 Welcome friends to a session on the art of storytelling as all of us know storytelling is so important that stories are so important that they are a part of our lives and that's almost a cliche to say I mean every day every moment either we are listening to stories or we are making up stories in our head or we are watching stories even in our sleep. So this is something that is so much a part of our life that we don't even realize the art behind the storytelling itself and also the science behind storytelling and the plot structure and other things are known to a lot of us but it's important to see the possibilities that storytelling has. So before I begin the presentation I will just cite the sources that I have gone through for preparing this presentation and these are just some of them. This is a wonderful book called The Story Telling Animal by Jonathan Gorshkal. There's Resonate by Nancy Duarte. There's this book Wired for Story by Lisa Cron and made to stick by Chip and Dan Heath. So these are just some of the references that I'll be talking about as I go along in the presentation. This is a very well known saying and we keep on hearing about this thing very often that if we want a message to burrow into a human mind, work it into a story. If it is just mere facts then probably it will not stick into human mind or we might not even realize the implications of it or the importance of it or what the message actually is. So when we want to put across a point very strongly, we'll see that it has to be worked into a story. Just mere narration of facts or just mere reporting of facts is often not enough and that is why it's important for all of us to know how to create stories out of information or how to know how stories work and to be frank this is something that we watch on a very daily basis. On television, on news, on sporting events, on to every other kind of thing we find out lots and lots of these stories. We'll find out how these stories work and what are the important elements of it. But first of all the realization that if the message has to make an impact it has to be worked into a story and stories generally answer some overarching question. Generally when it is designed from one end to the other end we are instinctively looking every line through every character through every image who is taking us closer to the answer. There is an answer that we are looking for and we want to find out what is that answer or whether we are looking for that resolution or not. So generally there is one overarching question. There might be other sub questions etc but there is an overall question that everybody seeks an answer to or as readers or as listeners we are waiting for an answer to those stories. Just let me give you some very small examples. I'm not even going down into the details and I can have hundreds of images about all that. Even in sporting events whether it's boxing or whether it is professional wrestling or it's cricket or football or basketball or any other kind of sport we are always moved by the stories there. And I'm sure very recently you would have been hearing a lot of stories about Muhammad Siraj, the fast bowler who has just joined the Indian cricket team. And the fantastic story about how he came up from a very poor background and how he has managed to turn himself into a world class bowler. So when we are talking about these even sporting events more than the action at times these stories are what makes them so very relevant and so very moving. And we are attracted to these kind of things as well. I'm sure you would have remembered the last year's winner of Indian Idol. His name was Sunny Hindustani. And apart from the fact that he was such a fabulous singer singing in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's voice and with all the clarity and with all the expertise that you expect from an Indian Idol. But the fabulous story behind the person, how he rose up from a shoe shine boy to where he was and that is something that is moving. That is something that keeps us watching these programs apart from the wonderful talent that these people have. These stories behind these people are so very important. Even on the Konpnega Krodpati kind of a show you would see that it's not only about Mr. Bachchan and the questions and the answers. But the individuals who come there and there's always a story behind those individuals and these are the things that matter. If you've seen that maybe the earlier ones which we would see there were the stories which were told by the people themselves on the seat. But now all these people's stories are said by a camera which has done the work even before that person has come onto this hot seat. Even in quotes we've seen the wonderful lawyers, the lawyers who do very well are the ones who can spin a very good story, a believable story, a credible story. We'll find out the elements of the stories in today's presentation but very important to realize and understand that these are the stories that keeps us hooked onto these events. Apart from of course the fabulous talent that these people display. Even in this test victory today the story is so very important about a team which was absolutely in the doldrums. Having the lowest ever scored by any team in the history of Indian cricket, any Indian team in the history of cricket. So from their bouncing back, these are the stories that we remember apart from the fabulous victories. And why are we fixated on such kind of stories? One of the things we'll see that many of these stories are on trouble. They are fixated on some trouble that some people had to face through. Even whether it was Mohammad Sera's story about a troubled, you know, power district and childhood. Or whether