Watch a human brain while engaged in a story and that brain looks as if that person is actually experiencing the story, rather than observing it.
That’s why stories are so sticky: why we eavesdrop on other stories, watch movies, listen to music, read novels and gossip. It’s a defining characteristic of humanity.
That’s the thrust of the 2012 book “The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human,” written by professor Jonathan Gottschall. Though he argues examples of story’s power shows up all over the place, from effective marketing to biography books and new journalism, this book centers around fiction. Fiction appears better at convincing than nonfiction, exactly because fictional stories put us in a kind of trance, lowering our defenses. How nations and cities, friends and companies, organize are all reliant on stories. (I referenced Gottschall’s work in my recent ‘case for storytelling’ conference speech.)
“Story is the grease and the glue of society,” wrote one psychologist. “Story is the center without which the rest cannot hold”
However the future of fact-based storytelling goes, there appears to be no decline in story in our lives, as disinformation campaigns and bestselling video games both show. As one gamer puts it in the book: “the future looks bleak for reality.”
Below I share my notes for future reference.
Continue reading We are a “storytelling animal”