The Narrative Gym for Politics: Introducing the ABT Framework for Political Communication and Messaging

By Randy Olson and Dave Gold

How do you craft your campaign’s central message? What does a Christmas tree have to do with it? How do you provide leadership through narrative? And how do you simply not bore or confuse voters?

Introducing the ABT (And, But, Therefore) narrative framework; a simple three-word tool for political communications and messaging that cuts through the noise of today’s information-saturated society. It is powerful AND may seem obvious, BUT most of your opponents don't know how to use it, THEREFORE ... let us fill you in on this secret little communications weapon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randy Olson
• Release date: Feb 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005900939

Randy Olson

Randy Olson earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University and achieved tenure at the University of New Hampshire before resigning and moving to Hollywood, obtaining an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California School of Cinema, and embarking on a second career as a filmmaker. Since film school he has written and directed the critically acclaimed films Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus (Tribeca, '06, Showtime) and Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy (Outfest, '08), and co-founded The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, a partnership between scientists and Hollywood to communicate the crisis facing our oceans.

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THE NARRATIVE GYM

FOR POLITICS

THE NARRATIVE GYM FOR POLITICS:  

Introducing the ABT Framework for Political Communication and Messaging

By Randy Olson and Dave Gold

THE NARRATIVE GYM FOR POLITICS:

Introducing the ABT Framework For

Political Communication and Messaging

Randy Olson

Dave Gold

Copyright © by Prairie Starfish Press

January 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the author at [e-mail]

Book Cover Design by ebooklaunch.com

Edited by Adina Yoffie

ISBN: 9798789063293

The mistake of my first couple of years was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right, AND that’s important, BUT the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people … (THEREFORE) …

—Barack Obama, 2012

CHAPTER ONE - Welcome to the Narrative Gym

Hi there, and welcome to the Narrative Gym, your resource for powerful communication, messaging, and (following the recommendation of President Obama on the previous page) telling a story to the gen eral public.

The Narrative Gym is a fun place AND it will give you the narrative strength you need for powerful communication, BUT it doesn’t physically exist; it’s just our way of approaching the whole topic of narrative structure, THEREFORE we’re inviting you into more of a state of mind and a way of looking at things that may well change your entire view of the world. We like to say that the narrative part of the brain is like a muscle that needs to be conditioned over time and kept in shape.

If you look at the cover of this book you’ll see the most important prop in the Narrative Gym: the ABT dumbbell. If you invest enough time working out with the ABT, you’ll eventually attain the ultimate goal, which is the development of narrative intuition. This refers to the point where you can just feel how material should be assembled in a way that neither bores nor confuses people, but, rather, activates, engages, and even motivates them.

We believe the development of narrative intuition is so important that there’s no time to waste in helping you become narratively fit. Towards that end, we’ve made this book short and to the point.

There’s an acronym you’ll find these days in online discussions when people post lengthy rants. Immediately afterwards, someone will write, TL;DR, which means, Too Long; Didn’t Read.

We’re hoping your response to this book won’t be that, but, instead, JR;TRI, which means, Just Right; Totally Read It.

The work we present here is a collaboration between the two of us—Randy, a scientist-turned-filmmaker, and Dave, a veteran Democratic Party political strategist. Let’s begin by having Dave address something on the cover of this book that needs explaining.

WHY IS THERE A CHRISTMAS TREE ON THE COVER OF THIS BOOK?

(FROM DAVE GOLD)

It was nearly 30 years ago that a metaphor featuring a Christmas tree helped teach me that nothing in campaign messaging makes sense except in the light of storytelling.

It is storytelling, not position papers, process arguments, or issues, that is the key to effective campaign communication.

The lesson came on my first day as a newly minted direct-mail consultant, after I had worked on a presidential campaign and run two successful Congressional re-election campaigns. As my new boss—who, in time, became my mentor—walked me through the process of constructing a fundraising re-solicitation mailing for a U.S. Senate client, I attentively took notes and eagerly asked what issues I should emphasize.

Oh, issues, tissues, he spat out. Issues are to a campaign message what ornaments are to a Christmas tree. Ornaments make the tree more festive, but if you don’t have a tree, it doesn’t matter how many ornaments you have; you don’t have a Christmas tree. For a campaign, the Christmas tree is its narrative frame.

The lesson, put simply, is that if you don’t have a central narrative, you don’t have an effective campaign message. It doesn’t matter how many issue papers you have put forward or how sophisticated your targeting is, no narrative = no clear message.

One political figure who understands this dynamic is former President Barack Obama. In an interview with Rolling Stone on the day after Donald Trump’s stunning 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, Obama observed that Democrats need to rethink our storytelling … [and] make it more interesting and more entertaining and more persuasive.

In the nearly 30 years since I was taught the importance of storytelling, I have sought every opportunity to make the case that storytelling is the key to winning campaign messaging. Over those same years, a broad consensus has emerged among campaign professionals around the importance of controlling the narrative, but, all too often, that has meant trying to control the issue agenda—the ornaments—not controlling the campaign’s narrative structure—the Christmas tree.

SPEAK SOFTLY, BUT CARRY A BIG NARRATIVE STICK

Knowingly or not, every campaign involves two narratives: Your opponent presents a narrative. You present a different narrative.

What is essential, however, is that your narrative include an attack component as well as your positive message.

As famed political strategist James Carville said in 1990, It’s hard for somebody to hit you when you’ve got your fist in their face.

Your basic challenge is that you need your narrative to be more powerful. If all you are doing is presenting positions on issues, you’d better hope your opponent is making the same mistake.

So that leads to two essential questions:

· What is a narrative?

· How do you make yours more powerful?

I discovered a simple but powerful definition of this word narrative in Randy Olson’s 2015 book, Houston, We Have a Narrative. He defines narrative as the series of events that occur in the search for the solution to a problem. As he points out, all good stories have a problem/solution dynamic at their core.

A murder mystery, for example, is just an exercise in solving