it was about Indian team being in trouble the last time or whatever. So it's not only, story is not only about escaping from these troubles. If it was so then it would all be like, you know, those hunky-dory registry kind of, you know, song and dance kind of things. But that is not the only pattern we find in stories. So stories are not only about escapism or escaping from, you know, real life troubles. But there are very many other things in a good story that we must realize. There were times when people have even, and we know about the plot and I will talk about the plot that we so very well know that there is a crisis and a resolution so on and so forth. But there were people who have tried to break away from these plots. Because if you see, and we will present in today's presentation as well, that there are some very strong, as we would say, a universal grammar of story which is almost similar across different cultures, different genres and different kinds of storytelling parts. So there were people who tried to, you know, break through these plots and they would just, you know, come up with what is happening every day. You know, kind of bringing the boring parts back into story and that did not work. So basically, story is about removing all the boring parts out and we, as journalism students and teachers and communicators, we know that even in journalism, we are trying to bring in all the important parts. But in novels or in stories, we are trying to leave out. We are trying to take out the, snip out the boring parts of real everyday life and bring in the important parts into the story. So stories are almost always about people with problems. So it could be people or even, you know, personified animals, animals who speak in people's voices. So they have a problem. They want something badly. It could be they want to survive or they want to win the boy or the girl or they want to find a lost child or a lost parent or whatever. So it's almost always about people with problems. So come to think of it, this is a very, very simple way of suggesting what a story would be. So if I put that in a very simple manner, and that's what the first book that I spoke of speaks of, is that story has a character who faces a predicament and he tries to extricate he or she. Whenever I talk about he, of course, I mean she as well. He or she tries to extricate himself or herself from the situation. So why should we be bothered about that? That is the question and that is where we are leading up to. So in its, at its very simplest, the story is about a human being or, you know, or any kind of even a thing that we can identify with. It could be an avatar. It could be animals or it could be other organisms that we identify with. They face a predicament and they try to extricate themselves from that kind of a situation. If I have to kind of explain that in terms of Bollywood, then it would be something like that. This is the Sid Fields paradigm. I'm just trying to zoom that for you. So Sid Field is, you know, a very famous Hollywood screenplay writer. And, you know, this is his particular style that he talks about. And I'm just trying to emphasize on that particular thing. So the first act is basically a setup. The second act is what he describes as the confrontation. If you see right at the top is the confrontation. And the third act is the resolution. And if you can see that the second act is the larger one. And there are so many points in the second half as well. Down at the screen here, as I said, these are in very, you know, this is like, okay, let me just zoom in through this. We are trying to explain it through the Shawshank redemption. In my view, one of the best movies ever made and it's a personal favorite. I'm sure many of you would have watched that film as well. So Andy, the protagonist is his convicted and he enters Shawshank. So that is about the setup. And then there is, you know, some kind of a plot point. And that's where, you know, that's where you will go into the confrontation part. And in the plot point, Andy asks red, you know, played by Morgan Freeman. I'm sure you remember that fabulous character. He asks red for rock hammer, a small rock hammer, you know, which that's where he asked for that. And then it, you know, story goes off. Then, you know, the confrontation part is such a big one. Andy forms a relation with red and, you know, he becomes very friendly with red and he adapts to prison life. Then there is a midpoint. And finally, you know, you and you come to the, you know, this place between confrontation and resolution when Andy escapes from prison. And in the resolution, Andy and red reunite in Mexico. I mean, and all of us feel so very happy about everything that has happened to everybody. So this is what, you know, basically a Hollywood plot structure looks like, or that's what many stories look like. Another way. So as I said, you know, the one way of story was this one. Describing story as a character with a predicament and an attempted extrication. And this is another way of looking at the story with a setup and then a confrontation and then finally a resolution. Many of our everyday stories, they can be different, you know, described in this manner. And as I said, why should we be bothered about whether, you know, the hero is winning or he's not winning? Because something is at stake that it convinces us that it will be a big loss if the hero or heroine don't obtain their goals. It's important that the audience is convinced that the stake is high, that for them the, you know, freedom, he was in Shawshank Redemption, he was jailed because, you know, although he was innocent and so on and so forth. So something that convinces us that this is important that the stakes