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

by Will Storr

point onwards, the protagonist has been in a battle to reimpose control over their external world. If the story has a happy ending the process will be successful. Their brain’s model of the external world, and its theory of control, will have been updated and improved. They’ll finally be able to tame the chaos. Control, as we’ve already discovered, is the ultimate mission of the brain. Our hero-making cognition always wants to make us feel as if we have more of it than we actually

lose our sense of control is to suffer the loss of the sense of ourselves as an active heroic character, and this leads to anxiety and depression and worse.

Those who ‘feel in control of their lives, have goals of their own choosing and make progress towards those goals are happier than people who do not’.

bantering more enthusiastically,’ he says. ‘After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in – particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth.’

The perfect archetypal ending takes the form of ‘the God moment’

‘life is change that yearns for stability’.

Story is a thrill-ride of control.

To live in a hallucination trapped inside a skull is to feel, in the words of neuroscientist Professor Chris Frith, like ‘the invisible actor at the centre of the world’. We’re that single point of focus at which everything

meets: sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, thought, memory and action. This is the illusion story weaves.

on. It

is, in other words, to experience the consciousness of the character as if we were them.

Research suggests that, when we’re transported, our beliefs, attitudes and intentions are vulnerable to being altered, in accordance with the mores of the story, and that

historian Professor Lynn Hunt argues that the birth of the novel helped precipitate the invention of human rights.

We all inhabit foreign worlds. Each of us is ultimately alone in our black vault, wandering our singular neural realms, ‘seeing’ things differently, feeling different passions and hatreds and associations of memory as our attention grazes over them. We laugh at different things, are moved by different pieces of music and transported by different kinds of stories. All

of us are in search of writers who somehow capture the distinct music made by the agonies in our heads. If we prefer storytellers with similar backgrounds and lived experiences to our own, it’s because what we often crave in art is the same connection with others we seek in friendship and love. It’s only natural if a woman prefers books by women or a working-class man prefers working-class voices: storytelling will always be full of associations that speak directly to particular perspectives.

Story, then, is both tribal propaganda and the cure for tribal propaganda.

‘Love makes you happy?’ the elder Barnes asked me, tenderly, from the pages of his book. ‘No,’ he continued. ‘Love makes the person you love happy? No. Love makes everything all right? Indeed no.’

The heart isn’t heart-shaped. Five words that immediately soothed me and made sense of my adolescent torments. Five words that, twenty-six years later and

married to another, still help me negotiate love’s unpredictable waters. The heart isn’t heart-shaped. A secret mantra I’ll hear in my head until the day that I or she dies.

The consolation of story is truth.

It’s not only us who are broken; it’s not only us who are conflicted; it’s not only us who are confused; it’s not only us who have dark thoughts and bitter regrets and feel possessed, at times, by hateful selves. It’s not only us who are scared. The magic of story is its ability to connect mind with mind in

a manner that’s unrivalled even by love.

When we’re talking about character, we’re really talking about character flaw.

Underpinning every gripping scene in their story is that fundamental dramatic question: who is this character really? If the author doesn’t know, the reader is likely to sense it and grow confused, frustrated and uninterested.

Here’s a reasonable milieu – scientists have found the cure for death and the earth is overflowing with humans.

it’s not a story, it’s a setting for a story.

metropolis. None of this is good. To move beyond cliché requires precision.

The only way to escape it is to work out precisely who this person is, how she’s damaged and therefore what specific battle the plot must create for her.

Jonathan Haidt. He told me something I’ve never forgotten: ‘Follow the sacredness. Find out what people believe to be sacred, and when you look around there you will find rampant irrationality.’

irrational about,

ask what they make sacred. The things we make sacred are, to a great extent, the things that come to define us. This, I believe, is the secret of unlocking the truth of a character.

when they’re asked what we’re like – this quality will probably be the first thing th...

The point of the plots was to test these sacred ideas and break them apart.

story is change, and the most important change of all that takes place is to the people who inhabit them.

ask, who is this person who believes this? How and why did they come upon this belief? What did they believe before? Why did they change? What does this belief mean for their outward goals? And their secret fears? What does it protect them from?

When we’re talking about a character’s sacred flaw, we’re referring to a flaw in their theory of control

We can see their mistake but they can’t. It leads them to behave in ways that seem baffling, maddening and self-defeating. We’re curious about this mistake – about its nature, its source, its effects and its possibilities for change.

She developed a reputation for being stiff, cold and robotic and unable to take advice. She couldn’t connect with her enemies and allies on a human level, or understand the delicate arts of negotiation, diplomacy and compromise, and this was her downfall.

‘May’s problem is she always thinks she’s the only adult in the room.’

works as a fabulous example of a sacred flaw.

Our protagonist’s sacred belief that she was the only adult in any room was, at one point, her superpower. It helped earn her everything she most valued. It gave her confidence, tenacity and courage. It gave her wealth,

status and a place in the driving seat of history. But ultimately it turned out to be her downfall.

flaw. Her faulty model of the world prevented her from taking advice or compromising. It alienated and enraged all the people who could’ve helped and supported

she ended up failed, loathed and broken. Her story is a tragedy.

could suddenly see for this person. So how would you succinctly describe your character’s broken theory of control? What’s the flawed belief they have about themselves and the human world that they cling onto, and that has come to largely define them? If it helps, you could think of it as a statement that begins in one of the following ways: The thing people most admire about me is . . . I’m only safe when I . . . The most important thing of all in life is . . . The secret of happiness is . . . The best thing about me is . . . The most terrible thing about other people is . . . The big thing I understand about the world that nobody else seems to get is .

The best advice anyone ever gave me was

This step involves working out exactly when and how

the damage occurred that

created your characte...

only truly safe when you were the best?’