You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

by David McRaney

Every story needs a strong protagonist with whom you can identify. If they are down on their luck or recently fell from grace, you see them as being approachable. If they are plucky and face great odds, again, you root for them without having to think about it. Early on, the protagonist will save someone without having to, and you start to like him or her. On the other side, you need a dastardly antagonist who harms someone for no reason, a person who ignores the rules and wants only to satisfy him- or herself no matter the cost. The hero or heroine leaves his or her normal world and enters into a new life full of adventure. Just when it seems as though the protagonist will fail, he or she overcomes whatever has been in the way, in order to defeat the antagonist, sometimes even saving the world in the process. When the hero or heroine returns to home, he or she has been changed for the better. If the story is a tragedy, the protagonist ends up worse off than when the story began.