0:00 There are six levels of storytelling
0:01 that every creator must master. I call
0:04 this the story ladder. The higher the
0:06 level, the better the story and the
0:08 bigger the results. Now, unfortunately,
0:10 most people are stuck at the bottom few
0:12 levels. Their stories just don't hit.
0:14 And so, they're playing the content game
0:16 on hard mode because they can't hold
0:18 attention. But here's the good news,
0:19 which is the few tweaks, you can easily
0:21 learn how to climb the ladder and become
0:23 a master at storytelling. So, in this
0:25 video, I'm going to walk through all six
0:27 levels of the story ladder and give you
0:29 tactical tips for how to climb it. And
0:31 if you can learn to tell stories at a
0:33 consistent level six, you will crush any
0:35 business goal you can imagine. By the
0:37 way, I'm Callaway. I've done billions of
0:38 views. And this storytelling framework
0:40 is the reason I went from zero to 100K
0:42 subs on YouTube in just 5 months. It
0:45 really works. All right, level one
0:47 storytelling is the foundation level. I
0:49 call this level the reporter. And
0:51 everybody starts here, but you want to
0:52 get past this level as soon as you can.
0:54 If you think about an average reporter
0:56 or newscaster, they're some of the least
0:58 engaging storytellers on the planet.
1:00 Respectfully, people watch the news, but
1:02 they watch it for the facts, not for the
1:04 stories. And the reason level one
1:06 storytelling is so unengaging is because
1:08 essentially all reporters do is read
1:11 facts in order. This happened, then this
1:13 happened, then that happened. They're
1:14 just reporting what happened. When you
1:16 tell stories in level one, you collect
1:18 all the Lego bricks, the characters, the
1:20 mission, the scene. But the problem is
1:22 you just lay them out for a viewer in a
1:24 predictable boring order. So for
1:26 example, if I started telling a story
1:27 like this, a man stood at the corner of
1:29 the street. His head was down. He had a
1:31 duffel bag over his right shoulder and a
1:33 clown mask in his left hand. When you
1:36 hear or see just that and nothing else,
1:38 it feels a bit meh. It's descriptive and
1:40 you can place yourself in the scene, but
1:42 it's just not that interesting yet. And
1:44 the reason it's not that interesting, as
1:46 I'll explain in the rest of the video,
1:47 is that it's missing several core pieces
1:49 that drive curiosity and contrast. And
1:51 this really is the secret to great
1:53 storytelling. What makes great stories
1:55 great is that they can hold your
1:57 attention continuously. If you were to
1:59 plot every human's base attention on a
2:01 graph, it would be a flat horizontal
2:03 line. And flat lines are boring because
2:05 they're predictable. Imagine riding a
2:08 roller coaster that was flat the entire
2:10 time. Obviously, it wouldn't be very
2:11 entertaining. It's the ups and downs and
2:14 unexpected loops that make roller
2:15 coasters fun to ride. And it's the exact
2:18 same thing with storytelling because the
2:20 brain is really good at guessing what
2:22 comes next in a pattern. And if it
2:23 guesses correctly enough times in a row,
2:26 it gets bored because it's not
2:27 challenging enough. So the key to
2:28 telling a good story is to figure out
2:30 how to bend that attention line so it
2:32 doesn't look so flat to give the roller
2:34 coaster twists and turns. Essentially, a
2:36 great story's job is to keep the brain
2:38 offbalance as much as possible. Now, for
2:41 the rest of the video, I'm going to
2:42 share a bunch of tactical ways in each
2:44 level to help you do that. Level one
2:46 storytelling is just gathering all the
2:48 Lego bricks, the who, what, when, and
2:50 where of the story, and then placing
2:51 them one after another on a horizontal
2:53 line. And so, if this is how you tell
2:55 stories, it's only a matter of time
2:57 before the viewer gets bored and bounces
2:59 to something else. My tactical
3:00 suggestion if you're stuck at level one
3:02 storytelling is that you need to climb
3:04 at least one more rung to have any
3:06 chance at holding attention. All right,
3:08 level two storytelling is where things
3:09 really start to get interesting because
3:11 this is where hooks start coming into
3:12 play. Now, when we think of hooks in
3:14 content, we usually think only about the
3:16 first couple sentences. How do we stop
3:18 the scroll and hook the viewer in
3:20 initially? And while this initial hook
3:22 is super important, it's only part of
3:24 the hook equation. Because great stories
3:27 have lots of other hooks embedded within
3:29 the body of the story as well. These are
3:31 called rehooks. Now, I call level two
3:33 storytellers the illusionist because
3:35 hooks are really just illusions. They're
3:38 misdirection. You expect to see one
3:40 thing, but then the story takes a
3:41 different turn and reveals another. And
3:43 the reason hooks hook is because the
3:45 brain struggles to guess what is coming
3:48 next. And it turns out people's brains
3:50 kind of enjoy when they don't know
3:51 what's coming. That's where the thrill
3:53 comes from. Now, this difference between
3:55 what the brain expects and what you
3:57 actually show it is called contrast. And
3:59 contrast is the secret to great hooks.
