EP8: A 'Fish Out of Water' Narrative: A Powerful Technique for Captivating Audiences

Ever wondered what makes movies like Pretty Woman, Back to the Future, Avatar, and Pocahontas so captivating?

Turns out, it's an age-old storytelling technique, and it has been reeling in audiences for centuries!

Tune in to this episode of Content Untapped as Ivan Meakins, dives into the magic of this narrative strategy and why our brains can't seem to resist it.

Discover how this narrative can unravel deep truths about our capacity to adapt and grow, and learn how to harness this technique to create compelling content that resonates with your audience.

This episode is a must-listen for storytellers and content creators looking to engage audiences on a deeper level. Don't miss it!

P.S. Don't forget to hit Ivan up on LinkedIn if you want to talk more about what you hear! See below for details

Book Referenced in this episode: 

Wonderworks: Literary Invention and the Science of Stories

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• Write Business Results
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey, what's up guys? This is Ivan Meakin and you are listening to Content Untapped, sponsored by Riot Business Results. This is the show where I go on a mission to unpack all those tiny little details that make up fantastic content. I report my findings back to you and I try and give you some practical tips that you guys can take home into your next project. If you do like what you hear, please do all those classic podcasty things you know like share, subscribe, tell your friends about us all that kind of stuff. It helps us spread the word and reach more people just like you, which is awesome. Also, if you wanted to have a more in-depth conversation about what you're hearing today, just set us up on LinkedIn. You can go to the Riot Business Results LinkedIn page or you can go to my own personal LinkedIn page and Fires a DM. We can spark a whole conversation there. Thanks, guys, let's just crack on with the episode.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Let's see if you can guess the story I'm about to describe to you. In a bustling city where dreams and dollar bills mix in a heady cocktail, a woman walks on the wrong side of the track she was bought up on. She's not like the rest, not like the sleek, manicured Los Angeles elite. She's a rough diamond prostitute from downtown. Yet destiny has a cut out for something different. All of a sudden, she's thrust in a world where she rubbed shoulders with the gentrified high society of LA. How does she deal with this situation, this alien world she finds herself in? All right, guys, I admit it, you caught me watching Pretty Woman again, but look as that film ended and as the credits rolled on it, it did get me thinking right. What is it about this story that finds its way into my hearts and all the hearts of the people who have shed a tear while watching Pretty Woman? Right? Why do we find ourselves rooting for this fish out of water or the ordinary Jane or Joe who find themselves in a pretty extraordinary world from what they're used to? Well, after doing some research and thinking about this for a while, I come to realize that there's a theory that I'm going to call the fish out of water technique. I'm sure other professional storytellers have the right way to describe this, but this is what I'm going to call it. All I know and I'm sure they will have tested this to is that this is a tried and tested storytelling technique catapulting heroes into strange new worlds, pushing them to the brain and seeing how they deal with the curveballs that they get thrown. It's also been used for thousands of years to captivate audiences all over the world, ever since.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Let's go back, let's say, to ancient Greece, right where Homer sings his song of Odysseus, the hero from Troy, who, if we all know the story, but I'll just kind of lay it out for you again very quickly in an attempt to make his way back home, blown off course, finds himself in a treacherous world of witches, monsters and narcotic flowers as well. But the Odyssey is based very much around an ordinary man, odysseus, who finds themselves very much in an extraordinary world. The beauty of the story is how he deals with the challenges that are front of him. So if we kind of lift this up and think about how this may apply to business content or storytelling in general, how can we leverage this technique in our own content? Right, how can we harness this fish out of water practice or technique, or the power of kind of transforming heroes into opposite worlds to tell better stories ourselves? This is what this episode is going to be about. I want to dive into the power of this fish out of water technique I want to unpack where it shows up in stories and why it sticks in the human brain so well, but also how you can use it to tell better stories in your own content, all for the purpose of forging stronger relationships with your audience.

