Story-based Strategy

What is story-based strategy?

Story-based strategy is a participatory approach that links movement building with an analysis of narrative power and places storytelling at the center of social change.

Every practitioner defines it in their own way.

Click Arrows for More

“Story-based strategy is a method of investigating the myths we believe, build and participate in. Bringing intentionality to the words we use and the assumptions we uplift or unearth, we use tools to take apart dominant narratives and construct the stories that will get us closer to liberation, placing our audience in the front row and inviting them to see and build the future we believe we deserve.”

Ruby Pinto • Co-Founder & Creative Director at Shred Magazine • AT2019

“SBS is a framework to help you figure out your campaign’s narrative strategy. It’s composed of tools or worksheets that you can use to analyze the opposition’s story, the current popular narrative about your issue, and develop a way of pitching or talking about your issue that will win over the folks you need to win!”

Kedar Reddy • Founder at Organiz • AT2019

“SBS is a tool, a guide, a practice to analyzing why we and/or other people hold some beliefs and how these impact [how we act with other people and the land and] how we show up in the world. It is a practice that can help us see how to shift the relationships of power in stories.”

Mariana Mendoza • CSS Board Member • AT2015

“If storytelling and revolutionary organizing go hand-in-hand, then Story-based Strategy is the delicate, yet intentional handshake. While Story-based strategy is also an analytical framework, it’s really a practice of freedom: it enables a moment of pause to confront feelings of fear, of harm, of loss, and spurs us to courage, bravery, and truth in the moments we need it most. It illuminates the stories we put out in the world to build power and shift behavior, and the stories we tell ourselves and live with as we light and sustain a clear path forward. It restores our sense of connection to each other and our sense of humanity in times when empathy wavers. It’s a toolbox that is energizing and mind expanding. Story-based Strategy illuminates pockets of mutual liberation—where listeners and storytellers, learners and teachers, stories and strategies for freedom meet.”

Zakiya Scott • CSS Strategy Director • AT2016

“We tell stories about reality. But we also tell stories to change reality. Those two things are in a dynamic conversation. Reality, story, reality. Story-based Strategy, to me, creates systems and practices for telling a story in such a way that you're able to shape reality toward getting your people free.”

Rachel Plattus • Organizer & Co-Creator at Beautiful Solutions • AT2017

“Story-based Strategy is a strategic framework, and set of design tools, to assess and craft narrative elements for winning social justice campaigns. SBS also happens have a surrounding community of heartfelt, grounded and geeking practitioners I know of in movements spaces.”

Dante B. Garcia • Artist, designer, & organizer • AT2017

“At Californians for Justice, we organize young people, build a base, and build power to win policies that change our material and social conditions. Now, apply that framework to how we engage, organize, and tap into our imaginations and push the boundaries of what is possible. It is through the collective and individual imaginations & stories we articulate with, and to, each other and to policy producers that become the guideposts of our vision to change our material conditions and build power.”

Saa’un P. Bell • Strategy Director at Californians for Justice • AT2015

Elements of Story

We use five Elements of Story to analyze our opposition’s stories and to craft our own.

Featured

Conflict

The backbone of narrative, what defines the drama, point of view, and makes the story interesting

Characters

The subjects, protagonists, and narrators of stories

Imagery

Words to capture imagination with metaphor, anecdote, and descriptions that speak to the senses and make the story tangible

Foreshadowing

The ways that a story provides hints to its outcome

Underlying Assumptions

Unstated parts of the story that must be accepted in order to believe the narrative is true

Using these elements of story, both for analysis and for generative work, story-based strategy proceeds through 4 main stages.

Break Down
the Power

Start by getting specific about goals, audiences, targets and constituencies to ensure that the stories and strategy we develop are grounded in the day-to-day realities of power around our issues. These are the Cornerstones of our work.

Battle of the Story!

Creating stories that challenge dominant narratives and control mythologies?
The Battle of the Story helps us craft stories that effectively intervene in the opposition's narrative, uplifting out own underlying assumptions around justice and liberation.

Their Story

Break down the opposition’s story into it’s component five elements of story. Understand the story you are aiming to change.

How does the story make existing outcomes possible or inevitable?

What do we have to believe, in order to believe their story is true?

Our Story

Our Story must challenge the opposition story’s underlying assumptions – taking care to avoid accidentally reinforcing them. It must uplift our underlying assumptions and reflect our values and the future we envision.