4:02 So to continue our example from before,
4:03 what if it went more like this? A man
4:05 stood at the corner of the street. His
4:07 head was down. He had a duffel bag over
4:09 his right shoulder and a clown mask in
4:11 his left hand. A car suddenly appears
4:13 around the corner and he hurriedly gets
4:15 in. So now things have changed. When the
4:17 Joker was just standing at the corner,
4:19 the story could have gone many different
4:20 ways. He could have walked across the
4:22 street. He could have turned around. The
4:24 scene could have cut right there. But
4:26 none of those things happened. Instead,
4:27 the car pulled up and he got in. And
4:29 this is an example of a micro hook. The
4:32 contrast between the four possible
4:33 outcomes that could have happened and
4:35 the one that actually did creates
4:36 intrigue in the brain for a split
4:38 second. Instead of one flat horizontal
4:41 line, all of a sudden, there were four
4:42 different paths you could go down. The
4:44 uncertainty in that choice is what
4:46 creates curiosity and hooks the viewer.
4:48 In level two, all you have to do is
4:50 focus on adding a few hooks to the body
4:52 of the story in addition to the already
4:54 existing foundational blocks. And to do
4:56 this tactically, you need to figure out
4:57 where you want the story to go and then
4:59 work backwards to set up away from that
5:01 point to keep the viewer off balance.
5:03 You want to use a couple lines to get
5:05 them leaning in one direction, usually
5:07 where they believe, and then snap back
5:08 to some alternate reality. And this
5:10 works for the Dark Knight, but it also
5:12 works for super niche educational style
5:14 content on YouTube. So, for example,
5:16 let's say I'm an accounting channel and
5:18 I'm making a video on advanced tax
5:20 strategies. I might know a great trick
5:22 about setting up personal 401ks that
5:24 could save entrepreneurs tons of money
5:26 in taxes. Now, knowing that I want to
5:28 make the video about the 401k, I need to
5:30 ask myself, what is the expected belief
5:33 that most entrepreneurs have already
5:35 about 401ks? And in this case, let's say
5:37 their expected belief is that they take
5:39 a long time to set up, they're
5:40 confusing, and they have high fees. So,
5:42 if I know that's their expectation,
5:44 well, then I might hook them with
5:45 something like this. There are tons of
5:47 little-known tax strategies that can
5:49 save entrepreneurs seven figures in
5:50 taxes. Most of them take lots of time
5:52 and money to set up, but personal 401ks
5:55 are the easiest and least expensive to
5:57 create tax savings. See, right there, we
5:59 tease the things they already believed
6:01 and then misdirected to reveal another.
6:03 It turns out that including a
6:04 misdirection every 2 to 3 minutes in the
6:06 story is a super powerful way to keep
6:09 the viewer's attention. And if you watch
6:10 the full opening scene from The Dark
6:12 Knight, you'd notice five or six of
6:14 these little mini hooks scattered within
6:16 the first 5 minutes. The more hooks, the
6:18 more they're hooked and the more they
6:20 keep watching. And with hooks, the
6:21 attention graph looks a little bit more
6:23 like this. It's a flatline, but then it
6:25 breaks into all these different options.
