You have 15 seconds…

You have 15 seconds to grab attention.

“If you don’t get attention within 15 seconds, it’s very difficult to get it back. And then really tell stories at human scale. Again, most storytellers know this already, but have those authentic characters with real emotions. Let them face some kind of crisis. Build a mystery around them.”

And…

“So if you think of the high points of your life– getting married, birth of a child– or maybe low points– 9/11 if you lived in New York or Washington– those are actually saved a memory in a very particular way. Because immersion is this valuation mechanism for social experiences, that tagging of emotion also saves that experience in memory. We get to re-experience that when we have a reminder of the experience.”

There’s a lot of good stuff in this podcast from Paul Zak on the Future of Storytelling website.

I’m fascinated that he has commercialised his research through GetImmersion.com, which includes a free assessment of your video in terms of those indicators of immersion. The model, built on Zak’s research, uses smart watches to accurately track viewers’ (or listeners’) physiological responses to the material they are engaging with. Among the case studies quoted is one done with Pandora in which the Immersion technology predicted hit songs with 83% accuracy.

I wonder how it works with written material?

The work builds on Zak’s earlier research which was captured in this video (also for FOST), which I posted a few years ago.

Zak’s new book, Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness, has just plopped through my letterbox.

This is fascinating science.

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