are high or we identify with those stakes. So then again, you know, I'll go on to describe three different kinds of plots once again. So as I said, the first one was about, you know, this very simple one story means character, predicament and attempted extrication. Then this is a well-known, you know, problem and resolution or confrontation setup and resolution. And then we are going to talk about three different plots which generally describe most of the stories that we come across. So first of these things are known as the challenge plot. And what is a challenge plot? It is a plot where it's, you know, kind of an underdog story where there is a challenge where the protagonist, he overcomes a formidable challenge and he succeeds, he or she succeeds. So a lot of our things are about these kind of things. So it could be the mountain man, it could be so many other people or it could be even the Swades story of Shah Rukh Khan. Or, you know, majority of our stories where there is a challenge and people, you know, fight through those challenges and how they triumph through their willpower, through their tenacity, you know, and through all kinds of adversity. So you might have found out, you know, these kind of plots in many of the even social issues when there is somebody who's fighting for maybe some environmental rights or whatever. So how he or she fought the story and how he or she managed to win in the end. Or these kind of plots are also seen in sporting events. A lot of people are talking about, you know, how Rahane has fought and scored the century. Since these are very real examples, I'm just trying to give you these kind of examples. A challenge plot is a very, very important plot to understand there. Then the other plot is about the connectivity plot about people who bridge a gap. It could be a racial gap. It could be a gap between the rich girl, poor boy. It could be between classes. It could be between religions, between ethnicities, between different demographies or whatever. People who develop a relationship that bridges these kind of gaps or people who cause these connections. So come to think of it, it can be related to our earlier examples or the templates that I spoke of. But we can see this as a very different kind of a plot, a plot where people who develop a relationship that bridges these gaps. So a very important kind of a plot structure. The other plot that I'm going to talk about is the creativity plot, which involves some kind of a breakthrough, solving a long standing puzzle or it could be attacking a problem in an innovative way. So maybe the Mungal or the Mars kind of a thing that we see in Indian movies. Although you can find a lot of these things related to the first part as well to the challenge plot as well. But it can be seen in many cases as a different kind of a plot as well where someone is making a mental breakthrough. You are going through conflict. I will talk about some of these mental conflicts that we go through in real life as well. So this creativity plot involves that kind of a mental breakthrough. Somebody who can break through even his or her earlier thought processes and attacking the problem in a new or an innovative kind of a way. So these are again three different plot structures. So these are generally very, very simple ways of describing how plots work. Again, another very important anagram and I'm trying to suggest the elements of a very good story. So if you can see it, it spells as S-U-C-C-E-S success. First of all, the story structure has to be simple enough. If the story structure is of the inception kind, then a lot of those things will be lost and you'll have to spend a lot of cognitive effort and so on and so forth in those story structures. So if you remember, you know, all our old even religious stories about Lord Ganesha, you know, just making a detour of his mother and saying that, okay, I have covered the entire earth and people believe it. So there are so many, you know, this is so very profound that he was able to explain that, okay, for me, my parents are the world. So if I take a detour of them, I have, you know, taken a detour of the world. Very simple stories. Unexpected and this is something that is important. If this is cliched, if it is boring, if it is something that we expect will happen, then it is lost. So that unexpected or that surprise element is very important in story. You expected this, but this is what it is. And that's again a very important element of a good story. Whenever we are telling a story, whether it's about sports or it's about social issues or it's about any other issue. If we can bring in that element of unexpected that we expect it to be like this, but it's actually like this. So that's a very important story element. The other important story element is that it must be concrete. It must not be abstract. It must be about real things. It must tell us about real problems or it must tell us about real issues or it must be talking about things that matter to everybody. So that again is very important that there must be concreteness to the story. It must also be credentialed means it must be believable. It must not be in the reams of fantasy and that's why there are many elements through which you can establish credentials. And one of the very simple elements in a story would be to explain things in details. And when those things are explained in details, people can understand that okay, this is true or I have evidence to believe that whatever is being said is true. Emotions are a very, very, very important part of a story. And I cannot overemphasize the importance of emotions or the effective thinking that goes into or the effective elements that goes into the story. That if you don't feel