What assumptions can we uplift and claim that close the window on policies and outcomes we are against and open the window to outcomes we desire?

Put your audience in the front row

Who are the people that you need to reach and persuade?
Hint: the answer is never “the general public”.

Imagine the audience(s) for your story as specifically as possible. Who are they? What kinds of jobs do they work? Education? What hopes, dreams, fears, and biases do they hold? What movies, shows, books and entertainment do they consume?
See your work through the eyes of your audience. The meaning of words and images are determined NOT through your eyes, but through the eyes and hearts of your audience.
Is your audience INSIDE our movements? Sometimes we take action to help move our movement organizations and communities on an issue. The questions above still apply.

Where will you intervene?

Story-based strategy informs more than just our messaging. A Point of Intervention is a place in a system – physical system or a system of ideas – where action can be taken to interfere with the story in order to change it. Our words and our actions combine to tell a story.

Featured

Point of Production

A place where things are made. Factories, crop lands and schools. The realm of strikes, picket lines, crop-sits, etc. Interventions here are often about leveraging labor power or impacting profits.

Point of Consumption

Places where people are in the role of customer. Stores, restaurants, online spaces, TV/movies etc. Sometimes the only place that an audience has a physical interaction with systems we are changing. The realm of consumer boycotts and markets campaigns.

Point of Destruction

A place where something is destroyed. Dumpsters, mines, clearcuts, landfills, jails, etc. Interventions here are often about stopping the bad.

Point of Decision

Anywhere there is decision making. Corporate HQ, polling places, townhalls, city council meetings, slumlord’s office, etc. Interventions here are often about challenging the assumption of who is a legitimate decision maker.

Point of Assumption

Challenging underlying beliefs/ control mythologies. Could also be actions tied to cultural moments or pop culture trends. Or prefigurative actions such actualizing alternatives.

How will you intervene?

How do your actions and visuals take advantage of your chosen Point of Intervention to tell your story?

Now that you’ve picked a Point of Intervention, you need to develop the relationship between it and your story. Action Logic is the explicit or implicit narrative that is illustrated by a specific action; how an action makes sense politically to an outside observer.

Look for fissures. Fissures are cracks in the opposition story – Points of Intervention where the opposition’s story is particularly vulnerable, already in the process of changing, or extra-valuable as leverage.

Check your work

F.R.A.M.E.S. is a useful acronym representing 6 quick tests to use before moving a message from the drawing board out into the world. Use F.R.A.M.E.S. on your entire action/event plan, not just your top-level messaging.

Frame the Issue
Does it reinforce the vision and values that you are promoting? Framing means defining the problem, who will be broadly impacted, and the solution.

Reframe Opponent's Story & Reinforce Our Frame
Make sure your message is not just reiterating your opponent’s frame. Reframing means changing the terms of debate on the issue.

Accessible to the Audience
Who is your message trying to persuade? Be as specific as possible about the audience and ensure that the message is crafted in terms of language, context, and values that will be appealing to them.

Memorable
The message has got to be memorable, easy to spread and “sticky.” How can you encapsulate your message in a symbol, slogan, or metaphor that captures the essence?

Emotional
People don’t swing into action because of a pie chart. An effective message should speak to people in terms of values, and deliver some emotional impact. Trigger emotional responses with themes like tragedy, hope, anger, frustration, and don’t forget joy!

Simple & Short
This means to get to the core essence of the issue. What is the most important point of the issue? What is it that makes it matter to your audience?

#ChangeTheStory

Change the Story, because just telling a totally new story too-easily assumes people are empty vessels waiting for you to pour your story in. Pin down the story you need to change, and then take action to transform it.

So while this work is infused with imagination, it is grounded in your analysis, and your strategic assessment. Transforming the opposition stories takes time, but it’s essential to creating a world where the goals and futures you imagine are possible or inevitable.

“If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story.”

— Barbara Green

#ShowDontTell

Show Don’t Tell, because unfortunately the facts often do not speak for themselves. Instead, we need to use images, metaphor, visualization and the five senses to illustrate what is important in the story as if we were painting a picture with our words. While the veracity of your claims is essential, facts only serve as the supporting details of the story, not the hook that makes the story compelling.

Take Story-based Strategy with you

Download the Story-based Strategy 101 PDF. This two-page document presents the information on this page, with added material, in a concise handout format you can use on your own project.

Download 101 PDF Here