New City Media

Ten students cross the quad laughing to each other, led by Professor Martin. He takes the front steps of the dorm two at a time and holds the door for his students. “This could be embarrassing,” whispers Kayla.

The group gathers at the door to room 312. Two knocks and a snicker. The door swings open to wide eyes followed by “Dr. Martin, oh my gosh – I totally overslept…”

“No problem Jenny, our class isn’t the same without you, so we thought we’d bring class to you this morning. Mind if we come in?”

“Um, sure, I guess, it’s a mess, I mean sure – come in guys.”

On Friday, April 23rd, “PHIL 211 History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy” was eleven students and their professor in a dorm room made for two.

This is Emory and Henry College.

This is a dramatization of a story told to me in a seminar I taught recently. I had this group of college communication professionals close their eyes and think of an image, a place, a person, a story – anything that they felt best exemplified their school. Dave shared this one. I added a few details and changed the name of the school to create this illustration.

Did you see the group walking across campus?

Did you wonder what they were doing?

This is a perfect example of a first mental image, and it’s a great way to get past your brain’s built-in blah blah filter.

Lately I’ve been learning a lot more about how we communicate and understand different kinds of messages. It turns out our brains have a very sophisticated way of ignoring most of the sounds, sights, smells and sensations that come in so that we can focus on what’s interesting or important.

Problem is, a lot of what we write ends up in the reader’s mental trash can.

Actually, let me back up and explain a little bit about your Left Brain and Right Brain and the part they play in communication. Then I’ll explain why the dorm room example works.

• Your Left Brain is rational, orderly and analytical. It likes to take things apart and study the details. It makes lists. It judges right and wrong.
• Your Right Brain is intuitive, chaotic and emotional. It looks at the big picture and sees patterns in everything. It makes music. It likes or dislikes.

Language lives in your Left Brain. Touch your head just behind your left ear. You’re pointing to “Wernicke’s Area,” the region of your brain that connects sound memories with objects to understand nouns. Above and to the front of your left ear is “Broca’s Area.” Broca connects sound memories with actions to understand verbs.

So we use the left side of our brains to understand the meaning of words. But what does our Right Brain have to do with communication? It turns out that while our Left Brain is making sense of the text, our Right Brain is tackling the context of the message. What is the emotional state or attitude of this person? The Right Brain “reads between the lines.” It imagines the scene. It connects the idea with other ideas it’s considered before.

The table below summarizes the characteristics of your Left and Right Brains.

Now back to the blah blah filter. We already said that Broca’s Area understands verbs. It also understands the rules of grammar. It’s very good at predicting what comes next in a logical sequence, like a normal sentence. When something comes along that Broca doesn’t expect, Broca is “surprised” and raises our attention and interest.

That’s why when Yoda says “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not,” it strikes us as strange or funny. It doesn’t follow our expected rules of grammar. It’s also much more interesting than “When you reach 900 years old, you will not look as good.”

Broca’s Area serves as a gatekeeper, the Blah Blah Filter. Knock on your forehead and say “hello” to your Prefrontal Cortex, the center of decision making, and just behind it your Working Memory or Imagination. Your current thoughts are spinning around in there right now. Just behind your Working Memory, Broca decides what of all the input coming into your brain at any given time is actually worth thinking about. It anticipates the predictable, and usually ignores it. If it didn’t our poor Working Memory would be overwhelmed.

One of the ways to surprise Broca (other than talking like Yoda) is to look for the moment of highest drama in your story and begin right there. Don’t take time to build up to it, don’t set the stage, just jump right in! Broca doesn’t have time to start “anticipating” anything, and your Right Brain is drawn into the mental image and drama your story creates.

Another way to surprise Broca is to give your reader’s brain some good sensory details and data to think about, and let the Prefrontal Cortex come to its own conclusions. It will reach them with much greater conviction! We call this “Show, Don’t Tell.”

The dorm room story does both of these things. It jumps into the middle of a humorous story about a student who overslept, and a professor who decided to bring class to her. It illustrates a special quality of this college that is hard to describe.

What impression do you have now about teachers at Emory and Henry College? How about the class size? The relationships between students?

What if I had written:
“The faculty at Emory and Henry College not only teach but form strong friendships with their students.”

You’d have to take my word for it, right?

Are you convinced?

Learn More

The guy who first figured out Broca’s role in anticipating and ignoring the predictable was Roy Williams, author of many great books on communication including the Wizard of Ads trilogy. His prediction was later confirmed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience. I learned a lot of this at the Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas. Crazy as it may sound, it’s the best class I’ve ever taken.

If you’d like me to come to your organization and teach our seminar “Beyond Blah Blah: Creating Great Content for the Web,” please drop me a line.