strongly about it, then it means nothing to us. So it could be anger, it could be outrage, it could be happiness, it could be sympathy, it could be lots and lots of emotions. So come to think of it, a lot of even political communication these days has these emotions involved. And as someone great once said that if you don't have emotion, you don't even have reason. So it's not emotion oblique reason, it's like a very, very important part of our everyday life. When we feel strongly about it or when we feel or when we like something or when we are angry at something, our reactions are stronger or we remember those things. So only those stories remain in our hearts or those stories are remembered when there is an emotional element involved. That is why even in journalism when we use the human interest angle, the stories are so very popular. People remember those kind of stories and finally the story itself and we have just spoken about the importance or the common kinds of plot structures in a story. So a good story has to be simple. It must bring in the element of the unexpected. There must be a concreteness in the story. It must be credentialed in the sense that there must be a lot of evidence for what is being said or people regard that being true and emotions are important. And of course it has to have that story kind of a structure. So why should it be unexpected so that we pay attention, we sit up and take notice. And that's a very important way of getting people to pay attention by bringing in an element of surprise. So every good story whether it's fiction or non-fiction or even if it's a new story, if there's an element of surprise people will pay attention to that. Concrete so that people can understand and relate to that and even remember that because there are so many stories going around. There are so many things happening. There are so many things being said that if we do not remember those things then we are lost. So it must be something that we remember and that will happen when the story itself is concrete. As I said credibility because you must believe in it and you must agree with the stakes and those stakes should appeal to you as well. Emotional it makes you care for those kind of events. So when we talk of climate change and its impact for example and if we bring in those emotional elements that will make people a lot more caring about what they do or what they not do or how they react to the stories or how they consider the stories as their own. And the story itself it prompts us to act and that is why these elements are so very important in our story structure. I'm not going to get into the details of the left brain and the right brain and all that but if you see or if you remember all that you know left brain is where the intuition the reason and all that is there. And the right part is where all the creativity is there. So I'm not going to get into a lot of details about that but it's very very important to understand that our mind abhors or our brain abhors thing that we cannot explain. If there is something that we cannot explain our brain our mind it will start thinking for reasons itself. And that is something that goes on all the time when say for example if you suddenly hear a dog barking outside you will immediately spin up a story in your head that maybe somebody is trying to chase a dog or trying to throw a stone or maybe somebody is coming or whatever. So these are the things that we keep drawing on to ourselves all the time if suddenly we are loud music outside you know there's a story okay maybe there's a marriage party or maybe there are people who are celebrating New Year's Day or even whatever. So these are the stories that we tell ourselves all the time because you know whenever there is something and we can't explain it our left brain will immediately tell us okay this means that. So we are you know providing reasons for you know ourselves on a daily basis on a regular basis or on every second basis. Even now you know if there are things that we cannot make sense of we will try and create reasons for that and there are hundreds and hundreds of examples from behavioral sciences where people talk about you know how these brain structures work. Because now there is something known as FMRI functional magnetic resonance imaging where we exactly know which are the neurons that light up when we are thinking about food for example or when we are angry and when we are outraged or whatever. So we know how the brain functions and that's what I'll try to talk about some of the things that why do we find stories appealing or why stories are important in our everyday lives. So there is something known as the mirror neurons in our brain and whenever we see something on the screen whenever we you know feel angry on the screen then the same neurons will light up when we are actually angry. Or when we see somebody sad and we feel empathy for those characters and how do we know that because there have been experiments involving FMRI where we have exactly the same neurons in our brain lighting up when we are actually sad so when we empathize with somebody whom we identify with. And as we have seen that that character has to be something that we relate with that is something that we identify with and we are with the predicament he or she is in and we want him or her to win. And that is why we empathize with those fictional characters and we literally experience the same feelings ourselves and that is why stories are so very important. And that is why as journalists also we tell all these stories because then people find them believable then their credibility is established and that is not because the way the stories are said but that's the way we are created. That's