What and why does Ajay Patel read?  Ajay Patel, CEO of SMA, wanted to highlight “The Science of Storytelling” for this week’s book. This book, written by Will Storr, was critically acclaimed and became a UK Sunday Times Bestseller in 2019. Storr’s book is one of the first serious studies of the science behind great stories. He references the latest research in psychology and neuroscience to develop insights into how to tell better stories.

“The Science of Storytelling” explains the important role of dramatic unexpected change to create interest, how deliberate information gaps or puzzles create curiosity, and why unique flaws in characters (individuals or organizations in our stories) force us to re-examine our own narratives of reality. The author describes how “reading works” and why that is central to storytelling. Brains take information from the outside world – in whatever form they can – and turn it into models. He explains how the sequence of words matters, why active sentence construction is superior to passive, and the necessity of specific details to encourage readers to create mental models that rouse their emotions.

Why is Ajay reading this book? According to Ajay, “To win in today’s competitive environment, we must pursue a distinctive and compelling strategy that is expertly executed in capture and convincingly documented in the proposal. All three conditions are necessary; no single one is sufficient to win.” Furthermore, he elaborates that “we need new methods and techniques to write proposals that transfer knowledge with few interpretive errors and create long-term retention to persuade the reader to pick us and relieve them from boredom. As such, this book is particularly pertinent to SMA. SMA has an enviable 40-year track record of helping clients win new business. The firm invented new proposal development methods and processes to help clients become more competitive in their markets. However, we need to continually innovate our tradecraft to succeed in the new age of competition. Will Storr’s book is a treasure chest of ideas for innovation in the craft of proposal writing. After all, what is a proposal other than speculative non-fiction?