This transcript was autogenerated by Vimeo. Please contact info@talestoolkit.com to address any issues. Super excited to have Kendall Haven here today. Um, right at the start of tell's toolkit, right at the beginning before I'd even started my training, I was recommended to read Kendall's book and this is my third copy actually, 'cause I've given it out to so many people. And the first one was annotated very heavily. So I was kind of gutted not to get it back. But I feel like you've been quite a big part of the tell's toolkit journey, to be honest, Kendall. Um, I think just to kind of message out to all the teachers, like we all know that story is a super powerful tool, but what Kendall does is he really digs into why this is what actually happens, what's impacted. And I think as teachers, we have a job to fight for the joy of story to remain. And Kendall can be a huge support to help us with this. 'cause we all know how much our heads, like the research and the numbers that go behind it. Um, so Kendall is a master storyteller We always assume that connection. He's performed for over 7 million people worldwide. Uh, founder of the field of story science. Um, he's led research for the National Storytelling Association. Uh, he's internationally recognized as an expert on the neuroscience and structure of story. And he's a distinguished visiting scholar at Stanford Uni and John Hopkins University. Um, and he's acted as a story advisor working with a whole range of companies and agencies, including names that we'll know, like NASA, the Navy Climate Protection Campaign, Boeing, um mm-hmm. He's worked with corporate schools, libraries, governments. So there's so many things that Kendall has done. Um, he's published 34 books on the Science and Newsom story. This is my particular favorite one. Um, and he's won, uh, 20 major awards for his writing and performance in storytelling. So, what can I say? Um, Kendall Haven, you are the king of story research. So I'm gonna hand over to you today, um, 'cause I'm sure everybody wants to hear what you've got to say rather than me. But yeah. Welcome. Really, really excited to have you here today. Oh, thank you. And a joy to be here. Uh, yeah. And I, I have done research. Started the research in 1980. Well, I really started the research in 1984. Uh, took good long while ago, I had dropped out of the field. My degrees were in oceanography, and I had been working for one of the, uh, US National Research Science labs on, uh, the sort of the combination of energy and the ocean, and dropped out to become a storyteller. Okay. And of course, asked, started to ask the question, why do people listen to stories? Why do they bother to pay attention to stories? Uh, your attention is one of the most precious you have. Why do we bother so freely to pay to? So for the National Storytelling Association in the US and then the International Storytelling Center started doing research on why do people listen to stories. At the time, I wanted to know, because I was trying to make my living as a storyteller, and I needed to know why people would listen or wouldn't listen to my stories, so I'd have a better chance to get paid. Mm-hmm. Which is always nice when you're being a storyteller. What we'll do today, as a result of 40 years of research, including lots of live test audiences, incorporating research from now, 19 different related fields of science, uh, and then, um, the number of years of testing in fMRI and EEG labs where I would wire up audiences and literally watch their brains on story. And what I wanna show you really is not why story, why we should hold onto stories, why we should tell stories. What I really want to show you is that the human brain, I is hardwired, physically hardwired to make sense of the world in story terms. Mm-hmm. We, we we're, you know, the, we really are homo narratives. Mm-hmm. Story animals. We make sense of the world in story. We do it automatically every one of the, the students that you work with. Mm-hmm. And it has been tested, not by me, but by others in, in infants as young as six, eight months old. And they can show eye movement, facial expressions that they're responding to those same exact story terms that hu uh, that adults do, that, that we all do. The problem is, it's like so many things that you do, you don't do it consciously. You do your story work at a subconscious automatic level. Um, but we do that with most things. Your conscious brain, your conscious mind is the slowest processor in your head. You have a number of other processors that are all thousands of times faster. And so anything that really is important to you, like having a heartbeat, uh, breathing, you, you don't stop and put it in your conscious mind and say, should I grab my heart and beat again? No, you, you, you put it in another process that can take care of it much more efficiently. I mean, other examples, tying shoelaces. You all know how to tie shoelaces. Uh, maybe you go to more exciting parties than I do, but it's a party game that we wind up playing a lot, where you give people a piece of paper and say, write down in temporal sequential order exactly what you do with each thumb and finger when you tie shoelaces, have people write it down, then pass their instructions to someone else who must follow those instructions. Literally. And exactly. And no one ever