Speaker 1: 3:27

So before we dive head first into this, let's just take a look at some famous, more modern examples of how this fish out of water technique appears in stories that you may be very familiar with. So, for instance, we'll start with Martin McFly, the quintessential 1980s teen accidentally shoved into the wholesome or let's say maybe not so wholesome world of 1950s and back to the future, forced to do all sorts of challenges fight off bullies, get his parents back together. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all is to spur in the advances of his flirtatious mother, which, to be fair, is a situation I don't think enables what we want to be in, and Marty right is way outside of his comfort zone. But one thing we can't do is we can't take our eyes off the screen as we watch to see how he deals with the situation and how the hell he's actually going to get back home, get back to the future. Another example, because the films come out recently, the second part of the films come out recently.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Let's look at Jake Sully, the kind of gruff marine from the hit movie Avatar who's forced into that lush alien world of Pandora and forced to befriend the indigenous population in order to extract precious natural resource of the planet. Obviously, james Cameron and his creativity so cleverly decided to call unobtainium which is a good one, james, but anyway we'll move on from that. But that whole plotline right, a man from a developed world forced into the wilds. It's also the plotline of Pocahontas Dancing with Wolves and 100 other Hollywood favourites too. So you know, we know it works right. But why does it work? Well, at least it worked for Avatar 1, because the second one was a bit of a disaster, but anyway.

Speaker 1: 5:03

So look, the point to remember here is that each of the characters of these stories, they're thrust into a world very opposite to what they know and they have to learn, they have to adapt and they have to grow in order to overcome. But what is actually that makes these tales so compelling to us, the audience, in our brains? What is it that makes it stick out Because of all of this? Really, humans, we're creatures of habit. We love the familiar, the comfortable, the known. But when you put us into an unfamiliar situation, what happens? We start to squirm, like Martin McFly and his teenage mothers, that survival instincts start to kick in, an alarm that will start ringing and we either fight or flight. But we also have this amazing capacity to adapt and to learn and in that journey of adaptation we learn a lot more about ourselves and what we're truly capable of. And that is where the real magic lies.

Speaker 1: 5:52

One of my favorite books on storytelling is from Agnes Fletcher, a book called Wonderworks, and he breaks this down in a little bit more detail. He explains that, and I quote Two-hour brain and object can stick out in two different ways. So the first way is the object can be a familiar thing that sticks out in a strange environment. So let's say that maybe Martin McFly is a familiar boy from the 80s who sticks out in a very strange environment in the 1950s in his context. But the second way is the object can be the opposite a strange thing that sticks out in a familiar environment. So if we think of some classic stories of what that could look like, let's use ET, an alien the crash lands in I think it's in the town of California very, very strange object that sticks out in a very familiar environment as we're watching it. It's the world we know, but there's an alien inside it which obviously creates some kind of tension, some conflict there.

Speaker 1: 6:43

But when something's out of place, it appears odd, our brains kick into action, they drive our attention towards the object to assess if it's genuinely a threat, and if it is a threat it triggers a flight response or a flight response. But if we find that there's no danger there, what we can do, we find amusement in it, right. So it's kind of a similar way in which when you watch some horror films, you kind of get scared and then you laugh it off. You get into laugh when something's scary because first off, your brain is very alerted to the danger and when you realize it's no longer a threat, that's funny, right. You can chill out and you can have a laugh about it.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Now, why is this important? So, look, I know you're not scripting Hollywood blockbusters here, guys, with your content, right. So it doesn't have to be a complex plot of multiple characters, interweaving plotlines, to hold people's attention, right. So that's first thing that's important. These stories can be very, very simple, but if you use these techniques and these mechanisms like the fish out of water technique, it can really make your audience take notice. So, look, let's try, let's have some fun, let's try an exercise, right, this is more of sort of a thought exercise to you guys.

Speaker 1: 7:48

But think about your business, right, if you think about your character as your ideal customer or this will be kind of your ideal reader or ideal consumer of content, right, what's the world that they know? Right, it's their comfort zone. Now, a picture throwing them into a completely opposite environment, throw them a huge curveball. How would they react to that situation? What would they learn? What kind of learning process would they go through to get at the other end? But, more importantly, what can your audience learn from their journey, from the character's journey, right? If you play this right, even the most dry, boring sounding businesses can create some epic content worthy of Homer himself.

Speaker 1: 8:26

I'm going to give you an example. Let's take a look at a accountancy firm as an example. By the way, no offense to any accountants out there, I promise it's just an example. If you're looking to engage your audience as an accountancy firm with a good story, perhaps you're writing an advertisement, maybe it's a VSL. Maybe you're writing a Facebook ad. It could be a blog, a book or a podcast as well. You choose whatever content you want.