the way we are that's the way our biology is that these mirror neurons they exist and they recreate for us whatever we see or whatever we hear or whatever we identify with and that is how we identify with those stories and we actually live through those stories. We find ourselves in those situations we can identify with those situations and that is why they move us so much that is why we find them so very believable. And that is why there are many things that happen because we empathize with such things. So as I said it is allergic to randomness and coincidence so if it cannot find meaning it will try and impose some meaning on something which is happening. So it could be as I said it could be any kind of a thing so whatever is being explained and if you don't believe that you try and make up your own explanation that suddenly the phone has stopped ringing so it could have been like this. Okay the bell is ringing now so that person would have come or whatever the newspaper man or whatever we try and create those stories or maybe the milk man didn't come so this could have happened to him. We try and create those patterns all the time or even in geometric shapes if we don't find patterns and if you see at clouds at times very closely you might find that they resemble somebody or the other. So we are looking for those patterns we are looking to find out meaning as I said and the left brain is very active in all these things. So we are as I said allergic to uncertainty and randomness and that is why storytelling gives us that kind of relief because it tells us why something is happening and why it is important and how we can make sense of it. The flip side of that is that very often we end up believing in conspiracy theories. I mean there are lots and lots of examples I don't want to get into all the examples but there are examples about I mean almost one third people at times believe in conspiracy theories. And there are many people who still believe that okay COVID-19 itself could be you know is not real or whatever we see is not real somebody else is you know making us believe all that. So people believe in all kinds of conspiracy theories because as I said our brains are tuned like that and they are actively looking for reasons and many people actually believe in those conspiracy theories. So you can make people actually believe that it's the sun which revolves around the earth and not the other way and the earth is flat. So lots and lots of people have their own theories to believe in and that's why because that's because their brain leads them into believing all these kind of things. So it's not only about whether you find it believable or not it also has some very very important elements. The story has a very important element because it encourages us to behave ethically because every story in every story virtue is being rewarded. If somebody is good here she gets a reward and the concept of justice or the belief in justice is always established in these kind of stories. If something unjust is happening it will be resolved I mean after the confrontation it will be resolved I mean that will be achieved. So it encourages us to behave ethically as well as I said you know a lot of those religious stories I mean even the Ganesha story as I told you it encourages us to be very respectful of our parents and what more profound way than to just tell it in a very simple story. So that makes us believe in justice for example because if you have something which is unjust happening or there is some injustice happening in a story it could be any film it could be a serial or it could be any kind of a thing. The storyteller would never condone that the storyteller would always condemn that kind of violence. So fiction will never be neutral to violence fiction or storytelling is always condemnatory of those violence and we are attached to those stories because we want to see the redemption we want to see justice being done. We want to see the person you know coming out victorious after that fight or after he goes through that kind of a problem. So these are very very important elements of storytelling because it tells us you know to behave ethically and you would imagine that these things were there even before the invention of the printing press or mass communication because earlier we had all those storytellers and he or she would have people surrounding him or her and they would be telling all those stories about justice about grace about good things and about winners about people who are virtuous winning and people who are not virtuous losing. So these are some of the strains that have survived for generations for thousands of years. So if I have to you know compare it with maybe a general report then a general report just conveys information. But stories produce an experience as an audience we have as I just spoke about the mirror neurons we see when we hear those stories or when we see those stories we can experience those stories. We can as I just showed you we identify with the protagonist the same neurons light up the same feeling comes to us when we see that story being played out or even when we read it. So that's very important that you know stories produce that experience and a good storyteller would create desire in the audience that okay I want it to go this way. So and this is the resolution I want and then they will adopt our perspective. So it could be something that we can do with climate change for example that you know through the story we tell them that this is what should happen. So rather than you know directing them or telling them or you know just hammering the message again and again if we can weave it into a story which people identify with then we'll be able to