

Last month the U.N. produced a PSA for COP 26 with similar structure, almost…

AND – the UN general assembly is meeting as per usual
BUT – a dinosaur takes the podium
THEREFORE – therefore we get … a 1.5 minute rambling lecture???

Do you see the similarities in the first two parts — the set up and twist? Then do you see the difference between the CONSEQUENCE elements?

One had the narrative sensibility to know to get out quick once the point is made.

The other droned on and on and on, wasting the talents of a great comic actor (Jack Black, the voice of the dinosaur) and then even worse, the day it was released, Rachael Maddow on MSNBC raved about the spot, basically calling it a masterpiece.

 

WHO WRITES THIS STUFF?

Look at the narrative structure of the 1.5 minute lecture. It’s a big stinking pile of DHY (Despite, However, Yet — the overly narrative structure).

It’s all so symbolic of the entire climate movement of the past two decades, sort of beautifully so. It’s been one big movement of lecturing the public, scolding them, bombarding them, and then retreating in confusion as nobody listens.

As veteran Democratic party strategist James Carville talked about last spring in VOX, it’s really been the worst communicating movement in the history of the planet. He said, “Let me give you my favorite example of metropolitan, overeducated arrogance. Take the climate problem. Do you realize that climate is the only major social or political movement that I can think of that refuses to use emotion? Where’s the identifiable song? Where’s the bumper sticker? Where’s the slogan? Where’s the flag? Where’s the logo?”

I gave a talk a decade ago titled, “Dude, Where’s My Climate Movement?,” for the 50th anniversary of the World Wildlife Fund. Things were bad back then. They’ve only gotten worse.

And now the hero and presumed darling of the entire climate movement, Greta Thunberg, is turning on the entire movement with her “Blah, Blah, Blah,” critique, which sounds a lot like, “And, And, And.” She’s labeling them as boring, and failing to solve problems.

Greta gets it.

#189) The ABT Framework Course to Complete Round 11

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A year ago the idea of an ABT course wasn’t even a twinkle in the eyes of the dozen of us now running it. We’re probably at about 400 graduates with the course sizes ranging between 30 and 50 participants. Next week we will complete our 200th Working Circle (the spin-off exercise that goes with the course). The ABT Framework is spreading, the course is booked into the summer, it produced a book and model for development, and we’re now at work on a big event with National Park Service for April 14 — details to emerge soon!

A NEW 4 MINUTE VIDEO on the strengths of the ABT Framework from two of our long time instructors Drs. Nancy Knowlton (Smithsonian Institution, Member of National Academy of Sciences) and Dianna Padilla (Dept of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University)

Narrative Gym Cover

GET THEE TO THE NARRATIVE GYM! The exceptionally short book that has arisen from the ABT Framework Course.

 

THE YEAR OF LIVING THEREFORE-ISHLY

Last March the pandemic set in and I decided to commit the rest of my life to nothing more than playing tennis and surfing. But by April I was bored.

A surf buddy was describing the online course he was developing for his work in child behavior. Before he could finish I caught the next wave in, called my Story Circles co-instructors to pitch the idea, within three days we announced it on Twitter and by the end of the week had filled all 50 slots.

This week we finished the 10th round of the course (with fisheries folks), next week we’ll finish the 11th round (sponsored by NSF, with museum systematists and taxonomists). The following week we’ll begin the 12th round (with National Park Service). The next month will be the 13th round (with Ecological Society of America). Several more rounds are coming together, heading into the summer.

I could say tons of great things about it, but the best things said to date are in the 4 minute video above featuring Nancy Knowlton and Dianna Padilla. Both have been part of the course from the start. Their set presentations in the course (on the Narrative Spiral and Proposal Writing, respectively) have become mainstays, as we continue to evolve our understanding of this incredibly powerful communications tool, the ABT Framework.

For details on running the course, contact us at the Story Circles website.

#188) THE DOBZHANSKY DANCE: Somebody smart is writing speeches for Biden

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NEWS FLASH: No president has ever given an inauguration speech like this. Somebody smart is writing speeches for Biden that have PUNCH. Not even Trump gave speeches like this.

WORDS.

 

IT’S THE FORM

Someday the NY Times and Washington Post will learn how to analyze the FORM of speeches instead of only CONTENT. They don’t seem to grasp that communication consists of two parts. The result is dull inductivist random walks like this one in the Washington Post where they just searched key words (any junior high school student could do the same).

But something is going on with the FORM of Biden’s speeches. His inauguration speech was unlike ANY other inauguration speech in form, and I’m willing to bet ANY speech from a president, ever. Total. All of them.

Even Trump, with all his bellicose bleetings, still produced speeches of mostly paragraphs. Just look at the structure below of Biden’s speech compared to a sample from one of Obama’s inauguration speeches. It’s fascinating.

 

DOIN’ THE DOBZHANSKY

The Dobzhansky Template is a tool to help find the one word theme at the core of a text. Whoever is writing Biden’s speeches, they found lots of one words for him to present.

