StoryPulsePrototypeSay it so that
something changes.
Rework your message so people remember and act on your ideas.
- Grounded in how attention actually behaves. Immersion neuroscience · Paul Zak
- The story does the persuading. PNAS 2025 · preregistered · 1,485 people
- Already measured on your own films. 35 readings · Patient Impact pilot
- Built on 20 years of storytelling for global brands. Casual Films
What are you making, and who for?
This tells me the pace to time it at, how long to hold you to, and how a room like that tends to listen.
What do you want them to do?
Every piece of communication aims to change something. The clearer you are about the change you’re after, the better your chances of making it happen.
Neither of these changes the score. They change the delivery notes at the end: what to let the story carry, and what to say once in your own words.
One behaviour: something you want the audience to start doing as a matter of course, not a task they tick off once. Leaving this blank will undermine the effectiveness of your message.
How much feedback do you want?
You can change your mind later. Quick gives you the reading and the cut. The others stop and ask you about your weakest points first.
When something is wrong, what should I do?
You can switch this at any point, on the screen where the checks appear.
Talk me through it
Long. Unedited. Don’t make it presentable. Everything after this is subtraction, and subtraction needs something to work on.
The part you left out
Take things away
Every line is scored for whether a person is in it. Tap a line to cut it and watch the trace at the top move. The trace rises where a human being is present and falls where the story turns into a situation, so most pieces get stronger as they get shorter: what is left has more of a person in it.
How to deliver it
The words are yours. The lines in brackets are directions to yourself: where to slow down, where to stop, where to say nothing. You don’t read them out.
On a phone the print sheet opens: choose Save to Files to keep the PDF, or share it straight into an email. On a laptop, choose Save as PDF as the destination.
The engine reads structure, not meaning, so it will get some pieces badly wrong. Saying so here is more useful to the pilot than a good score is.