Researchers Pennington and Hastie proposed the "story" concept to model the process of juror decision-making, theorizing that a juror will construct a tenable story to make sense of the evidence. This story is a narrative summary assembled around the more understandable events and information remembered by the juror from the trial process. A juror will discard those elements that do not fit the story. The researchers then set out to verify their model using mock trials and juries. Consistent with the model, they concluded that jurors were more likely to decide a case based on whose presentation of the evidence made it easiest to construct the story.

A decision-maker needs to have complex issues presented in a manner that makes them understandable and usable as elements in the construction of his story. The role of expert witnesses in the trial is to present the information, based on the evidence, in such a way that the decision-maker can integrate it into the construction of his story. If there is conflicting information from another expert witness or attorney, the decision-maker will use whatever information makes the most sense to his evolving story. The expert witness can tailor his presentation to make it easy for the decision-maker to understand and integrate the testimony into his "story". The team that provides the story elements the decision-maker use as a basis of their story will be the team most likely to prevail. Using the concept of “story” provides a simple yet powerful structure to build the demonstrative evidence strategy.