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Why some powerful stories go nowhere
Every Tuesday, The Productive Disruptive delivers storytelling science, message makeovers, cultural commentary, and a little rebellious hope for anyone still stubborn enough to believe communication can change the world.
Dorian Johnson
July 21, 2026
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“I feel like, as an older person, maybe we’re not translating that message to our younger people. We have to do better. We’re lacking somewhere if we’re letting young people repeat the mistakes that we have learned.”
A man shared that with me while I was talking with people at the 117th NAACP National Convention about nicotine and its impact on Black communities.
As someone who works in adolescent health, his words hit like a ton of bricks.
I heard someone looking across generations and wondering whether hard-earned lessons had reached the people coming next.
These conversations kept coming.
Throughout the weekend, people connected what they learned from the exhibit to their own lives, families, and generations.
My aunt and uncle were menthol smokers.
I remember the Newport boxes. The lingering smell in the car on a road trip.
I also remember my brother telling me, when I was probably in third or fourth grade, that Black people usually smoked menthols.
I accepted that as information about the world around me. Years later, I can place it inside a larger history of racial targeting, marketing, addiction, and normalization.
Stories help people make those connections.
They give an issue a face, a voice, and a memory.
Still, empathy alone can leave people moved without helping them understand what they’re seeing or how to respond.
A strong story can guide an audience through four layers:
Person. Pattern. Power. Pathway.
Person
Start with someone’s experience.
What did they live through, notice, question, or remember?
The man I spoke with gave youth nicotine use a human shape. He wondered whether his generation had passed along what it learned.
His words carried sadness, responsibility, and concern for the people coming next.
For your story: Whose experience could help people connect this issue to something they’ve seen, felt, or lived?
Pattern
Connect that experience to something larger.
He was thinking about youth vaping rates and how saddening it was to watch another generation face nicotine addiction.
His concern stretched across generations. Older adults had learned hard lessons about cigarettes and menthol. Young people were now encountering nicotine through different products and marketing.
Patterns help readers see where one experience connects to a wider history, trend, or shared reality.
For your story: What other experiences, trends, or histories show that this issue reaches beyond one person?
Power
Ask what shaped the pattern.
Black Americans didn’t arrive at disproportionate tobacco-related harm through individual choices alone. Marketing, access, racism, chronic stress, policy, and industry decisions all played a role.
Together, these forces made nicotine products widely available, familiar, and culturally embedded.
Nicotine addiction is powerful. Once these products became normalized, the harm could compound across families and generations.
The better question reaches beyond, “Why did people keep using nicotine?”
It asks what shaped the conditions around that use.
For your story: What systems, incentives, decisions, or environments helped create the pattern?
Pathway
Give people somewhere useful to place their concern.
That could mean changing a practice, asking a better question, sharing a resource, supporting an organization, or joining an effort, such as
For readers who want to learn more about addressing nicotine addiction in Black communities, Breath of Freedom is a collaboration between Truth Initiative and the NAACP focused on reclaiming the narrative around tobacco for Black Americans.
A story can stir emotion and still leave people unsure what comes next.
A pathway gives that concern somewhere to go.
For your story: After people care, what meaningful next step can you help them see?
🧠 Story Science Side Note: A meta-analysis found that people tend to remember information better when they connect it to themselves. It’s called the self-reference effect.
People can link new information to memories, relationships, and knowledge they already carry, which helps organize and deepen how they process it.
📝 Message Makeover:
Before:
Black Americans experience disproportionate tobacco-related harm.
After:
Targeted predatory marketing, unequal conditions, and nicotine addiction helped create a pattern of harm across Black communities.
🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner:
Find the Missing P
Take one story, case study, or example you already use in your work.
Use the 4P’s I mentioned earlier
Person: the lived experience
Pattern: the wider trend or shared reality
Power: the forces shaping it
Pathway: the meaningful next step
Which P is missing or underdeveloped?
For help, consider these
Person: “This issue became real for ___ when ___.”
Pattern: “Their experience connects to a wider pattern of ___.”
Power: “This pattern was shaped by ___.”
Pathway: “After hearing this story, people can ___.”
Up at an ungodly hour(always)✌🏾