gets shoelaces tied. Mm-hmm. We all know how to do it, but you don't know how to do it consciously. It's the same with stories. The idea of education, it seems to me, should be at a most fundamental level to expose at a conscious level, those students, to those subconscious automatic story elements that they use automatically all the time as the basis for all of their learning, all of their experience. And then they become conscious masters of those elements. And it makes a world of difference. So what I wanted to do was zip through, and today I'm gonna use some slides. Mm-hmm. Show those, those to you. And, and, and then wind up with a couple of games that you can play with your students that are amazingly fun and amazingly productive. This is a great way to, by the way, if you know, if you want on the side start writing, um, you know, short picture book stories, uh, have your students help you with the stories, build up the stories, and then say, oh, that was a good one. And you can take it and actually write it down and, and work on the details some. And, uh, and you'll have a constant supply of stories for yourself. Anyway, let's go ahead and get started on that. And I will do the little things that I gotta do to… Yeah, yeah. Sounds good there. Alright. Now, so that's our topic. Um, really your students' brains on story. That's what we wanna look at. Uh, the key question, and there are two of them, and, and they have to do with the functioning of the brain. How does the brain make sense out of incoming information? And how do we create meaning from it? What the, a lot of the focus of my research the last 25 years has been to show that we do that in story terms. We do that using story elements, which means that teaching those elements and exposing students to those elements, which are all story elements. And the best way to do it is through working with them on stories is the fundamental basis for all of their learning. Mm-hmm. One more demonstration of this before we go back to that one. We assume that it makes sense. We have this make sense mandate. We assume that things are gonna make sense and force them to make sense using story structures. That's how we make sense of the world in story terms. Uh, one more demo, picture yourself at some event, um, I dunno, conference a, a a, a big party, a social event somewhere. And you overhear this conversation. You don't know who the two people are. You just overhear the conversation. Person says, hi, John. Person says, I'm not here. You never saw me. I'm not here. Person chuckles. And says, oh, it's okay. Carol's gone home. Now, if you heard that make perfect sense to you, you would assume person is in fact, John. And what John is saying is keep it quiet. There's certain people I don't want to bump into today. And person understands the situation, says, oh, Carol's gone home. You're safe. You don't have to, you don't have to hide, right? Mm-hmm. Everyone interprets it that way. That's not what it says. To make it make sense to you without any conscious thought or reservation. You completely reversed the factual statements. That person made you reversed. Every one of them did it in a heartbeat, did it without conscious thought. Why? Because this makes sense. Mandate forced you to make it make sense. And that overrides literally accepting the information that you get from the source material. Person is saying, shh, I'm not here. Maybe they've figured out how to project an avatar. I don't know. Um, maybe person, me. Person is hallucinating. And person is just on the phone and really isn't there? I don't know. But the fact is, no one ever stops to consider that what person is saying is possible and factually correct. Even though it's what they're making those statements. It happens all the time. Automatically, subconsciously, every time a human being perceives information through one of their sensory organ eyes or ears. Uh, back to the first one, real, the first demo real quickly. Uh, here we are. The fact is, there really is no connection. Person is asking about a person. John. Person is talking about a car. There is no connection between them until you force one. That's this make sense, mandate in action. It is completely driven and controlled by story terms. So those elements then are worth taking some time to look at, let's now go back forward. So the question is, what is the story? What makes the story a story? Right? Again, this is from the research. This is, this is, we're able to ferret this out both from, uh, oh, uh, you know, about sources of research material that I've put together. And then would go into the labs to test it and watch audiences and be able to isolate certain information and see how they responded to it. We find eight elements, informational elements that really drive all of our understanding. They are all the core elements of what we would normally call effective story structure. So let's start with a sentence. He went to the store. Good story. Willing to accept that story. Uh, and of course the answer is, well, no, it's not a really good story. And most people then say, oh, whoa, I've got some kids who that's about what they would come up with. Mm-hmm. That's because in their minds, they come up with a full story. Uh, and once they've seen the story in their minds, they'd let a very limited vocabulary and, and a and a