1155: Relentless Escalation

At the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy learns that his father (Henry) is missing. By the end they'll be reunited, but Henry will be on the ground, dying ... Thus grow great stories, relentlessly escalating tension, conflict and threat. Indy visits Venice to track down his Dad, but Henry isn't buried in a local library, he's imprisoned by Nazi's seeking a) his Grail notebook and b) eternal life. So Henry is found, but the stakes are massively raised: The quest for the Grail is not archaeology. It’s a race against evil. If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the earth... We might believe that epic storytelling has little to do with business, but we'd be wrong. From the motorboat shredding propeller to the epic tank battle, Indy 3 is filled with beats, scenes and sequences that raise tension. And that fractal structure is the clue. Because the movie isn't just about the big set pieces, the writers demionstrate the power of escalation at every level. Take the simple, throwaway beat that comes as Indy and Henry escape the Zepplin: HENRY (with delight): "I didn’t know you could fly a plane."INDY: "Fly... yes. Land... no." We tend to think of storytelling as big, creative work, but we can just as easily escalate tension in emails, advert or social posts. The tools of storytelling don't care about scale. They just work. Nick --- This is one of 30 riffs on #Business #Storytelling. Follow me to get the series. ------------------- The Stories Mean Business podcast with Nick Warren. One Idea A Day, Every Day. Get deeper into business storytelling: https://storiesmeanbusiness.com/storybusiness/ https://storiesmeanbusiness.com/podcast