Story or Die How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life

A step-by-step guide to using the brain's hardwired need for story to achieve any goal, whether it's successfully pitching a product, saving the planet, or convincing your kids not to text and drive, from the author of Wired for Story.

Story isn't just one way to persuade. It's the way. It's built into the architecture of the brain, and has been since early humans gathered around the camp fire, trying to figure out how to outsmart the lion next door.

In Story or Die, story coach Lisa Cron sets out to decode the power of story, first by examining how the brain processes information, translates it into narrative, and then guards it as if your life depends on it. Armed with that insight, she focuses on how to find your real target audience and then pinpoint their hidden resistance. Finally, she takes you, step-by-step, through the creation of your own story, one that allows your audience to overcome their resistance and take up your call to action, not because you told them to, but because they want to.

That is the power of story. Use it wisely.

Lisa Cron is a story coach, speaker, and the author of Wired for Story and Story Genius. She has previously worked as a literary agent, a television producer, and a story consultant for Warner Brothers and The William Morris Agency, among others, and currently advises writers, nonprofits, educators, and journalists on the art and craft of story. Cron has also served on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts MFA program in visual narrative, and since 2006 has taught in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. She lives in Santa Monica, California.