limited verbiage of the story represent the whole story in their mind. Although if they said he went to the store verbally, in their minds, they would, I'm sure I guarantee it 'cause I've tested it, see a whole lot more. But let's say, what do you want to know in order to turn that into a good story? The two most common questions that come up, uh, are first who's he. Mm-hmm. Although that's not usually the first one that comes up. The first one that that comes up most prevalently is why do you go to the store? What's he after? Um, so let's set the he who's he aside, because at least we have a, a placeholder for character. So what you're asking is, who are the characters in this story? We have a placeholder for that. The pronoun. He, let's go to the other one and we'll start there. Why do you go to the store? What you're looking for is a goal. Here are those elements. The first couple are gonna refer, relate to the character. We'll come back to those at the end. Goal. Goal. What is a goal? A goal is simply what a character is after what they technically what they need or want to do or get in the story. It's not what they do, it's not what they accomplish. Mm-hmm. It's what they're after. That's a goal. A goal needs to be something tangible and physical. Happiness is a terrible story goal. 'cause no one knows what it looks like. Mm-hmm. We want our goals to be something concrete. Um, a quick example on goal, how powerful it is and how essential it is. Although we consciously don't think about it a lot. Here's a paragraph. Um, I mean, take time. You can read it. I'll read it quickly out loud. Sally. Let loose a team of goers. The plan backfired when a dog chased them away. She then threw a party, but her guest failed to bring their motorcycles. Furthermore, her stereo system wasn't nearly loud enough. Sally spent the next day looking for a peeping tom, but was unable to find one in the yellow pages. Mostly. We don't have yellow pages anymore. The classified part of the phone books, obscene phone calls, gave her some hope until the number was changed. It was the insulation of a blinking neon light across the street that finally did the trick. Sally framed the ad for that light that she found in the classified section of the newspaper, and now has it hanging on her wall. Does it make sense? No. Do you know what this is? Action. It's a plot. It's just plot. Children often want to do as they develop stories, think this happened and then that happened, and then that happened. And the stories go nowhere. Stories are not about what happens. They're about the characters to whom they happen. And some very specific character information, most first and foremost of which is goal. So let's create a goal for, you know, um, for Sally. Mm-hmm. Sally hates the woman who moved in next door. Uh, she's decided she wants to drive this woman out of the neighborhood. So she puts together a plan. She's going to invite a bunch of bikers to a party. She's gonna let loose a bunch of gophers. She's going to find a peeping tom and a blinking neon light, right? Everything in the story now has a goal. It's goal driven. It makes sense because there's a reason for it to exist in the story. That's a goal. Okay? We often say that story is about character. Character, character, character, character, right? And it is. The problem is what you have to remember is that story is not about character as a noun. Story is about character as a verb. It's about what they do in the pursuit of the goal. Okay? So when we say story is about character, we don't mean description. We mean story is about the character in action in pursuit of the goal. Character's pursuit of the goal is the plot. The goal tells you what they want. The plot is what they do in pursuit of what they want. So all of a sudden now these two things tie together. In fact, what we get is a structure that looks like this. The character wants to achieve a goal. They start taking action. And the, well, the greatest danger is that, that, uh, you know, a big delivery truck is gonna come roaring through and you will be flattened and kill Mm-hmm. That's danger. Risk is a measure of how likely it is. If you stop and look both ways and there are no cars coming, and you quickly step out of the street and then step back on the curb, danger didn't change. It's still that you'll get flattened by a big, uh, you know, a, a a huge delivery truck and you'll be killed. But the risk is virtually zero because you look both ways and there weren't any cars or trucks coming. Excitement is literally measured as the product of risk times danger. But you can increase either of those. Wanna make it more, wanna increase risk, fine. Put a blindfold on some of them. Have them cross a, a, a busy eight lane street, um, with the blindfold on and risk goes way up. Danger hasn't changed. Want to change danger? Fine. Put the blindfold on them, have 'em cross the street. But it's really just a street that is reserved for, young children on tricycles. And they may get hit, um, but it's just gonna be with a tricycle. It's not gonna hurt very much. So danger's gone way down. The risk hasn't changed. You see the difference between the two, they are independent and they are amazingly powerful tools for controlling excitement and that, and in controlling tension in the story. And as they say, as goes tension. So goes