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by
Will Storr
Read between
December 12 - December 21, 2021
This is what storytellers do. They create moments of unexpected change that seize the attention of their protagonists and, by extension, their readers and viewers. Those who’ve tried to unravel the secrets of story have long known about the significance of change. Aristotle argued that ‘peripeteia’, a dramatic turning point, is one of the most powerful moments in drama, whilst the story theorist and celebrated commissioner of screen drama John Yorke has written that ‘the image every TV director in fact or fiction always looks for is the close-up of the human face as it registers change.’
This is what storytellers do. They create moments of unexpected change that seize the attention of their protagonists and, by extension, their readers and viewers. Those who’ve tried to unravel the secrets of story have long known about the significance of change. Aristotle argued that ‘peripeteia’, a dramatic turning point, is one of the most powerful moments in drama, whilst the story theorist and celebrated commissioner of screen drama John Yorke has written that ‘the image every TV director in fact or fiction always looks for is the close-up of the human face as it registers change.’
Alfred Hitchcock, who was a master at alarming brains by threatening that unexpected change was looming, went as far as to say, ‘There’s no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.’
Alfred Hitchcock, who was a master at alarming brains by threatening that unexpected change was looming, went as far as to say, ‘There’s no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.’
Humans have an extraordinary thirst for knowledge. Storytellers excite these instincts by creating worlds but stopping short of telling readers everything about them.
Humans have an extraordinary thirst for knowledge. Storytellers excite these instincts by creating worlds but stopping short of telling readers everything about them.
Brains, concluded the researchers, seem to become spontaneously curious when presented with an ‘information set’ they realise is incomplete. ‘There is a natural inclination to resolve information gaps,’ wrote Loewenstein, ‘even for questions of no importance.’
Brains, concluded the researchers, seem to become spontaneously curious when presented with an ‘information set’ they realise is incomplete. ‘There is a natural inclination to resolve information gaps,’ wrote Loewenstein, ‘even for questions of no importance.’
In his paper ‘The Psychology of Curiosity’, Loewenstein breaks down four ways of involuntarily inducing curiosity in humans: (1) the ‘posing of a question or presentation of a puzzle’; (2) ‘exposure to a sequence of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution’; (3) ‘the violation of expectations that triggers a search for an explanation’; (4) knowledge of ‘possession of information by someone else’.
In his paper ‘The Psychology of Curiosity’, Loewenstein breaks down four ways of involuntarily inducing curiosity in humans: (1) the ‘posing of a question or presentation of a puzzle’; (2) ‘exposure to a sequence of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution’; (3) ‘the violation of expectations that triggers a search for an explanation’; (4) knowledge of ‘possession of information by someone else’.
The world we experience as ‘out there’ is actually a reconstruction of reality that is built inside our heads. It’s an act of creation by the storytelling brain.
The world we experience as ‘out there’ is actually a reconstruction of reality that is built inside our heads. It’s an act of creation by the storytelling brain.
Say it’s dusk and you think you’ve seen a strange, stooping man with a top hat and a cane loitering by a gate, but you soon realise it’s just a tree stump and a bramble. You say to your companion, ‘I thought I saw a weird guy over there.’ You did see that weird guy over there. Your brain thought he was there so it put him there. Then when you approached and new, more accurate, information was detected, it rapidly redrew the scene, and your hallucination was updated.
Say it’s dusk and you think you’ve seen a strange, stooping man with a top hat and a cane loitering by a gate, but you soon realise it’s just a tree stump and a bramble. You say to your companion, ‘I thought I saw a weird guy over there.’ You did see that weird guy over there. Your brain thought he was there so it put him there. Then when you approached and new, more accurate, information was detected, it rapidly redrew the scene, and your hallucination was updated.
Human eyes are able to read less than one ten-trillionth of the light spectrum.
Human eyes are able to read less than one ten-trillionth of the light spectrum.
Even the colours we do ‘see’ are mediated by culture. Russians are raised to see two types of blue and, as a result, see eight-striped rainbows. Colour is a lie. It’s set-dressing, worked up by the brain. One theory has it that we began painting colours onto objects millions of years ago in order to identify ripe fruit. Colour helps us interact with the external world and thereby better control it.
Even the colours we do ‘see’ are mediated by culture. Russians are raised to see two types of blue and, as a result, see eight-striped rainbows. Colour is a lie. It’s set-dressing, worked up by the brain. One theory has it that we began painting colours onto objects millions of years ago in order to identify ripe fruit. Colour helps us interact with the external world and thereby better control it.
Wherever studies have been done, from East to West, from city to tribe, dream plots reflect this. ‘The most common is being chased or attacked,’ writes story psychologist Professor Jonathan Gottschall. ‘Other universal themes include falling from a great height, drowning, being lost or trapped, being naked in public, getting injured, getting sick or dying, and being caught in a natural or manmade disaster.’
Wherever studies have been done, from East to West, from city to tribe, dream plots reflect this. ‘The most common is being chased or attacked,’ writes story psychologist Professor Jonathan Gottschall. ‘Other universal themes include falling from a great height, drowning, being lost or trapped, being naked in public, getting injured, getting sick or dying, and being caught in a natural or manmade disaster.’
This is the reality of Leo Tolstoy’s brilliant assertion that ‘a real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.’
This is the reality of Leo Tolstoy’s brilliant assertion that ‘a real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.’
A further powerful tool for the model-creating storyteller is the use of specific detail. If writers want their readers to properly model their story-worlds they should take the trouble to describe them as precisely as possible. Precise and specific description makes for precise and specific models. One study concluded that, to make vivid scenes, three specific qualities of an object should be described, with the researcher’s examples including ‘a dark blue carpet’ and ‘an orange striped pencil.’
