5 OF THE MOST COMMON PROBLEMS WITH ABTs

Many people glance at the three words (And, But, Therefore) and think that’s the whole model.  It isn’t.  

Those are the three primary elements. Each one subdivides in two, making for the six elements of the secondary structure (as explained in detail below in item #5).  Once you are working at this level, things get more challenging.  Here are five of the most common mistakes we see in early drafts of ABTs.

1 SCOPE – You want to begin by setting the scope or scale of where you are working.  We call this first element the ORDINARY WORLD.  Some people start too broad, others too narrow.  You need to give it plenty of thought and figure it out just right.  It is a key piece of the FRAMING of the narrative.  

2 ASPIRATION –  Before you dive into the problem you will address, you want to establish what the ultimate goal is that you are working towards.  People are driven, first and foremost, by HOPE.  They hope to solve a problem and improve things.  Hope can be delicate so it needs to be established at the outset.  The most powerful tool for this is the IF/THEN clause.  You want to basically say, “We are working on THIS and IF we can succeed with it THEN we will be able to achieve the dream of …”  That is the HOPE.  It becomes the counterbalance to FEAR.  This is where it needs to be conveyed, lighting the fire of motivation, BEFORE jumping into the drama of the problem. (What you don’t want is to leave the HOPE message to the end, by then it’s too late, as this next item explains.)

3 IMPACT –  You don’t want to start with the problem. In order to have an impact, a narrative needs to cover an arc.  You want to start with what is good then arc into what is bad, and then eventually present what will be done to address it.  If you start with what is bad, you have nowhere to go.  Too many ABTs begin with DRAMA and THE PROBLEM.  In order to have an IMPACT, the big punch of THE PROBLEM needs to first be SET UP (the blue material).  

4 SINGULARITY –  “More is not more” when it comes to narrative dynamics.  The power of narrative is at its maximum with THE NUMBER ONE.  As soon as you move from one problem to two, you already begin to dilute the focus of the audience.  It is one of the most difficult challenges, but you have got to get your narrative down to THE SINGLE PROBLEM.  If you have multiple problems to address, that is okay, they just need to be done in a hierarchical fashion where there is still a single OVERARCHING problem inside of which all the rest is presented.

5 RATCHETING –  There are of course the three obvious elements of the ABT (And, But, Therefore), but at the deeper, more powerful level, each of these elements subdivide, creating a total of 6 elements.  With each it is a progression from the GENERAL to SPECIFIC.  

For the AND material, you go from the Ordinary World (GENERAL) to the IF/THEN (SPECIFIC).  For the BUT material, you go from the Emotional Statement of the Problem in 5 Words or Less (GENERAL) to the “Because” element (SPECIFIC).  For the THEREFORE material, you go from the simple bridge of “We are fixing this …” (GENERAL) to the “By” element laying out the actions to be taken (SPECIFIC).

When you have a finished draft of your ABT you need to go back and make sure all 6 of these elements are addressed as a series of three pairs in this “ratcheting” progression from GENERAL to SPECIFIC, GENERAL to SPECIFIC, GENERAL to SPECIFIC.

“NARRATIVE INTUITION” – This term was coined in the 2015 book Houston, We Have a Narrative. When you reach the point where you recognize all five of the items above and they make complete sense, you are beginning to show narrative intuition, the ultimate goal for powerful communication.