attention. So these are your moment to moment tools for controlling audience, attention, risk, and danger. Uh, the truth is that problems and complex risk and danger, they're always there. They, and they drive stories. And I don't mean stories necessarily about failure to have more risk and more danger. That those are just challenges along the road towards success. So, um, those risk and danger create excitement. They create tension, they create drama, but they don't necessarily go together. They're independent. You can, when we talk about influence, they're the levels of influence. They, they control because they control tension and they control attention. They control the way that you hold the audience. So, um, let's skip through a couple of slides. Uh, any any danger. We'll do, uh, emotional, mental, social, physical. That's where you put in. What could go wrong? It's the danger. And then just how likely is it? That's the risk. So let's create, uh, and, and these are for most stories of everyone's favorite dangers. Let's create some real danger here. Um, we have the butterfly, uh, uh, and the butterfly hises, you can't come in. And then with a high pitch whistle, the butterfly symon to swar summoned the swarm of Africanized killer bees who blocked the front door and threatened his life. Now we've got some danger, right? So he crept under the back door, went in, got his milk, he's no dummy, he's not gonna face all those killer bees. Uh, went under the back door, got his milk, went home. The end. If we're gonna put this danger in the story, audiences demand that characters face it or deal with it. So what we're missing still is motives. Why in the world would he deal with Africanized killer bees? Um, if he's gonna go in the front door and, and struggle and force his way through, motive winds up being one of the most important of all of the elements. Why? Because we judge events and characters by what, how we interpret their motives, not their goals. We can excuse almost any goal if the motives behind it are, um, what we think are socially acceptable, normative. This is where values, beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, um, fears, all of those internal elements come in. They come in as the, as what drives us to go after goals, drives us to do things that are motives. Watch what happens to the way that you relate to the character. He in this so little, little story we're building, as we put in a motive for him. Um, he went to the store for some milk that would keep his deathly ill son alive until the doctor arrived. That's a motive. Now, I also added in, I wanted him was we said we wanted him to struggle and not to go around to the back door. So I added in also that he went under the front door and beat his wristed his life, swatting his way through, uh, through the attack. The killer bees that struggle. But look at the effect of the motive. Then if he is risking his life, threatening his, um, if he's risking his life for the bees facing the bees, we need to have a motive for it. And as soon as we give him a motive that, uh, in this case support his son, who's definitely ill son, we're not quite sure what that illness is. That, uh, a definitely illness that can be solved by a quart of milk. But we, we'll go with it for the sake of the story. We now have the effect of motive. And it's a very powerful effect. How do you get to motive? Motive comes from the why question. Why'd they do that? Why is that? Why'd they do that? Three and four year olds, they learned that the why question is one of the most important in the world because it gives them access to motive, gives them access to the, the the thinking that goes behind actions. Um, so motive. Now we put in struggles. We've, that was the slapping his way through the, through all the killer bees motive. We've skipped one and two. That's character and character traits. So let's put those in. It turns out when I say character positions, it turns out there are a couple of character positions that our brains are automatically set to fill with the available characters in a story. Who's the story about main character? One? Um, who, who's the bad guy? Antagonist, right? Antagonist is the embodiment of the biggest single obstacle blocking the character. Um, and then who, who really, who do I identify with? Identity, character. And one more that turns out to be very important, although it doesn't show up in any of the classical literature, and that's by name called the climax character. It really is the power position. Every audience member is going to assess for themselves. Who has the power to make this story come out the way it's supposed to come out? And they will blame that power character if they don't make it come out the way that that audience member thinks they should. Um, so those are the character positions. Character traits are just any bit of information, any bit of detail, really about the character that makes that character memorable more technically makes the audience able to remember who the character is, right? Memorable in that way. Not necessarily a good way, but just be able to identify, oh, that's who that character is. It's character and character traits. Um, so let's, um, we need to create some, some in information about he who went to the store that would make him actually interesting. What kind of information