make them adopt our perspective. So the important thing is that something must be at stake that convinces I'm just repeating what I've said earlier that it convinces that a great deal will be lost if the hero doesn't or the heroine doesn't obtain his or her goal. Now I'm just trying to in the next few slides I'm just trying to tell us tell you once again about what what is a good story or what are the elements of a good story and then I will end this presentation after you know a few of these slides. So what are what are the important elements in a story which allows us to envision the future to the story we are kind of tunneling it to the future and we are trying to find out what will happen or what might happen to us. So those stories which allows us to look into the future is a very important are important elements of stories and as I said that these are the cognitive secrets of our mind. This is what behavioral science tells us about how our mind works. So this is one part of it that we think in those stories or we are involved in those kind of stories which allows us to see the future which allows us to be a part of a future. Again a very, very important part when the brain focuses its attention on something it filters out all the unnecessary information. So once you focus on to something so good fiction writers are one who will just have the right amount of detail they will not be explaining the background and the place with all the specifics. So when they describe something in specific maybe the surroundings or whatever those specifics will be as less as possible so that the focus is not lost on the story of the human being there and on the broad theme that the story brings out. So there are two or three things you know playing out at the same time that is the story of that particular human being who's involved in that predicament and he or she is trying to extricate himself or herself out of that predicament. And the brain and we are focused on to that kind of a thing so all the unnecessary information is what the brain will immediately blank out. So as storytellers it's important to for us to keep the focus on and not to bring in a lot of all those subplots into the theme. Again emotion determines the meaning of everything. If you are not feeling something about it we are not at all conscious. And as we work along you can understand that if you're working with a team which is truly excited about something then the result will be there to see. And I mean every story even if you are not playing out the emotion the emotional part has to be established in another way let me explain you how. If all of us when we talk about Captain Spock the very moment we think okay okay so the emotion is very important if the emotion is not there then the person would be like that. And in that wonderful series called the Big Bang Theory all of us find Sheldon so very likable because at times his emotions are not what it normally is and that's what it makes conscious about our own emotions about how emotions should be. So a lot of things we see on Twitter or on Facebook or on Instagram or whatever it is because people are emotionally driven to react to that kind of thing and it might not always be good but it's important to realize that if we are not feeling then we are not even conscious. Then the stories which will become a part of our subconscious will not be very effective. Everything we do is goal directed and again that's very important in stories and also in real life we are always trying to figure out what is everybody's agenda or what do people want from us. Do they want to just hit us with a hammer or they just want to send us a smiley or they are just you know being friendly or they might do us harm or whatever. Because most of us are all of us are goal directed we are you know looking forward to achieve certain things or we have certain things in mind or we want certain things to happen and you know we are also looking at people's goals. So if your protagonist doesn't have a goal or if your story is about things which there is no goal then that is not a good story so generally it's important or good stories will have some kind of a goal. However indirect it may be but these goals are important in storytelling. Again a very important part and in another video on cognitive biases I have spoken out about this as well. We see the world not as it is but as we believe it to be and in the conspiracy theories part also I told you that the brain itself imagines or thinks about the reasons why certain things are happening and why certain things are not happening. And we see the world in that kind of a prism. In as I said in many of those in internal conflict kind of situations we see where the protagonist is going through that kind of a conflict because his belief is what should not be or which is not true and he or she emerges out of that kind of a belief. So everybody has his or her own way of seeing the world because the world revolves around that particular person. He or she has a very different spotlight or she has a very different projection of the world based on his or her own experience. So important for storytellers to know that and important for us to know that when we talk about these stories we look for a particular world view. So it could be related to the encoding, decoding kind of a thing that we say. So oftentimes when somebody is shown as a villain maybe by the storyteller people would at times even identify with the villain because the villain or the so called villain story is something that we identify in real life or we consider him or her to be our identity. So it's important that everybody does not look at the same problem or the same situation or the same goals in the