HMN 2025: Do you want to solidify what you are saying?

Read the following sentence from Henry David Thoreau. “The boy gathers materials for a temple and then, when he is thirty, decides to build a wooden shed.”^[i]

Thoreau did an amazing thing in just one sentence. He uses four techniques to make his message memorable: (1) constructing a narrative, (2) maximizing image potential, (3) stimulating emotion, and (4) communicating with novelty.

Each technology facilitates memory encoding. Of course he didn’t know that. He just felt it. But today, research by psychologists and neuroscientists shows the power of these four behaviors to improve memory in readers and listeners.

You may not want to make your communication as memorable as Thoreau’s, but wouldn’t you? Can so many meanings be packed into so few words?

By understanding the science you can start in that direction and think through the consequences. No longer will you say nothing when people read your emails, reports, articles, and ask questions about what you said.

1. Narrative structure

The first technique to improve memory is to convey your message through narrative. Research shows that people’s memory improves when they incorporate what they say into a narrative structure.[ii]

That’s why another New Englander, Robert Frost, also wrote so many memorable poems.[iii]

Even if you can’t tell it succinctly, you can use story structure to improve people’s memory. Or, to put it in neuroscience terms, you can learn how to write so that meaning is better encoded in your audience’s primary memory center, the hippocampus.

Raymond Mar, a psychologist and narrative authority at the University of York, reviewed 37 studies with 33,000 participants to investigate this point. How does conveying information in a story compare to conveying information in an essay? “There have been clear and distinct benefits in all of our studies for information presented narratively, both in terms of comprehension and memory,” Mar said.[iv]

The plot structure appears to account for this advantage. Researchers suggest that people remember stories better because narratives help us store a coherent sequence of connected events.[v] Research shows that stories also help grab people’s attention.[vi]

Here’s an example from entrepreneur Michael Ventura’s book: apply empathy: “’If you don’t get into trouble, you’ll never learn how to get out of it.’ That was advice a friend’s father gave me in 2003. I was 23 years old, had less than two years of advertising experience, and had just lost my job.”[vii]

Ventura’s approach appeals directly to the memory center because it draws attention to the characters in the jam (themselves), which is the first ingredient in many interesting story structures.

2. Maximize imaging potential

The second way to get people to remember what you say is to write so they can “see” your point. Uncover their mental movies. Thoreau did it, so did Frost. They made their point with photos.

Or, as the researchers say, they delivered with high imageability, and many experiments showed that it improved free recall. For example, Mabel Lau and her co-authors from the National University of Singapore asked people to recall words they read from a list. One of the most consistent predictors of recall was imageability.[viii]

Writer Carlos Eire used images to capture the cold of Chicago. “Air was a giant sword that wrapped around everything. Even through the thickest layer of wool, the wind blowing in from Lake Michigan two blocks away will drive the blade deep into your body. It was about -10 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s so cold that your saliva will freeze in just 2 minutes…[ix]

The power of imageability comes in part from its concreteness. (See my previous post.) People remember concrete language better than abstract language.[x] But imageability goes one step further in helping the brain store information in both the verbal and imagery systems.[xi]

3. Evoke emotions

A third way to make people remember what you say is to write with emotion. That doesn’t mean you’re exaggerating what you say. No one likes fake drama. This just means putting real passion into your writing, including the wording, images, and story structure.

If you care about what you are saying, your language should show that. Physician Atul Gawande writes passionately about his subject. mortal Being, His book about gaps in geriatric health care. His point was simple. “Long-term care facilities for older adults are not suited to the challenges of the future. . . .”

But he didn’t say that. He says: “You would think people would have revolted. You would think we would have burned down the nursing home. But we haven’t done that because it’s hard to believe that anything better is possible. . . .”[xii]

Emotional words (typically emotional stimuli) are more likely to stick in people’s memories and aid recall. (Check back in my previous post for more details.) In one study, people remembered 5.7 abstract words from a list of 20 previously seen words, but 7.75 from a list of concrete words and 9.1 from a list of emotional words.[xiii]

Here’s Lewis Thomas. cell life, Writing with a passion for the immune system: “When we detect lipopolysaccharide, we are likely to use all our defenses. We will bomb, defoliate, blockade, blockade and destroy every organization in the region.[xiv] You get pictures and emotional pictures.

4. Seek novelty

A fourth way to improve your memory is to deliver your message in a novel way. Notice how Thoreau doesn’t say much that hasn’t been said before. A young boy’s glorious dreams fade as he matures. But he said it in a new way, so you are more likely to remember it.

Here’s a line from DH Lawrence that similarly uses novelty to drive home the point: “…In older landscapes, as is the case with older people, the flesh wears away and the bones become visible.”[xv]

Here is scientist Merlin Sheldrake.: “The nose is a finely tuned instrument. Just as a prism can split white light into its component colors, the olfactory sense can split complex mixtures into their component chemicals.”[xvi]

New word combinations, new images, new stories, new ideas—in fact, any type of new stimulus lasts longer in your long-term memory.[xvii]

One caveat: Sentences constructed with new meanings improve memory, but sentences constructed with new sentence structures do not.[xviii] Henry James wrote, “A fast carriage in the dark of night, four horses riding on an invisible road, that is my idea of ??happiness.”[xix] The images, not the novel sentence structure, make his arguments memorable.

Of course, you can use other methods besides these four writing techniques to make your words memorable. Repetition, alliteration, word distinctiveness, asking questions that stimulate curiosity, and presenting information that sparks insight are all shown in experiments to improve memory.[xx]

But you can’t go wrong if you focus first on narrative, imageability, emotion, and novelty. Too little passion, too few pictures, too little novelty, too little story, and people might not remember anything you said at all. They may remember that they are not worth listening to you.