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

by Will Storr

As the story gives us hints and clues about the causes of their errors, we’ll warm to their vulnerability and become emot...

When the dramatic events of the plot coax them to change w...

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 mythologist Joseph Campbell said that ‘the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections.’

unlike in life, story allows us to crawl into that character’s mind and understand them.

there’s little more fascinating than the cause and effect of other people, the ‘why’ of ...

When designing a character, it’s often useful to think of them in terms of their theory of control. How have they learned to control the world? When unexpected change strikes, what’s their automatic go-to tactic for wrestling with the chaos? What’s their default, flawed response? The answer, as we’ve just seen, comes from that character’s core beliefs about reality, the precious and fiercely defended ideas around which they’ve formed their sense of self.

Psychologists measure personality across five domains, which can be useful for writers doing character work to know.

extraversion

neuro...

openness

agreeable

Conscientious

Personality has a powerful influence over our theory of control.

This, then, is how unique and interesting fictional characters generate unique and interesting plots.

‘It is from character,’ writes the psychologist Professor Keith Oatley, ‘that flow goals, plans and actions.’

As we interact with the world in our own characteristic way, so the world pushes back in ways which reflect it, setting us off in our o...

It’s in these ways that tiny differences in brain structure can add up to massively different lives and plots.

Storytellers can show the personality of their characters in almost everything they do: it’s in their thoughts, dialogue, social behaviours, memories, desires and sadnesses.

what we do in tiny interactions like the way we shop, dress or talk to a stranger on the train or decorate our houses, shows the same kinds of patterns as can be observed from examining a whole life.’

Human environments are rich with clues about those who occupy them.

Identity claims betray how these people want others to think of them.

People use ‘feeling regulators’, motivational posters, scented candles

Extroverts who feel energised by bright colours are more likely to decorate their ho...

introverts prefer the hush of m...

Behavioural residue’ is what psychologists call the things we accidentally leave behind: the stashed wine ...

Our traits work with our cultural, social and economic environments, as well as the experiences we go through, to construct a neural world for us to live in that is unique.

The protagonist’s point of view orients us in the story. It’s a map of clues, full of hints about its owner’s flaws and the plot they’re going to create. For me, it’s the single most underrated quality of fiction writing.

In most of the best contemporary fiction, objects and events aren’t usually described from a God-like view, but from the unique perspective of the character.

culture is actually built deeply and directly into our model of the world.

Culture distorts and narrows the lens through which we experience life, exerting a potent influence on us, whether by dictating the moral rules we’ll fight and die to defend or defining the kinds of foods we’ll perceive as delicious.

Play is critical for the making of social minds. One study into the backgrounds of sociopathic murderers found no connection between them apart from an extreme lack of play,

Western children are raised in a culture of individualism which was birthed around 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece.

This conception of the individual as the locus of their own power, free to choose the life they wanted, rather than being slave to the whims of tyrants, fates and gods, was revolutionary. It ‘changed the way people thought about cause and effect,’ writes the psychologist Professor Victor Stretcher, ‘heralding in Western civilisation’.

For the Greeks, the primary agent of control was the individual. For the Chinese, it was the group.

For the Greeks, reality was made up of individual pieces and parts.

For the Chinese, it was a field of interco...

What these forms reflect is the different ways our cultures understand change.

individual pieces and parts. When threatening unexpected change strikes, we tend to reimpose control by going to war with those pieces and parts and trying to tame them.

For Easterners, reality is a field of interconnected forces. When threatening unexpected change strikes, they’re more likely to reimpose control by attempting to understand how to bring those turbulent force...

Having undergone its adolescent narrative-making process, the brain has essentially worked out who we are, what matters, and how we should behave in order to get what we want.

But now it becomes less plastic and harder to change. Most of the peculiarities and mistakes that make us who we are have become incorporated into its models.

From being model-builders we become model defenders. Now that the flawed self with its flawed model of the world has been constructed, the brain starts to protect it.

the individual now acts to preserve established structures in the face of environmental challenges,

We respond to such challenges with distorted thinking, argument and aggression.

‘we ignore, forget or attempt to actively discredit information that is inconsisten...

Smart people are mostly better at finding ways to ‘prove’ they’re right and tend to be no better at detecting their wrongness.

good dialogue is ‘two monologues clashing. It’s true in life, never mind drama. Everyone is always, always thinking about themselves.’

The person with merely differing views becomes a dangerous antagonist, a force that’s actively attempting to harm us.

what happened when people in brain scanners were presented with evidence their strongly held political beliefs were wrong. ‘The response in the brain that we see is very similar to what would happen if, say, you were walking through the forest and came across a bear,’