There’s an undying story about Britain that goes like this: in 1940, uncomplaining Brits saved the world from Hitler. Then they lived happily and conservatively until their country was taken over by Brussels and swamped by immigrants. This story of paradise lost gets retold at every British election. The novel twist of the coming election, on May 7, is that the story will be told most effectively not by the Conservatives but by the anti-immigrant UK Independence party.
有一个关于英国的奇葩故事是这样的：1940年，无怨无悔的英国人从希特勒手中拯救了世界。之后他们过着幸福而传统的生活——直至自己的国家被欧盟接管，并且被大量移民搞得拥挤不堪。每次英国大选时，这个“失乐园”的故事都会被重述。对于5月7日将要举行的大选，新变化在于，最能成功讲述这个故事的不是保守党(Conservatives)，而是反移民的英国独立党(UK Independence party)。

Anyone with anything to sell needs a story. That’s because people use stories to make sense of an incomprehensible world. Stories rather than facts win elections, sway policy makers and convince investors or donors to hand over money. Recently, I spent a day brainstorming about storytelling techniques with two film-makers and a Hollywood producer, to help out a charitable foundation that needs to promote its causes. Here are some pointers we came up with.
任何人推销任何东西都需要一个故事。这是因为人们用故事来理解难以读懂的世界。故事（而非事实）可以赢得选举，左右政策制定者，并说服投资人或捐赠者出钱。最近，我花了一天时间与两位电影制作人以及一位好莱坞制片人对讲故事的技巧进行“头脑风暴”，为的是帮助一家需要宣传其事业的慈善基金会。下面是我们想出的一些要点。
The first thing to grasp: the person you’re trying to persuade is bored with you already. She doesn’t care about your tedious concerns. For instance: at times during the British election campaign of 2005, zero per cent of voters surveyed by Conservative pollster Michael Ashcroft had heard about his party’s promises of choice in schools. The Tories had policies but no story. They were like those speakers at conferences clicking through slides full of diagrams.
首先要明白的是：你正试图说服的那个人对你已经感到厌倦了。她并不关心你繁琐的关切。例如，2005年英国大选期间，保守党民调专家迈克尔•阿什克罗夫特(Michael Ashcroft)调查的选民中，没有一位听说过该党关于择校的承诺。保守党有政策，但没有故事。他们就像一些会议上的发言者，只会点击播放满是图表的幻灯片。
The best story (as the authors of the New Testament knew) is about attaining paradise. In politics, the right traditionally locates paradise in the past. The Conservative MP Laura Sandys once told me her party instinctively tended towards “a mythical view of the 1950s, when everyone had a rose arch in the garden, the children came home smiling from school, and the father from his secure job at 5.30. There was no crime or antisocial behaviour, and everyone respected authority.”
最好的故事（如《新约》作者们深知的）是关于如何到达“乐园”。在政治上，右翼传统上把乐园定位在过去。保守党议员劳拉•桑兹(Laura Sandys)曾对我说，该党本能地倾向于“上世纪50年代的虚构情景，那时家家户户的花园都有一座玫瑰拱门，孩子们开心地从学校放学回家，父亲工作稳定，五点半准时下班回家。没有犯罪或反社会行为，每个人都尊重权威。”
The left used to locate paradise in the future: think of Bill Clinton’s “the boy from Hope”, or the British Labour party’s fabulously unimaginative “Forward, not back” of 2005. Since the financial crisis the left has lost its optimism, so that the US Democrats now locate paradise in the Clintonian 1990s, and will probably enter the next election bearing aloft an ancient relic of that era.
左翼过去常把乐园定位在未来：想想比尔•克林顿(Bill Clinton)的“来自（阿肯色州）霍普的男孩”，或是英国工党在2005年极其缺乏想象力的口号——“前进，别后退”。自金融危机以来，左翼已不再像过去那样乐观，因此，现在美国民主党将乐园定位于克林顿式的上世纪90年代，而且很可能推选那个时代的老人投入下届选举。
Winning conservative slogans manage to locate paradise in the past and present simultaneously: Margaret Thatcher’s “Great Britain is great again!” told a story of national history in five words. Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” didn’t just invoke a new dawn. It also echoed the then still famous song about the American frontier from the musical Oklahoma!: “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’.” Reagan’s story was paradise regained.
