to prime others to agree with that goal long before it is time to argue a point or make a request. Few of us know how to capture an audience’s attention using only facts. We professionals save movement, tempo, and heat for the roll-up-the-sleeve pitch. Everything before then, from claims report to executive summary to peer review study, is offered up safely…and bone dry. We miss the perfect opportunity to condition our audience to want to agree with us—we miss it every time. Strong narratives help an audience see events from your perspective, a lost skill in a world of short attention spans and pit bull sound bites. In Art of Story and Humor, business people learn how to recognize the patterns and logic that underlie more dramatic forms of communication, and are then shown examples of how these patterns can be applied in all forms of commercial, educational, and institutional writing. Art of Story and Humor explores humor patterns (including verbal physics and minimization), movement in music and screenplay, the theory of plausible impossible, theme, perspective, structure, order, jargon and beige staging, word choice and comparison, digital visualization, fact gathering, matrix development, the use of bad facts to maintain interest and credibility, new approaches to understanding the number and nature of audiences, being prepared for bias, and focusing on statistics. Lawyers, scientists, teachers, and accountants can boost already strong writing talent by using experience to blend humor and story principles into everyday communications. This is the companion text for the Art of Story and Humor session books. Introduction by William C. Altreuter, who along with Ms. Berlin, teaches “Writing Funny, and Other Ways to Persuade” at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

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