does that? Anything, anything that differentiates this character from the other characters around them. Anything will do something they own something, they possess something, something that they do a job, a position, something from their background. So what they're afraid of, what they're not afraid of, uh, their habits, their quirks, their what they're good at, what they're bad at. Anything will do, uh, as long as it makes them into an individual. So I got carried away and, um, went wild with, I now named him Bob. Kindly a, a kindly bald man ever since. His severe reaction to a was thing when, when he was 10, uh, lurched to the store on his skateboard, using his crutches to propel him down the street. Since one leg and one arm were in cast after his coke bottle, bottom glass thick, fell off leaving him virtual, virtually blind and causing him to tumble down the front stairs. I just wanted to make him give him, I wanted to increase risk and danger is what I wanted to do by diminishing his ability. If you think he is less able to confront the killer bees, that increases risk, right? Because he is less able to confront the bees. So he then is more likely to wind up being stung severely. Um, anyway, not a great story, but the elements are there. What are those elements? Let's look. We're missing one. And the last one is details. What are details? Anything your senses would record if you were there live. That's what details are. What are senses would record what it looks like, sounds like, feels like, smells, like, uh, that's it. So cha And they can be about the characters. They can be our, our sensory details. They can be about the scenes, what it seemed look like, sound like, smell, like, feel like, or about the events. That's details. And there they are. We have character who is of interest to us, has a goal backed by some motive, blocked by problems and conflicts that create risk and danger. Character then must struggle to get through and past problems and conflicts facing risk and danger to achieve a goal that's important to them. That really is a definition of a story. And those are the elements. Uh, and now what are they? If you wanted to put them in writing, there they are. Um, those are the eight. The more you use those elements consciously, cognitively with your students, the more they become consciously aware of how their brains automatically work and function. And the more able they are to c to consciously, intentionally use those elements in their own creations and as part of their own development, their own learning. You want the short version of it. Here it is blank. A character needed blank, a goal because blank motive, but problems and conflicts, risk and danger. So they have to struggle and finally come back and resolve the goal at the end of the story. That's the short version of those eight elements. Now, I was gonna put those to work couple, I wanna show you two quick games, amazingly fun, simple work with any age group. First, the big three plus here are the big three. You get three students up, volunteers go to the first one. You say, okay, we're gonna make up a story. Glass is gonna make up a story. Who is this story gonna be about? Rules. It must be a fictional never before made up character. It can't be someone that they know, someone in the room. It can't be a cartoon character that they all know must be a fictional character, never before made up. Does not have to be a human being. Doesn't even have to be a alive, could be a teacup. As long as we can then ascribe, um, some agency to that object. Okay? First one, you go to the second one, you say, alright, in this story, what does blank the character want or need to do or get in this story? And the key words are want or need, and what are they gonna, uh, and then they'll say, what? Well, in this story, the rules are that has to be something that is physical, tangible. Uh, it, it doesn't have to necessarily make sense for the character. If we have a teacup, uh, the teacup could want to be president, you know, I don't know, prime minister of Canada. I, I, I don't know. Um, as long as it's something that can be visualized, can be is tangible. So you look the third, the third cha the third student. And you say, all right, blank character wants blank. What, whatever, uh, the second person created, you say, so how come they don't have it? What's keeping blank from getting that? And then the, those are the triggers then for a story. Then you, you, you go, um, we'll go to the plus part. So the plus part, this is when we really expand the story, come back to, to, uh, character number two and say, or student number two, and say, no, why? Why do they want that? Um, you then start to expand to the whole class and let them go on other elements that could be keeping the character from the goal. What literally you are doing is this first character's creating first student's creating a main character. Second one's creating goal. Third are creating conflicts and problems. And the why question creates motives. And let the class then go always going back to those, to those, those elements. And they will create a great story that works every time. In fact, what usually happens is you need to do crowd control because pretty soon every every every student in the room can see in their head the way the story ought to go. And they're all