6:27 So that's level two. It's foundations
6:29 plus hooks. And here's the truth. If
6:31 you're just starting out with
6:32 storytelling, it can be kind of hard to
6:34 figure out how to actually apply these
6:36 learnings in your own niche. It's easy
6:38 for me to explain them, but it's hard to
6:39 actually do in practice. To make this a
6:41 little bit easier, I actually built an
6:43 AI storytelling tool that does all of
6:45 this for you. You just describe your
6:47 video topic, add whatever notes you
6:49 have, and then we take all of these
6:51 storytelling frameworks, and we write
6:53 level six stories with great hooks
6:55 automatically for you. The tool is
6:56 called Sandcastles.ai. And I'm biased,
6:59 but it's pretty incredible. We've had
7:00 people writing 20 scripts a day. That's
7:02 how fast it is. Now, today it's just
7:04 built for short form video scripts, but
7:06 we're actually building in the long form
7:07 script writer as well. We have a wait
7:09 list below for that. If you want help
7:10 telling better stories faster, and you
7:12 just want us to take all this off your
7:14 plate, I would check it out. There's a
7:15 link in the description for you to try
7:16 it for free. All right, level three
7:18 storytelling is all about taking those
7:19 base foundations plus the hooks and
7:22 adding on a reason for your specific
7:24 viewer to care. This is the stakes level
7:26 and what I call the champion
7:28 storyteller. It's called the champion
7:30 because in level three, your story
7:31 starts to champion a specific use case,
7:34 pain point, or individual archetype. If
7:36 you think about it, level one and two
7:38 are just raw psychology building blocks
7:40 that can be applied in any story in any
7:42 way. It's like a verbal cannon that
7:44 could be pointed wherever you want. But
7:46 the truth is, what really makes a story
7:48 connect with your viewer is when you aim
7:50 that cannon specifically towards them.
7:52 You have to get them to care about this
7:54 story more than all the others. Now,
7:56 tactically, you can do this in several
7:57 ways. The easiest way is just to
7:59 describe a pain point that your viewer
8:01 has. So they have a deeper connection to
8:03 your story because they have a vested
8:04 interest in solving that pain. So in the
8:06 tax saving example, you could literally
8:08 just say, "If you feel like you're
8:09 spending too much in taxes, you need to
8:11 do X, Y, and Z." And of course, this is
8:13 literally stating the pain point
8:14 directly. And this is pretty much all
8:16 you need to do in the stakes level when
8:18 you're making expertise or educational
8:20 style content to get somebody to buy in.
8:22 But if you're telling more entertainment
8:23 style stories, how do you do this in a
8:25 more nuanced way? You don't often have a
8:27 pain point when you're doing an
8:28 entertainment story. Well, the key to
8:30 adding stakes in entertainment style
8:32 content is by building characters or
8:34 conflicts that the viewer can see
8:35 themselves in. You need to give them
8:37 something to root for and a reason why
8:39 they want the character to accomplish
8:40 the task. When somebody can connect
8:42 their identity to what's happening on
8:43 screen, they immediately buy in more.
8:45 They identify with the character and
8:47 they invest long-term in finishing the
8:49 story. This is aiming the cannon. A
8:51 great example of this for me personally
8:53 is from the movie Miracle. In this
8:55 scene, the USA hockey coach Herb Brooks
8:57 is super upset with the players and he
8:58 puts them through these crazy drills
9:00 because they didn't play well. And
9:01 there's a famous line in the movie where
9:03 he says, "The name on the front is way
9:05 more important than the name on the
9:06 back." Talking about country patriotism
9:08 verse individual accolades. And as
9:10 someone from the US that played sports
9:12 growing up and had tough coaches, I
9:14 really resonated with this and saw
9:15 myself in the players. And this made me
9:17 invest in the story and want to stay
9:19 longterm to find out what happened. So
9:21 whether you're telling an entertainment
9:22 story or an educational one, it's worth
9:24 taking a second to ask yourself what
9:26 does the viewer think, feel, and
9:28 identify with and then build common
9:29 ground against that. If you do, your
9:31 viewer will overinvest in your message
9:33 and pay attention for longer. All right,
9:35 now we're getting into the advanced
9:36 stuff. If you're on level three, you
9:38 have the foundational building blocks,
9:40 the hooks, and the relevant stakes. And
9:42 this alone can be really effective for
9:44 storytelling in today's content world.
