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The Science of Storytelling

Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better

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The Science of Storytelling

By: Will Storr
Narrated by: Will Storr
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About this listen

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘If you want to write a novel or a script, read this book’ Sunday Times

‘The best book on the craft of storytelling I’ve ever read’ Matt Haig

‘Rarely has a book engrossed me more, and forced me to question everything I’ve ever read, seen or written. A masterpiece’ Adam Rutherford

Why stories make us human and how to tell them better.

There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story – but few have used a scientific approach.

In this incisive, thought-provoking book, award-winning writer Will Storr demonstrates how master storytellers manipulate and compel us.

Applying dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to the foundations of our myths and archetypes, he shows how we can use these tools to tell better stories – and make sense of our chaotic modern world.

INCLUDES NEW MATERIAL.

©2019 Will Storr (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Neuroscience & Neuropsychology Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science Words, Language & Grammar Writing & Publishing Human Brain

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Critic reviews

"One of my absolute favourite writers." (Decca Aitkenhead)

"There’s nothing else quite like Will’s approach, with its illuminating, scientific take on storytelling. All writers, no matter what their level of experience, are likely to go away with a new understanding that will deepen and nourish their work." (Craig Pearce, screenwriter of Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby)

"Storr is irascibly good company, and has something approaching genius for marshalling his material." (Sunday Times)
All stars
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listened to selfie before, also read by the author. but this time it was a pain to listen. i felt as if someone told him to put more emotion in the Reading Which does not suit him. not authentic. pls keep reading as you normally do. love the story

reader was pretentious

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This book looks at the science of storytelling and what it tells us about ourselves and how stories can change our very behaviour. And it looks at this through the prism of science. Within a head lies a brain and mind that never actually experiences everything and yet tells us everything about who we are - every sensory, mental, emotional response is something we form and create in the brain. And nothing defines us more than the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves with a society that tells its own stories. For many, stories trump facts. Everything that we experience is almost done as a hallucination, we construct colours through wavelength and sounds through bombarding molecules within the air that we perceive and make sense of meaning and we are surrounded by a swarm of molecules that allow us to smell different foods. And our brains then construct these as colours or noise or taste. Storr tells as much as a story about us (it could be as much as a self help book as well as a book on the art of telling better stories, and certainly help understand the human condition).

Storr also writes about telling a story. All good stories should start with a character, one who often has the flaw in how they perceive the world. That character should drive the story rather than a plot that says how a character should behave. All stories should have a believable character, rich in detail, with a flaw in how they perceive the world, and through crisis and realisation, perceive that realisation and either change or die. Many characters don’t even have to have a reasoning or back story about why they behave in that way, Shakespeare was the first to realise this. You never know why King Lear has to play a game where he decides which daughter loves him most will have which piece of kingdom, because King Lear believes he is all powerful. This fatal flaw leads to tragedy and that the art of a good story. But we are nothing more in our behaviours than chimpanzees or other apes - and they lead similar lives to early man, behave, groom and fight without the reasoning of language. Many people do things they have no reason why they might do something, but they will still give them a story or narrative to explain why they do the things they do. When we don't know why we have done something, we still create a story or narrative that explains why we did do something.

This book is rich in the reasons of what makes a good story, how we become involved and empathetic through it. But stories can also form origins and ideologies and belief systems. The Bible tells a story that forms a viewpoint and how the world works for some, that forms their complete belief system. Other books that do a similar job, create ideologies that might save us or pit us against others. And we give the stories a form of realism that tells us how we should behave, not necessarily of the truth, but the meaning we will give to it. We also have to have goals that drive us.

This book is full of scientific evidence to support these ideas and they are fascinating in the stories that they tell. The book uses both novels and films such as Lolita, Citizen Kane, the godfather, and Shakespeare’s plays to explain how this process works. So if you want to write a good story, come up with a character who has the flaw that they themselves cannot see but you can, driven by God knows what. And a plot should have a five part sequence beginning with who am I, followed by some form of crisis, and eventually a realisation that might lead to change or destruction. It’s a fascinating tale, and this is a rich book which you can learn a lot if you want to write a novel or just understand how people behave. I loved it.

There is a fascinating experiment in the book about how people have different dispositions such as those who experienced the world in a more optimistic way, compared to a group of people who are more despondent about the world. The optimistic ones watching a video of interactions such as in a school corridor, saw more positive interactions. Those students who had past experiences of loneliness saw exactly the same videos but saw more bullying and people being unfriendly. Who we are and our past experiences can greatly influence how we see the world in very different ways. No person reads a book or sees a film in the same way.

I also liked the studies about how we make confabulations about events. For example, in people with split brains (those who might have epilepsy and have had treatment that is involved split in the the corpus callosum) if you place a sign in one side such as drink, that person might go up and get a drink and when asked why they have done that, they will make up a story that they were thirsty. There is often no point in explaining the cause of our own thoughts and behaviours because we just make up a story to explain it, even when it's not the reason we did something or carried out a behaviour.We often don't know why we do what we do or feel what we feel. We can fabulate when theorising as to why we're depressed or justify moral convictions and we confabulate when explaining why a piece of music moves us. Our sense of self is organised by an unreliable narrator. Fascinating stuff.

I really love Will Storr books, Selfie is also great and I will be reading his new book ‘The Status Game’ soon.

Great book on both writing and life

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I have over 100 books if the subject of novel construction - this is by far the best one.

If you want to write novels listen to this

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I really liked this book which offers plenty of insights and is well grownded in current academic and scientific work

Fascinating

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I loved this book so much that I immediately started listening to it from the beginning again. Very compelling.

Excellent

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