The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better

by Will Storr

today’s landscape of popular storytelling. For the mythologist Joseph Campbell, a story starts with a hero receiving and, at first, refusing a call to adventure. A mentor comes along to encourage them. Somewhere in the middle they’ll undergo a ‘rebirth’, only to rouse dark forces that pursue them. After a near-deadly battle, the hero returns to their community with learnings and ‘boons’. The Hollywood animation studio Pixar is home to some of the most successful mass-market storytellers of our age. ‘Story artist’ Austin Madison, who’s worked on blockbusters including Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up, has shared a structure he says all Pixar films must adhere to. The action starts with a protagonist who has a goal, living in a settled world. Then a challenge comes that forces them into a cause-and-effect sequence of events that eventually builds to a climax that demonstrates the triumph of good over evil and the revelation of the story’s moral. Thirty years of study led Christopher Booker to assert the existence of seven recurring plots in story. He calls them: Overcoming the Monster; Rags to Riches; The Quest; Voyage and Return; Rebirth; Comedy; and Tragedy. Each plot, he argues, consists of five acts: the call to action, a dream stage in which everything goes well, a frustration stage at which fortunes turn, a descent into nightmarish conflict, and finally a resolution. Following Jung, Booker outlines a character transformation he believes ubiquitous. At the story’s start the p...