9:46 But if you really want to ascend into
9:47 rarified storytelling air, you need to
9:50 keep climbing. Level four storytelling
9:52 adds on arcs and loops. I call this
9:54 level the architect because when you're
9:56 storytelling with arcs and loops, you're
9:58 adding on layers and navigation to the
10:00 story. And let me explain what that
10:01 means. Think of arcs like waves. They go
10:04 up and down. There are times where
10:06 you're building up the tension, using
10:08 choppier sentences, adding some sort of
10:09 rising action, some conflict, and then
10:11 there are times when you're releasing
10:13 tension, letting the plot breathe,
10:14 adding falling action, relaxing, and
10:16 letting the story go. Now, you've
10:18 probably seen some version of this core
10:20 story arc before. Inciting incident,
10:22 rising action, conflict, falling action,
10:25 resolution. We were taught that most
10:27 stories follow this one sweeping story
10:29 arc. And while this may be true for
10:30 classic stories, what I've noticed for
10:32 modern stories in the internet era is
10:34 that there's several of these arcs that
10:36 rise and fall much faster centered
10:38 around different hooks. But either way,
10:39 the point is when you're storytelling in
10:41 Level 4, you need to add these arcs to
10:43 build more layers into the story. One
10:45 character might be further along their
10:47 arc than another, and that dichotomy
10:48 adds depth, which makes it more
10:50 interesting to watch. Now, on the
10:52 entertainment side, a great example of
10:53 this is White Lotus, a show that's
10:55 currently airing right now. There is no
10:57 show that does a better job of building
10:59 diverse character arcs using plot lines,
11:01 music, and rising and falling action.
11:03 And these arcs are like mini stories
11:05 within the bigger story. Now,
11:07 tactically, it's much easier to build
11:09 arcs into entertainment style content
11:11 because you can use character action and
11:13 plot lines to play with the tension
11:15 lever. But for educational and expertise
11:17 style content like what I make, how do
11:19 you add arcs into the story? And this is
11:21 where I use loops instead of arcs. The
11:23 difference between loops and arcs is
11:25 that loops close. So in each expertise
11:28 style video, I have one major loop,
11:30 which is the whole video, and then a
11:32 bunch of minor loops that are every
11:34 subsequent point in the body. And you
11:36 can make those minor loops however you
11:37 want. It doesn't have to be beginning,
11:39 middle, end, but as long as they're
11:40 self-containing and a repeatable
11:41 pattern, it'll work. So for my videos, I
11:44 like my minor loops, my individual
11:45 points to include what is going on, why
11:48 it matters, an example, and then
11:50 tactical recommendations for how you can
11:52 action against it. And almost all of my
11:54 videos follow this pattern. Having a set
11:56 pattern in the minor loops trains the
11:58 viewer what to look for so they can
11:59 expect when the next loop is going to
12:01 open. When you storytell in loops versus
12:03 one giant unstructured mess, it makes it
12:05 way easier for the viewer to orient
12:06 where they are in the story. And this is
12:08 called story navigation. So at any point
12:11 you should be able to pause the video
12:12 and a viewer can tell you exactly where
12:14 you're at in the story. Regardless of
12:16 the type, educational or entertainment,
12:18 it's critical the viewer is able to
12:19 navigate so they can stay engaged the
12:21 entire time. All right, level five
12:23 storytelling is where the sauce really
12:25 starts to get added in. This is the
12:27 resonance layer, and I call this
12:28 archetype the translator. It's called
12:30 the translator because you're doing
12:32 whatever you can to add to the story to
12:34 increase comprehension. The truth is,
12:36 stories are only as good as the
12:38 comprehension they drive. If you share a
12:40 bunch of interesting things, but the
12:41 viewer is confused when they hear them,
12:43 well, then those things might as well
12:44 not have been said. So level five is
12:46 really about taking a second pass back
12:48 through your story and making sure that
12:50 every line hits the way you want it to.
12:53 If you play a video and randomly hit
12:54 pause is a viewer able to tell you
12:56 exactly what just happened because this
12:58 is comprehension in a nutshell. Now
13:00 there are several specific tactics that
13:02 you can use in level 5 to avoid
13:04 comprehension loss and make sure the
13:06 viewer understands what's going on. If
13:07 you're telling a story with video, using
13:09 ontarget aligned visuals is obviously
13:11 the easiest way to do this. A picture's
13:14 worth a thousand words. a video is worth
13:16 a thousand pictures. So, if you're
13:17 making a complex point, use a video
13:19 visual to illustrate it. And that's what
13:21 we do in my educational videos, and I
13:22 think it's what really separates us.
