One of the most important goals for communication is concision. By combining Chat GPT and the ABT you can achieve it in ways never before possible. Enter the text of an article into Chat GPT, tell it to use the ABT, and this is an example of what you’ll get back. Not perfect, but close, and of course incredibly fast.   USING CHAT GPT TO TURN THE ABT INTO A TOOL I gave a talk on this a year ago at a gene therapy meeting — basically how to use the ABT with Chat GPT to produce a concise statement of the narrative core of a text. It’s time to formalize it for everyone. It’s very simple. 1 EN ..read more

Ironically, as we were working with a biomedical company last week, hammering out delicately formulated and legally correct ABT-structured answers to common questions for their product, several university professors were imploding in front of congress. Sadly, they didn’t have to end up in such a mess. LOST THE NARRATIVE. There was no narrative flow to most of what they said in their answers.   PLANNING FOR A ROASTING How much planning do you want to do in advance of a grilling? If you do none, you run the risk of rambling wildly.  You do too much, you over-think and over-complicate ..read more

Chat GPT 4.0 is beyond amazing. Maybe not in terms of CONTENT so far (it makes lots of mistakes and even bullshits), but if you understand FORM there’s no way you can be anything but stunned by it. On a parallel note the ABT (And, But, Therefore) Framework is also about FORM. So what this means is that Chat GPT is the ultimate tool for the ABT Framework PROVIDED … you have narrative intuition. Allow me to explain further … OBSTACLE OR OPPORTUNITY? For the past 30 years I’ve had a mentor (a Hollywood veteran) in my journey into and through Hollywood. Five years ago he began warning me what wa ..read more

Scientists love their HOWEVERs. It’s the more diplomatic, less forceful word of contradiction with which to introduce the problem portion of your ABT. We have data to show how much scientists love it. BUT … the more powerful and more widely used word of contradiction is THE BUT BOMB. Keep that in mind in matching your content to your INNER CIRCLE versus OUTER CIRCLE audiences. TONE DEAF? Okay, maybe this wasn’t the most tactful t-shirt for us to make for our World Bank friends given current world events, BUT … come on, have a sense of humor (please insert in your mind a smiley face emoji here ..read more

There’s lots of excitement around Chat GPT AND it’s clear Artificial Intelligence will soon put an end to human culture (as Maureen Dowd conceded yesterday in the NY Times), BUT in the meanwhile Narrative Structure is still everything, THEREFORE we’re hard at work in 2023 propagating the ABT everywhere possible. Suddenly the ABT is being put to work in a lot of places. Yay.   OVERNIGHT SUCCESS It’s taken a decade. From the World Bank to Pfizer to the Smithsonian to Cornell University … people are seeing the power and application of the ABT Framework as a tool for finding the narrative co ..read more

Hollywood screenwriters like to talk about wants versus needs for characters. In 2006 Al Gore announced his “want” with his landmark movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” He pointed to the ultimate problem of global warming and announced that he wanted very much to stop it. But then the question to ask (that he never really did) was, “What do we NEED to achieve this goal?” The specific answer was 60 votes in the U.S. Senate for significant climate legislation. And even more specific would have been a plan for how to change minds to achieve those votes. That was never addressed. Lots of science, very ..read more

What do you do when you’ve created an incredibly powerful communications model that has you so busy training people with it that you don’t have time to write a book on how to teach it? You crowdsource it. Which is what we’re doing now as people contact me with their great stories and publications on how they are using the ABT Narrative Framework in teaching. Our podcast, “ABT Time,” has become our forum for this with two in-depth discussions (so far) of How to Teach the ABT, Parts ONE (2021) and TWO (2022). THE NEWEST BATCH OF ABT TEACHERS. From English to Geography to Biology, the ABT Narrat ..read more

Yes, we use the ABT Framework in working with the most sophisticated folks from the Federal Aviation Administration to Pfizer’s Global Epidemiology Team, but I also help my friends use it on a daily basis for everything from love letters to wedding speeches. Here’s two great examples from the past couple weeks of friends using it for a GoFundMe campaign and a non-profit fundraising video. This is the photo from the GoFundMe page for Jesse Bielmann that has proven hugely successful. The concise ABT-structured text has been a major strength.   EXAMPLE 1: GoFundMe Campaign: ABT is on the jo ..read more

They were there from the very first round of the ABT Framework Course in April, 2020. Two of them gave guest lectures in the first round (Palermo, Howell), two of them connected with elements of the business world from Park Howell that instantly resonated with them (Padilla, Knowlton) resulting in them joining the instruction team. By two years later the four of them had combined for over 100 guest presentations as well as embodied the single most important trait for the ABT Framework, which is the ability to LISTEN. They are true role models for effective communication and lead spokespersons ..read more

What more can be said about a course that was born by the pandemic, gave rise to 250 one-hour sessions, 200 conference calls among the 20 instructors, produced over 750 graduates, plus a podcast (ABT Time) that just produced its 35th episode. We developed the first ever detailed model for narrative structure (NOT storytelling) (you can read about it at ABTFramework.com) which is now detailed in 4 books. And of course the best news of all: We’re only getting started! THE 24 ROUNDS OF THE ABT FRAMEWORK COURSE, PLUS THE ONE ROUND WE DID FOR THE BUSINESS WORLD, MAKES 25 ROUNDS IN JUST UNDER TWO Y ..read more