fighting to take control of the story. Why? Because those core elements create the story. It's those core elements, character goal problems and conflicts, motives. And then you play out the story with the risk and the danger that those, um, uh, that those problems and conflicts create. And with the struggles to deal with problems and conflicts, it's so simple. Um, and yet it is so profoundly revealing because it focuses them consciously on what they intuitively, subconsciously, automatically do. Anyway, the other one is this. Uh, the first time I tried this game, I was working with middle school, high school students, um, in a summer course at uc, Berkeley. And I had no idea if it would actually work. And I was amazed at how well it worked. I've now tried it with groups. I guess I've never gone below four year olds, okay? There might've been some three year olds in the room, mostly fours. Uh, and, and, and literally then and up. So create a character and an action action. It can be as simple as, and when we create a character, what we wanna do is identify at least a name, what we're gonna call the character, um, species or object, what whatever they are, and some sense of relative age. And then that's kind of the minimal of it. So, you know, young, young John walked to the corner, uh, walked down to the corner past his house, the character in action. So have someone create that and then ask why. And no matter what they answer, you say you just keep going with a why question. Yeah. And what will happen is they're going to create the backstory, who this character is, why they want it, where it came from, and they'll start to identify all of those elements. And as soon as they create more and more the backstory, every time someone creates some backstory element, they'll project the, the story going forward to incorporate and deal with that element. They create a why. You know, if one of the questions is, well, um, you know, so why do you do that? Well, because he is afraid of going out of the house, and this is the first time he is ever gone out of the house. And, uh, and so he is trying to see if he can make it all the way to the corner. Well, now we've got a, we've got some, uh, some, uh, fear identified that everyone is gonna project forward through the rest of the story. And it's amazing if you just keep saying why, why, why'd they do that? Why did they want that? Why did they think that? Um, why are they afraid of that? Why did they, you know, why did they say that? What? I don't care what happens. The why question drives students into creating the story elements. And you can keep then track of those elements, character, goal, motive, problems, conflict, blah, blah, blah, as as they're creating them. Uh, and they will amaze themselves at what they're able to create. Uh, so two games, real simple ones or don't require, don't, don't, don't require a lot of prep, don't require you to, um, write a lot on the board. But again, what we're creating here is character gold problems. And, and then by keep asking the storyline, by di diving more into the background of the story, we're creating the storyline going forward. And it's amazing how simple it is, and yet how powerful it is it focusing in on those elements that really drive story. Now notice in both of these games, what I didn't ask is what is really any questions directly about what happens? Stories are character based. The reason we have events in the story is so characters have an opportunity to struggle to achieve goal. So we need events, but the events are dependent. The things that are independent are character, goal, motive, those elements. Um, and of, of them, the one that it should come last in terms of the development is the struggles what they do. Kids always want to jump far too early to the events, to what happens. And they get stuck if you get them in the habit of thinking character first, character goal, motive first, the stories never get stuck because they've got the heart and soul of the story. And then they can develop and play with it as they want. Anyway, that is what I really wanted to present those core elements of story, they come from the way the human brain is physically configured and programmed to make sense of the world and create meaning from it. They give you some very specific, powerful tools that are so easy and fun to use, and yet that are very profoundly powerful with your students. Mm-hmm. That's the idea that I wanted to get at. Um, so for all of you, good luck with your stories and have a good time playing with those elements and with your stories. Mm-hmm. That was brilliant Kendall. I think, um, one of the things that stuck out for me as well was when you're playing the why game, I feel like children are very good at doing that naturally, aren't they? Because often, often when you're working with children or you've got children Always, You'll always get that. Why? Well, Why? Yeah, why, why? And, and, and really that's what they're after. Yeah. They, they, they, they're trying to form a story in their heads and they're missing these big pieces. Yes. And not sure about goals. They're not sure about and, and goal, it's goals and motives that they're really going after. Why do we do that? Why do you want me, why do I have to go to bed? Why do I have to work my teeth? Why do I have to eat my vegetables? Why, why, why, why what? And and they're trying to understand the, the story. And it really is the, I'll say it this way, when it first hit me that that's what they were doing. Mm-hmm. That I, when, when I first connected it, I mean, it was like one of those aha moments where you say, oh, they're not just annoying, they're really trying to figure out the world. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and it's big for them, like you said, like, you know, they're doing something really fun. They're playing with the toys downstairs, and all of a sudden it's like, we want you to go and brush your teeth, but why? What, what, what are we gonna do that for? Like, yeah. I, I get it. What, what would be, what, what in the world would I want to do that for? Yeah. Uh, it, yeah, it is, and it, and it's about understanding, understanding life, understanding the world around them. That's it. Yeah. No, it's really interesting that, um, just thinking about, obviously the work we do at Tels Toolkit and we have the character set and problem solution that we use, right? Yeah. How would you elicit some of this stuff that you're talking about through those stories with the youngest children? So we work mainly in early years. Like how would you, right. How would you, obviously the character, the danger, the risk, those things. Car character. Yeah. Um, don't, don't use the vocabulary goal, motive, risk, danger, uh, uh, it's what what are they trying to do? What are they after? Why, why, you know, what, what do they want? What do they need? Three year olds or, um, certainly by three year olds, they're good at, they're good at those. Uh, and then for the conflict and problems, ooh, what, what, what might go wrong? Yes. What might go wrong? Uh, that's a And then do you think, do you think it'll happen? Do you think it'll happen? That's a risk, that's a risk question. Um, what, what would happen to, what would happen to them is a danger question. Do you think it'll really happen? Do you think you will, will it, will you think it'll really ha those are, so that's risk and danger questions. Um, solution is, you know, again, that's resolving the solution is to resolve the goal. So we never really know what the kids want to get to the solution. They're very loyal to their characters and wanna make life easy for them. And, and don't, and it takes a long time for them to learn and believe that stories are about making life miserable and and awful for characters while, while they have to struggle in face risk and danger. And it's just, it's just grim. Um, but that's a learned, that's a learned thing. Uh, but the key, they can, if they can go character and before they go to problem go golden motives Yes. What are they after? Why are they after it? And then let the problems will always fall in line within that structure. And then resolution of the problems then leads to goal achievement. So they have a way to end the story. They take care of the problem and they get, you know, whatever it was they were after in the first place. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Because often what you find that teachers will do or practitioners will do, is that you have the character and when you get to the setting, it's then about having a bit of fun with the character and doing something. They enjoy something they like, you know, they like running or swimming or dancing or sleeping or whatever it is. Yeah. I would love those things. Yeah. Whatever is, comes in and interferes with what they're wanting to do, which I suppose is their, is their purpose. Right? And, and I think often when you do that, when you say like, why and what happened? And tell me more. And, you know, I can see that, you know, that might make you feel a certain way. And what then those things lead to children come up with their own ideas and their own solutions and their own stories, which is, which is just a, a great tool for life ab Absolutely. Absolutely. And conversation. Yeah. It, it's true. And, and so many parents feel like that's their job. They're supposed to, they're supposed to solve problems. Yes. Uh, you know, and say, okay, here's the answer. Here's the answer. Do this. Um, and, and, and so often the best answer is not in the form of an answer, but at the best answer is to, to let the child explore how they, you know, their, their own their own answer anyway. Yeah. I agree with you completely. That's true. Yeah. No, it's great. Um, just to kind of finish off, I know one of the things that kind of comes out through your books and your writing and the knowledge that you have is very much about the impact of story and why it is such a massive tool for everything. I mean, for learning and development, for change. Yeah. For, I mean, I dunno, if you just wanna, I, this is massive question just in terms for the teachers and that people are listening, like, just, uh, why should we do storytelling with children? What, why is it important? What is the, what is the change that happens when we do this? Alright. Uh, so question is why do storytelling? I, I know in many schools and school districts, storytelling is sort of held out as a carrot. If you're really good and do all your work today, at the end of the day, I'll tell you a story, it's the other way around. Mm-hmm. Because we can now very concretely demonstrate that our brains are hardwired