13:24 Another great example of this on the
13:25 entertainment side is the black hole
13:27 scene from Interstellar. Obviously,
13:29 nobody has been inside a black hole. So,
13:31 trying to visualize what this scene
13:32 would look like is a really difficult
13:34 task. But Christopher Nolan used
13:36 specific visuals to showcase Matthew
13:38 McConna in the five-dimensional
13:40 tesseract. Who knows if this is
13:42 scientifically accurate, but the point
13:43 is those visuals helped increase
13:45 comprehension of what that scene might
13:47 be like. Now, if you're not using video
13:49 and can't use visuals, the next best
13:51 thing would be to go back through the
13:53 story and add secondary metaphors where
13:55 you can. So, if you say something
13:56 complex like the combustion engine
13:58 propelled the vehicle at 600 mph, you
14:01 can repeat this again using a simpler
14:02 metaphor. That'd be like a plane flying
14:04 on the road. This gives you two shots at
14:07 explaining the point and increases
14:08 comprehension. Overall, the tactical
14:10 suggestion for the resonance level is to
14:13 go back through your story line by line
14:14 and gut check if everything makes sense
14:17 to the viewer. Ask yourself, how might a
14:19 novice viewer get confused if they were
14:21 to hear this thing for the first time?
14:23 And do whatever you can to eliminate
14:25 that confusion. All right, we've arrived
14:27 at the top of the storytelling ladder.
14:29 This is level six and what I call the
14:31 maestro. This is all about adding the
14:33 signature sauce and your unique
14:34 fingerprint to the story. The first five
14:36 levels are all about mastering the base
14:38 story components. We talked about the
14:40 fundamentals, the hooks, the stakes, the
14:43 arcs, and the resonance. You've
14:45 basically taken a core topic and then
14:46 woven in as many twists and turns as you
14:49 possibly could. This last layer is all
14:51 about taking the story and making it one
14:53 of one by adding your signature sauce to
14:55 it. The truth is, signature sauce can
14:57 exist in many different ways, but what
14:59 it really boils down to is the one of
15:01 thing that you can do that no one else
15:03 can. For me, I've realized over time
15:05 that my signature sauce is the way I
15:07 explain things and how I break down
15:08 complex things into simple terms using
15:10 metaphors. My brain just came out of the
15:13 factory like this. And so, I try to lean
15:14 in and apply that layer as icing on
15:17 everything I do. For my friend Roberto,
15:19 his signature sauce is using cinematics
15:21 in his breakdowns. He's one of the best
15:22 in the world at this. For Christopher
15:24 Nolan, his signature sauce is taking
15:26 complex, multi-layered, crazy ideas and
15:29 distilling them so that they make sense
15:30 by the end. For Wes Anderson, it's his
15:33 signature filming style and color
15:34 palette. For Kendrick Lamar, it's how he
15:36 writes and delivers lyrics. Nobody else
15:38 in the world can do it like he can. The
15:40 reason coming up with a signature style
15:41 is such a massive mode and so valuable
15:44 is that it takes hundreds and hundreds
15:46 of reps for you to realize what yours
15:48 is. Style is the final 1%. It is the
15:51 last mile. But once you have it, this is
15:53 how you stand out. My tactical
15:54 recommendation for this is to spend all
15:56 your time mastering the first five
15:58 levels. And if you tell enough stories,
16:00 your signature style will kind of appear
16:02 over time. All right, that is all I've
16:03 got for the six levels of storytelling.
16:05 For beginners, what I recommend is you
16:07 start with level one, the foundations,
16:08 and then you slowly build up and add one
16:11 piece at a time. On my channel, I have
16:13 several other videos breaking down all
16:15 of the other pieces. So, make sure to
16:16 check those out if you want to go more
16:18 in depth with the tactics. Again,
16:19 storytelling is a really hard skill to
16:21 master. So, if you want help and an
16:23 assistant that would just do it for you,
16:25 I would strongly recommend checking out
16:26 sandcastles.ai. We actually just
16:28 released a feature where you can paste
16:29 in all of your raw notes and we'll just
16:31 turn that into a finished script
16:32 automatically. And remember, there's
16:34 tons of free stuff in the description if
16:35 you're a business owner trying to make
16:37 content faster. All right, appreciate
16:38 you guys listening. We will see you on
16:40 the next one. He's
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