same manner. And very importantly we do not think in the abstract, abstract means vague. We think in specific images whether it is our dreams, whether it is a vision, whether we are imagining something, whether we are realizing something, whether we are explaining something. We think in specific images and that is why good stories are the one which can create those images in your mind. They do not talk in vagueness, they don't talk in abstract and that's why creating that imagery or creating that imagination is so very important for storytelling and that is why podcasting and all those things have made their return as to say and radio is becoming so very important because it helps us to think. Radio helps us to paint those pictures and it's important that when we can imagine things that's where we are impacted more. And again brain is stubbornly resistant to change and we know it through the cognitive biases, we know it through cognitive dissonance, we know it through confirmation bias. Most often we only want to read or listen things that we agree with. If it is something that we do not agree with then there is cognitive dissonance. So if we have to agree with something very differently we have to start off with from a common kind of a platform and then to extend from that. So important to realize that all of us have our own belief systems or have our own likes and dislikes. And it is resistant to change so we expect that kind of as we say uniformity or we expect some kind of regularity in a lot of events in the world. So from very birth and this is what I've already said when I spoke of the conspiracy theories and all that. Our primary goal of the brain, the left side of the brain basically is to make those causal connections. If this then that, okay he said that then this could mean that or she said that it could mean that. Or she would gesture like that it could mean that. Or this is happening or he's going or the channel is changing or whatever. So we create those causal connections. So those cause effect connections should be known. It should not be just flying away in all directions. Because we store these things in the subconscious mind and it is a kind of a simulation. And I'm sure we understand the meaning of simulations where we actually we might not ever, you know, try and go up the Everest or whatever. But those are the things that we notice and the brain, the implicit part of the brain, not the explicit part of the brain. The subconscious brain stores these things that whenever in future we find out something like that. We might use those examples in the future as well. So the brain abhors randomness. If something is random, the brain would abhor that it would not like all those meaningless patterns. And if the patterns don't even exist, the brain will create those patterns. And that's very important to understand that even in times when we hear when we see those, you know, patterns on Mars or whatever people will maybe even start looking at them as if, you know, it means something. So we are creating, we are drawing patterns even if they're not exist because it anticipates or it helps us to anticipate what might happen next. So we are converting whatever data, whatever information comes to us in these meaningful patterns. So even when we are reading stories or when we are inside a story, we are looking at these kind of patterns or what might happen next. Often brain will summon the past memories to evaluate what is happening. So a lot of the things that when we want to make sense of something which is happening, we go back and find out, you know, what it was like in the past. So a lot of our things are based on our own experiences. So we draw from our own experiences to, you know, make sense of what is happening now. So whatever we are seeing at the moment is really related to what has happened to us. So it's important to, you know, draw back or to go back to what has happened. So that again, you know, links to the cause-effect relation that I was talking about. It takes a long-term conscious effort to hone a skill before the brain assigns it to a cognitive unconscious. As I said that it is there in the unconscious mind, but it will take a long-term conscious effort. So it's something that we hear or a story which we hear for the first time. It will not go into the cognitive or the unconscious or the subconscious mind immediately. There is a long-term effort or when you are involved in the story or when it has all the elements that I spoke of. If all those elements are there, then only I will be attracted to the story and then only it will be in my cognitive unconscious or the subconscious. I'm not going to talk about these things because I think we've already spoken a lot about, you know, storytelling and all. These are some of these story types that we use when we want to persuade people to accept our point of view. Or, you know, even in presentations, these are the six different kinds of stories which are being told. It could be who I am and, you know, talking about your or establishing your own credibility. Then why am I here? What I'm trying to do? Or what is the kind of vision I have for everybody or for the team so on and so forth? And, you know, having teaching stories, stories which have some message there or stories which tells us about some values which are present there. And kind of thing that I know what you are thinking kind of stories. So many, many, many kinds of stories I have tried to summarize just the most important basics of storytelling. So I'm sure that it makes some sense to all of you. As I said, these things will be available to most of you after this presentation. So that's all from my presentation. So I think we end the presentation here.