5. Communications are "interesting, boring, or confusing."

The element that determines which of those three outcomes you have is the central element: contradiction. . . . There are lots of words that are used to establish contradiction (such as “despite,” “however,” “yet”) but the most commonly used word is “but.” You can find a number of websites that list the most commonly used words in the English language. “And” is always in the top 3. “But” is usually around 15 to 25. None of the other words of contradiction are even in the top 100. So that’s why we choose to focus on “but”—the most common word for the most powerful part of narrative.

You need the contradiction for the narrative process to begin. If there’s just a lot of facts with no contradiction, you end up with the AAA structure (And, And, And), which is nonnarrative and boring.

It’s the contradiction that activates the brain.