保守党胜选的口号成功地把乐园同时定位在过去和现在：玛格丽特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)的“Great Britain is great again!”（大不列颠再次变得伟大！）用5个英文单词讲述了一个关于国家历史的故事。罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan)的“美国的清晨”不仅唤起了一个崭新的黎明。它还呼应了当时仍很有名的音乐剧《俄克拉荷马！》中赞美美国边疆的歌曲《噢，多么美丽的清晨》。里根讲述的是关于复乐园的故事。
Messianic movements locate paradise in the afterlife. That is Isis’s great story: ditch your PlayStation, come to Syria, build the caliphate, die with your place in history assured and collect your virgins in heaven.
救世主式的运动把乐园定位在来世。这是伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国(Isis)的伟大故事：丢掉你的PlayStation游戏机，到叙利亚来，建立哈里发国，历史必然铭记你的牺牲，你会在天堂获得处女陪伴。
Every fairy tale ends with paradise: “And they lived happily ever after.” The campaign for gay marriage has succeeded by copying the fairy tale’s narrative structure: the characters overcome obstacles, and the story ends with a wedding. The campaign also borrows a word — “marriage” — that has always worked for the political right. Traditional rhetorical techniques sold the gay cause.
每一个童话故事都以人间乐园结尾：“从此以后，他们过着快乐的生活。”支持同性婚姻的运动通过效仿童话故事的叙事结构获得成功：角色克服重重阻碍，故事以婚礼结束。这场运动也借用一个一直被政坛右翼有效利用的词——“婚姻”。传统措辞技巧推动了同性恋人群争取权益的事业。
Activists often ignore these basic rules of storytelling. Their stories tend to be angry, not hopeful: for instance, “Polar bears are dying out because oil companies are heating the planet.” That story doesn’t work, not merely because it lacks human protagonists but because it poses a problem without an obvious solution. Clearly oil companies will always be mightier than polar bears. And people consume oil, so this story will make them feel bad, and they will reject it.
活动人士往往忽视这些讲故事的基本规则。他们的故事倾向于义愤填膺，而不是让人抱以期待：例如，“北极熊正在灭绝，因为石油公司使全球气温升高。”这个故事毫无效果，不只是因为它缺乏人类主角，而且也因为它提出了一个缺乏明显解决方案的问题。显然，石油公司将永远比北极熊强大。而且人类使用石油，所以这个故事将让人觉得不舒服，他们将拒绝接受。
Rather, what the voter, policy maker or investor wants to hear is a story with a solution. And he wants a solution to his problem, the thing that worries him, not to the storyteller’s problem. If you’re meeting a stressed policy maker, don’t land him with yet another problem that he doesn’t have the time, interest, energy or resources to solve. Instead suggest something specific that he can feasibly do for the cause that might earn him a bit of job satisfaction, and possibly even personal glory.
相反，选民、政策制定者或投资者想听到的是一个具有解决方案的故事。而且他想为自己（而非故事讲述者）担忧的问题找到解决方法。如果你遇到一位心力交瘁的政策制定者，不要再向他抛出他没有时间、兴趣、精力或资源解决的问题。相反，你可以提议一些他能为你的事业办到的实事，这样或许会让他获得一些工作满足感，甚至可能是个人荣誉。
Ideally, your story will make your listeners part of the solution. Tell them what they can do for their country. That was the beauty of Barack Obama’s 2008 slogan “Yes we can!” (The much derided kindergarten simplicity of the chant was, of course, a strength.) Winston Churchill in 1940 couldn’t promise paradise, because that would have sounded bonkers, but he did cast his listeners as heroes: “We shall fight on the beaches…”
理想情况下，你的故事将会使听众成为解决方案的一部分。告诉他们能为自己的国家做些什么。这就是巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama) 2008年竞选口号“Yes we can!”（是的，我们能！）的美妙之处。（当然，这一口号备受嘲弄的幼儿园式的简单是一个优势。）1940年，温斯顿•丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)无法承诺建立人间乐园，因为那听起来像是白痴，但他把自己的听众塑造成了英雄：“我们将在海滩上战斗……”
If you want to be heard, you need a story. But the corollary is: if you don’t want to be heard, don’t tell a story. Be boring. Banks and Brussels both do that brilliantly. Put out long legal documents about “collateralised debt obligations” and people will switch off. Brussels jargon about “additionality” and “subsidiarity” achieves the same effect. Once nobody is listening, the actors can do what they like.
如果你想被聆听，你需要一个故事。但出于同样的道理，如果你不想被听到，就不要讲故事。宁可令人厌烦。银行和欧盟在这方面都很拿手。银行拿出关于债务抵押债券(collateralised debt obligations)的冗长法律文件时，人们就失去了兴趣。布鲁塞尔关于“额外性”(additionality)和“辅助性原则”(subsidiarity)的术语可以收得同样的效果。一旦没有人在听，“演员们”就可以做他们喜欢的事。