A further powerful tool for the model-creating storyteller is the use of specific detail. If writers want their readers to properly model their story-worlds they should take the trouble to describe them as precisely as possible. Precise and specific description makes for precise and specific models. One study concluded that, to make vivid scenes, three specific qualities of an object should be described, with the researcher’s examples including ‘a dark blue carpet’ and ‘an orange striped pencil.’
C. S. Lewis implored a young writer in 1956, ‘instead of telling us a thing was “terrible”, describe it so that we’ll be terrified.
C. S. Lewis implored a young writer in 1956, ‘instead of telling us a thing was “terrible”, describe it so that we’ll be terrified.
The evolution of our strange, extremely other-obsessed brains has brought with it weird side-effects. Human obsession with faces is so fierce we see them almost anywhere: in fire; in clouds; down spooky corridors; in toast.
The evolution of our strange, extremely other-obsessed brains has brought with it weird side-effects. Human obsession with faces is so fierce we see them almost anywhere: in fire; in clouds; down spooky corridors; in toast.
storytellers stretch time, and thereby build suspense, by packing in extra saccadic moments and detail.
Analyses of language reveal the extraordinary fact that we use around one metaphor for every ten seconds of speech or written word.
metaphor is far more important to human cognition than has ever been imagined. Many argue it’s the fundamental way that brains understand abstract concepts, such as love, joy, society and economy.
describing a love scene between the characters Ammu and Valutha: ‘She could feel herself through him. Her skin. The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.’
Estimates vary, but it’s believed the brain processes around 11 million bits of information at any given moment, but makes us consciously aware of no more than forty. The brain sorts through an abundance of information and decides what salient information to include in its stream of consciousness.
Human memory is ‘episodic’ (we tend to experience our messy pasts as a highly simplified sequences of causes and effects) and ‘autobiographical’ (those connected episodes are imbued with personal and moral meaning).
we wouldn’t be the storytellers we are if it wasn’t for its most recently evolved region, the neocortex. It’s a thin layer, about the depth of a shirt collar, folded in such a way that fully three feet of it is packed into a layer beneath your forehead. One of its critical jobs is keeping track of our social worlds. It helps interpret physical gestures, facial expressions and supports theory of mind.
These theories and explanations often take the form of stories. One of the earliest we know of tells of a bear being chased by three hunters. The bear is hit. It bleeds over the leaves on the forest floor, leaving behind it the colours of autumn, then manages to escape by climbing up a mountain and leaping into the sky, where it becomes the constellation Ursa Major. Versions of the ‘Cosmic Hunt’ myth have been found in Ancient Greece, northern Europe, Siberia, and in the Americas, where this particular one was told by the Iroquois Indians. Because of this pattern of spread, it’s believed it
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Gregory Williams liked this
This is how best selling page-turners and blockbusting scripts generate their addictive force. They have a relentless adherence to forward motion, one thing leading to another, and exploit our quenchless curiosity for fuel.
‘You want all your scenes to have a “because” between them, and not an “and then”.’ Brains struggle with ‘and then’. When one thing happens over here, and then we’re with a woman in a car park who’s just witnessed a stabbing, and then there’s a rat in Mothercare in 1977, and then there’s an old man singing sea shanties in a haunted pear orchard, the writer is asking a lot of people.
Good stories are explorations of the human condition; thrilling voyages into foreign minds. They’re not so much about events that take place on the surface of the drama as they are about the characters that have to battle them. Those characters, when we meet them on page one, are never perfect. What arouses our curiosity about them, and provides them with a dramatic battle to fight, is not their achievements or their winning smile. It’s their flaws.
feels as if everyone else is ‘biased’ and it’s only you that sees reality as it actually is. Psychologists call this ‘naive realism’. Because reality seems clear and obvious and self-evident to you, those who claim to see it differently must be idiots or lying or morally derelict. The characters we tend to meet at the start of story are, like most of us, living just like this – in a state of naivety about how partial and warped their hallucination of reality has become. They’re wrong. They don’t know they’re wrong. But they’re about to find out
The mythologist Joseph Campbell said that ‘the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections.’
When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.
Whereas Westerners enjoy having accounts of individual struggle and victory beamed into their neural realms, Easterners take pleasure from the narrative pursuit of harmony.
Of course, different kinds of story have different levels of emphasis and psychological complexity, but plot without character is just so much light and sound. Meaning is created by just the right change-event happening to just the right person at just the right moment.
Who is this person? This is the question all stories ask. It emerges first at the ignition point. When the initial change strikes, the protagonist overreacts or behaves in an otherwise unexpected way. We sit up, suddenly attentive. Who is this person who behaves like this? The question then re-emerges every time the protagonist is challenged by the plot and compelled to make a choice.
Gregory Williams liked this
Beneath the level of consciousness we’re a riotous democracy of mini-selves which, writes the neuroscientist Professor David Eagleman, are ‘locked in chronic battle’ for dominion. Our behaviour is ‘simply the end result of the battles’.
We believe we’re in control of ourselves but we’re continually being altered by the world and people around us. The difference is that in life, unlike in story, the dramatic question of who we are never has a final and truly satisfying answer.
We can’t simply toss aside our flawed ideas as if they’re a pair of badly fitting trousers. It takes overwhelming evidence to convince us that ‘reality’ is wrong. When we finally realise something’s up, breaking these beliefs apart means breaking ourselves apart. And that’s precisely what happens in many of our most successful stories.
Because humiliation is such an apocalyptic punishment, watching villains being punished this way can feel rapturous. As we’re a tribal people with tribal brains, it doesn’t count as humiliation unless other members of the tribe are aware of it. As Professor William Flesch writes, ‘We may hate the villain, but our hatred is meaningless. We want him unmasked to people in his world.’
Tribal stories blind us. They allow us to see only half the truth, at best.