to make sense of the world. And, and that includes math and science and, um, every topic, every subject that there is in story terms, the more we initially work on the story part, the more we are literally working on and developing students' ability to tackle and master every aspect of learning. Story isn't a separate topic. It is at the heart and soul of all human learning. It's the way we structure and make sense out of information. Mm-hmm. So understand that first, and it facilitates whatever direction that child wants to go in, in life. It's amazing how central story, those elements of story. And, and, and that cognitive conscious story thinking is to the way that the human brain operates. It seems to me that that raises it up to a very central element and, and, and a central pillar, an underpinning of all education. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that makes me think as well, Kendall, is that, that I know my childhood is very different from a lot of children nowadays. And I think that storytelling, uh, maybe is kind of eked out a little bit sometimes by things like screen time children not being able to play out as much as they used to. Um, I mean, I was always playing out on the street, making up stories, building things, doing things with my friends. Yep, Yep. Like play out in the streets anymore. And the same way. And, and obviously there's childhood is quite different nowadays. I know that in my childhood, I had, my mom was a great storyteller and it was a huge thing for, she was always making up stories in the car and digging holes on the beach and taking it into places for sand fair to live. And there was always stories from my mum, but then there was a huge part of my life that was making stories with my friends. So, so I think as practitioners in, in schools, I think, I think there's an importance for us to keep that going and to give that a place in, in school, If you want your child to, to learn to run, what do they have to do? They have to run. If you want your child to do something physical, you know, of course you say, well, of course you gotta go do it. To make, if story is so central to the human brain and the human thinking, If you want a new human being to be able to think and function, they need to exercise that most fundamental element of their mental processing story. How do you do it? You tell stories, you share stories, model stories. So they gotta get it somewhere. Yes. It's not that their brains won't still work on story, it's that they won't be cognitively consciously in control of those stories, uh, because they'll be formed subconsciously and automatically. And because they haven't developed that awareness of those elements and, and of the, the structural parts of story, um, they'll be subject to the, the sort of the whims of that subconscious story. Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta come somewhere. It's gotta be developed somewhere. It, it, it is essential for a human being if they're going to be a successful, functioning human being to understand at some level, consciously those story elements. Um, and it's not something that can be overdone. Yes. It's not you, you know, you, you worry about, well, you gotta be, you gotta drink water, so drink a lot of water. Well, there, there's a limit to it. You, you can overdo it and drink too much water. Uh, you can overdo anything. I, I have yet to see any human being who overdid stories. Yes. So we're, but it's very prevalent to see groups that, that underdeveloped, uh, and we're underexposed to story and, and look at the negative impact of that on, on their lives. Yeah, that's true. Um, brilliant Cavin, right? It's come up to the, uh, Kendall, sorry it is come up to the end of time now. Um, but, but a massive thank you. A massive thank you for kind of coming and talking to us. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah. It's been, it's been great. There's been some fantastic messages there for people. Is there anything you'd like to leave everybody with? I ought to do it with a story. Um, and yet I hadn't, uh, I hadn't really, um, your, I think if I was gonna leave people with a thought, it, it is this, you are a storyteller. Why do we know that? Because you're a human being and you're still breathing. And that's, so the question isn't, are you a storyteller? The only question is, how comfortable are you consciously controlling the stories? The idea of these story elements is to give you concrete tools that are really simple to use, that let your natural storytelling come out. Mm-hmm. Um, celebrate the fact that you are a storyteller because you, you are so are all of the students you work with. And the idea of working in a, in a classroom setting with students on story is to give them some initial simple tools to help them express the stories that naturally want to come out. 'cause they automatically do. Mm-hmm. And you'll find that, uh, it makes for an amazing, an amazing experience both for them and most likely for you along the way. Mm-hmm. Brilliant. Yeah. Big thank you, Kendall. It's been really good talking to you, so I really enjoyed it. And to you. And to you. And good luck with all your stories. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of getting it out there, getting the stories into schools, so, yeah. Good. Yeah. So yeah. Lovely to meet you!