Previous to Wednesday’s Inauguration speech I heard two speeches from Biden that made me sit up and say wow, something’s different here. The Narrative Index scores have not been that high (the Inauguration was an 18, see figure below), but they’ve had a punchiness to them that stands out.

Here are representative samples of the inauguration speeches of Obama and Biden. Whoever wrote the Biden speech, that person has my automatic respect, admiration and interest. Let’s hear more of it — way to make traditional dull communications punchy.

 

OBAMA:

 

BIDEN:

The Narrative Index is the ratio of BUTs to ANDs, multiplied by 100 to make it a whole number.

#186) The Banality of Evil: Stephen Miller has Lousy Narrative Intuition

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Trump speechwriter Stephen Miller is not just qualitatively dull — you can actually see his dullness in the narrative metrics of the speeches he writes. It’s been on display since the start of his speechwriting for Trump. The Democrats should hope he continues to be the (uninspiring, confused and narratively amateurish) voice of Trump.

DONALD TRUMP’S RNC ACCEPTANCE SPEECH, just like all of his speeches that are written by Stephen Miller, was dull, flaccid, and devoid of narrative strength. This is not just me saying this — it’s the numbers.

 

NARRATIVE METRICS REVEAL ALL

Communication has two parts: CONTENT and FORM. Everyone talks about the content of Trump’s speeches, but it’s the form of speeches that determine whether they have lasting impact. Or not.

There’s a new book about Trump’s speechwriter, Stephen Miller, titled, “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda.” The author, Jean Guerrero has an article in the NY Times yesterday discussing Miller’s speeches, but her focus is only on content. Which means there’s more to the story. Much more.

In 2015 I published my book, “Houston, We Have A Narrative” (University of Chicago Press) in which I first presented the ABT Framework. This led to two simple metrics for analyzing narrative structure which are:

NARRATIVE INDEX — the BUT/AND ratio

“AND” FREQUENCY (AF) — % of total words that are “and”

As a candidate, Trump’s values for the Narrative Index were exceptionally high (always above 20, frequently above 30) and his scores for the A.F. were impressively low (rarely above 3.0, sometimes even below the ideal value of 2.5).

I spent 2016 warning of the dangers of his communication skills. I teamed up with James Carville and we tried to explain this to the Hillary Clinton campaign, but hit the same brick wall everyone else did trying to communicate to them. Trump won. I ended up on Park Howell’s podcast, “The Business of Story,” telling about this which became one of his most popular episodes.

The poor communication skills of Clinton’s campaign were examined in painful detail in the 2017 bestseller, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign.” In contrast, Trump communicated skillfully right up until March of this year when he finally ran aground with the problem of split narratives (economy vs health, which Dr. Dianna Padilla and I quantified in May in an article in Medpage titled, “COVID Leadership: Trump vs Cuomo”).

So there’s been this shift in Trump’s communication dynamics, but it’s actually the second major shift. The first one took place back in 2016 once he secured the Republican nomination. It was the appointment of Stephen Miller as his main speechwriter.

 

STEPHEN MILLER: THE VOICE OF DULLNESS

In June, 2016 Trump secured the Republican nomination and two things occurred. First, he shifted to using a teleprompter for his speeches which previously had been wildly spontaneous and off-the-cuff. Second, he brought on Stephen Miller to write his more formal speeches.

From then on, his speeches fell largely into two groups:

FORMAL (written by Stephen Miller) – safe, boring, low N.I., high A.F.

INFORMAL (written by Trump or unscripted) – barn burning rants, high N.I., low A.F.

Look at the formal speeches — routinely below 10 for the N.I., often above 4.0 for the A.F. What that shows is the “And, And, And” structure which is largely non-narrative — just expositional.

Then look at the informal rants — rocketing up in the 40’s for the N.I., with the sparse use of “and” producing A.F. scores below 3.0. That is Trump at his most powerful when it comes to mass communication (and I’m not talking about communicating to the academics who are nauseated by him — I’m talking about the masses of America). The prevalence of the word “but” reflects the ABT (And, But, Therefore) narratively structured form.

 

THEREFORE … MY ABT STATEMENT ON STEPHEN MILLER

It’s very cut and dried. The bottom line is that when Stephen Miller is involved, there’s little narrative structure, just a lot of “And, And, And” (I had several friends text me during Trump’s RNC speech asking, “Doesn’t this seem like a lot of And, And, And?”)

But when Trump sidelines Miller and takes control, he’s very ABT — punching away, producing the version of him that his followers love. Which leads me to my own ABT about Stephen Miller:

Stephen Miller is indeed the voice of a lot of unpleasant content in Trump’s speeches AND those speeches are offensive to Democrats, BUT he’s not good — he has no grasp of narrative structure, THEREFORE Democrats should hope Miller continues to write Trump’s speeches.

BUT … watch out if Trump eventually stops using a speechwriter and reverts back to doing it all by himself. If that happens, it will not just be offensive content, it may be delivered in a dangerously powerful way.

Which means things will get ugly … -er.