s4h-narrative

Narrative

Applies narrative and storytelling thinking to communication, strategy, and meaning-making. Diagnoses what kind of narrative work is needed and applies the right tool.

Which tool fits

You need to...	Tool
Map the audience's actual beliefs, goals, and fears	audience-modeling
Identify the current frame and generate better alternatives	frame-analysis
Apply story architecture to a proposal or presentation	structure-mapping
Find or create the tension that makes communication worth attending to	tension-mapping

Routing Decision

• Don't know why the audience isn't responding → audience-modeling
• The framing of a situation is wrong or limiting → frame-analysis
• Have content but it's not landing — structure problem → structure-mapping
• Communication is flat, forgettable, or not engaging → tension-mapping
• Unclear → structure-mapping; most communication problems are structural

Confirm Direction

Framing check: Before confirming which tool to run, confirm your read of the narrative situation. State the specific content, communication, or story challenge being addressed in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:

• Question: "I'm reading this as: [your one-sentence framing of the specific narrative situation — what content, for what purpose, for whom]. Is that right?"
• Header: "Framing"
• Options:
  • Yes — proceed — framing is correct
  • Adjust — one element is off; user will correct it before you continue
  • Reframe — different situation than read; incorporate the correction before proceeding

After diagnosing which tool fits, use the AskUserQuestion tool to confirm direction. Construct the question dynamically to include your diagnosis:

• Question: "My read: [diagnosed tool] — [one sentence on why it fits]. How would you like to proceed?"
• Header: "Direction"
• Options:
  • Yes, run that tool — Execute the diagnosed skill immediately using the context already provided
  • Show all options — List every skill in this category with one-line descriptions
  • Quick version — Run a lighter-weight alternative if one exists for this situation
  • Re-diagnose — Revisit the situation description for a different read

Proceed based on their selection.

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Audience Modeling

Maps the audience's current beliefs, real goals, fears, and threshold conditions.

What do they already believe about this topic? What do they actually care about — not their job title, but their real goals? What are they afraid of — about the message, the change, the consequences? What would they need to see or hear to act? Build this model before structuring the communication; the best-structured message in the wrong frame for the wrong audience still fails.

Output: Audience belief map, real goals, fears, and the minimum conditions for a positive response.

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Frame Analysis

Identifies the current frame and generates alternative frames.

Every situation is perceived through a frame — a set of implicit assumptions about what kind of thing this is, who the relevant parties are, and what's at stake. Name the current frame explicitly. Now generate 3-5 alternative frames: what if this were a different kind of situation? Each frame makes different elements visible and others invisible. Find the frame that reveals the truth you need people to see.

Output: Current frame explicitly stated, 3-5 alternative frames, and the frame that best serves the communication goal with reasoning.

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Structure Mapping

Applies story architecture to any communication.

Information delivered as data rarely moves people. Information delivered as story does. Apply narrative architecture: (1) Status quo — the world before, (2) Disruption — what changed or needs to change, (3) Stakes — what's at risk if nothing happens, (4) Journey — the path forward, (5) Resolution — the new world this creates. Map the content onto this arc. Cut everything that doesn't move the story forward.

Output: Content mapped onto narrative arc, elements to cut, and the structure that moves from status quo to resolution.

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Tension Mapping

Finds or creates the tension that makes communication worth paying attention to.

Without tension, there is no story. Without story, there is no attention. Tension is the gap between where things are and where they should be — or between what we know and what we need to know. Find the tension already present in this situation: what's at stake? What could go wrong? What is the unresolved question the audience needs answered? If tension is absent, it must be created — not manufactured, but surfaced from what's actually true.

Output: The genuine tension in this situation, how to make it visible and felt, and how the communication resolves it.