YouTube Transcript:
6 Levels of Storytelling Every Creator MUST Master

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