Speaker 1: 8:50

But let's think about your ideal client for a second. It's likely that they're a creative entrepreneur, maybe a big ideas guy or girl, who spends their time innovating, networking and most likely dodging anything remotely comfort-related. Right, you probably know the type. But imagine that their accountant, the one that they've been relying on for years for all of this stuff, just suddenly packs up the leads. You choose the reason. Perhaps they decide to move to a Tibetan monastery to find inner peace, although that's probably not the most realistic example. You find the reason.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Now, all of a sudden, mr or Mrs Creative is suddenly thrust into this world of numbers, tax codes, spreadsheets up to their eyeballs in payroll forecasts and figures. You can imagine how frustrating that might be to someone like that. Right? What would they do in that situation? If you're an accountancy firm, you probably know these people. You've probably seen this happen before as well. How would they react, and how do they react to those situations they find themselves in?

Speaker 1: 9:52

And now, as the story develops, who's that guy to help them get out of this mess? Well, it's it. You, right, you're the doc to their Marty McFly, the Gandalf to the Frodo, right Like you, could help them grapple with the numbers, wade through the jargon and slowly they can see the patterns, start to gain insights and get actually great results. And all of a sudden, in this story, the world of numbers, once the lead character's kryptonite starts to make more sense, and lo and behold, they're all of a sudden financially literate, and what they become is they become much better entrepreneurs, and they only have you to think for that right.

Speaker 1: 10:30

So if you think about this like a story like this can become a huge tool in your content toolkit, helping you bring your ideal clients closer to you, because what's important is your ideal clients can see themselves reflected in the story that you're you're telling. So if you take a step back and see what we've done, we've taken a person from a world that they knew and we've thrown them into an extraordinary situation in their context, right, and they adapted, they grew and they prevailed, with your help. We took a fish completely out of water, completely different had, made it swim in completely different waters, and we saw how it, how it thrived, right, with your help. And that's the power of storytelling and it's the power of this technique that I'm talking to you about today, and it's the power that you guys wield when you can start using techniques like this in your own business narratives as well. One thing that this technique does and when you can throw people into opposite environments is it shows something about the human spirit. It tells the story about that capacity we all have to adapt, to learn, to grow. It's a great trait. It's a trait that we admire in others and we all want to achieve in ourselves and like to think that we have the ingredients inside us to deal with it when we get thrown curveballs as well. So what it does is it reveals something deeper and true about ourselves and the world that we live in too. So if we think about that energetic, big idea entrepreneur we threw into the complex world of accountancy, they became more resilient, they became more savvy and a lot more powerful as a result of your guidance, and when people read a story like that, they can begin to see that maybe they can do the same thing as well. Right, so the experience of your character, their growth and their story can inspire others who are wrestling with similar struggles, and that's really important.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Guys, I want you to remember that when you're crafting content. When you're telling stories, you're not just passing on information, right, think of it like you're like lighting a beacon, almost you know, showing your audience that it's okay to step into unfamiliar territory and it's okay to struggle and to fumble around a bit, because in the end, that's how we learn, we grow and we become stronger, as long as we have the right help, which is obviously where you come in. So the next time you're staring at it a bit of a blank page, wrestling with the right words to say or trying to find a story for your content, just remember this fish out of water technique and try and play around with it a bit. Think about your audience, think about what they know, think about what they're comfortable with and then boom, just toss them a curveball, give them something completely unexpected, something completely opposite to what they're used to, and watch how they grapple, flail around a little bit and then eventually grow and triumph.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Before we kind of sign off for today, I just want you to think about how stories are constructed. You know, they all have a compelling character, they all have a challenging environment to some degree and they all kind of a lot of stories and probably the most famous ones, chronicle the journey of transformation too. And as you tell your stories and you craft your content, just remember to show a bit of the human experience too, right? Remember, above all, to tell the truth. When you can put a bit of yourself in your story, you can put a bit of your clients in your story, a bit of real reality in your story. It's going to become much more compelling in the challenges and the environment by which your readers are going to read about. It's going to become a lot more compelling, a lot more real for them as well, which obviously means more eyeballs in your content too. So I hope you guys found that useful. Until next time, keep creating, keep telling awesome stories and I will see you soon. Thanks again for listening and I will see you next time.