A primary goal of teaching, the authors state, is to help learners get their stories straight. To accomplish this, instructional designers set the story straight by enhancing a story's authenticity to create what the authors call an "ahha" moment rather than a "that's horse puckey" moment. Designers must offer opportunities for individuals to engage in learning opportunities in ways that enable them to re-frame their own stories to be more viable and coherent than those which were previously told. To that end, this article offers designers principles for increasing the authenticity of keystory elements: story arcs, plot events, characters, tasks, and environments. These principles have a vital influence on whether designed learning experiences have any impact on our learners' stories and, by extension, learner performance. (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)