Who Knows More About Story: Writers or The Pentagon?
By Lisa Cron | October 8, 2015 |
Photo via Flickr by Pfc. Mardicio Barrot
I can’t believe I’m back! I missed you all, and the amazingly warm, welcoming and fabulously engaged and engaging community here at Writer Unboxed. I’ve spent the past year working on my new book, Story Genius, and thinking about one thing: story itself, not “writing.” Because to talk about writing is to talk about the method. The technique. The format. The genre. To talk about story is to talk about the juice, the point, the content, the thing that hooks readers from the first sentence.
I want to spend the next ten months before Story Genius comes out, letting you in on what I’ve learned about story – not just theoretically, but hands on, boots on the ground, so you can begin to harness the unparalleled power of story right out of the starting gate (which is not page one, but miles before it). It can all be boiled down into this one simple sentence:
Story first, writing second.
My goal in Story Genius was to create a step-by-step method to go from the first glimmer of an idea to a finished first draft by focusing solely on story. After all, writing and technique is born of story, not the other way around. This is good news for writers. Because story is story regardless the format, the technique, the genre.[pullquote]You know that old saw, “The pen is mightier than the sword”? It’s a metaphor, right? Wrong. It’s a fact.[/pullquote]
And the heartbreaking thing is that story – what it is, where it came from, what its biological purpose is, and what the readers’ brain is actually responding to – is not something that tends to be discussed by writers, let alone taught to writers. But strangely enough, the biological effect of stories is being talked about with increasing frequency and urgency by scientists. Discoveries and connections are being made that explode our understanding of story and the power it has over us. In other words, everyone else is beginning to figure out that writers are among the most powerful people on the planet.
You know that old saw, “The pen is mightier than the sword”? It’s a metaphor, right? Wrong. It’s a fact. You know who believes it?
The Pentagon.
Or, more to the point, DARPA, The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s top secret military research arm, which “is the most powerful and most productive military science agency in the world. Its stated mission is to create revolutions in military science and to maintain technological dominance over the rest of the world.”
Sounds like the beginning of a dystopian novel, doesn’t it? Story as a way to maintain dominance over the world? How could a technology that’s as old as our brain do that?
That’s what DARPA wanted to find out, so in 2011 it began a program called Narrative Networks (N2) based on the fact that human brains physically change in order to fit new information into coherent narratives. According to DARPA, “Narratives exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior. They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of personal identity.”
As Wired pointed out when the program began, “One of DARPA’s stated goals is to explore ‘the intertwining of the biology of narratives and emotions. This will discuss, in terms of our neuron signals, how listening to a narrative can impact the biology of emotions like empathy, sympathy or outrage and disgust, leading to impulsive reactions.’ All this may sound fluffy but there have actually been a number of scientific studies assessing the relationship between the seemingly disparate but deeply related issues of memory, judgment, identity, narrative and neuroscience. DARPA’s workshop is trying to weave these elements together within the context of their work: security matters.”[pullquote]Story – narrative – is the language of the brain. And in that capacity, story’s main job is to impart useful inside intel on how to navigate our beautiful, unpredictable world.[/pullquote]
Kind of scary to think that the Pentagon wants to harness the power of story to get its point across, isn’t it? Conjures up images of Big Brother and mind manipulation. But that’s precisely what story does – it changes how we see things. That’s its job. Story itself is neutral; it can take us just as far in the right direction as the wrong. It all depends on who is wielding it.
There’s only one thing we can’t do: unplug our brain from story. Because story – narrative – is the language of the brain. And in that capacity, story’s main job is to impart useful inside intel on how to navigate our beautiful, unpredictable world. In fact, as studies have shown, reading novels increases our ability to empathize, but not by choice. Our newfound empathy isn’t something we “decide” to engage in having read a story about someone different than us; it’s something that happens organically — because when we were lost in the story, it rewired our brain.[pullquote]Studies have shown that reading novels increases our ability to empathize, but not by choice, but by rewiring our brain. [/pullquote]
That’s how powerful stories are. They often change how we see things, without our conscious knowledge. We’re being affected by stories every minute of every day, whether we know it or not. What the Pentagon is getting at is that it’s better to understand the story, and the power it exerts, than to pretend that that power doesn’t exist.
And for us writers, the more we understand what it is that’s really captivating our readers, the better we’ll be able to write stories that enthrall them.
The genuinely surprising thing is that it took humans this long to prove how powerful story is. We needed evolutionary biology and neuroscience to give us the key insights. There are two good reasons that story’s power stayed hidden for so long.
The first reason we overlook the power of story, and why writers tend to be unaware of exactly what it is that makes a story compelling, is because although we think in narrative, we don’t tend to perceive it as such. Instead, we tend to believe that we’re seeing things “objectively”—that is, the way anyone would (well, anyone as sane, smart, and savvy as we are, that is)—rather than “subjectively,” as defined by what our very specific life has primed us to see.
That’s why what sometimes appears to you as a clear-cut, illuminating fact that demands instant action, might leave someone else scratching his head and wondering what on earth you’re talking about. While this might sound obvious in the abstract, out there in the field it’s easy to forget. It’s like the old joke David Foster Wallace tells in his now famous This is Water speech: An older fish asks two young fish, “How’s the water?” and as she swims away, one young fish turns to the other and says, “What the heck is water?”
Our subjective story is the water we’re swimming in. So we don’t see it as our narrative, but as “life” – the way things are. Truth is, we don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. And what writers need to take to heart is: so do our protagonists.
The second reason we’ve missed the unparalleled power of story is, ironically, because we love stories so much. Since it feels so good to get lost in a story, we’ve come to regard stories as “entertainment” and thus optional — as if stories serve no real purpose other than to entertain us.[pullquote]Without narrative, life would not only be meaningless, but incomprehensible. Stories don’t simply chronicle external events (plotters, beware), they make sense of those events as they relate to a specific person, given that person’s agenda.[/pullquote]
Story isn’t something we humans created for “entertainment” nor is story about something as ephemeral, vague and – honestly unhelpful – as the concept of “art.” In fact, we didn’t create story at all; story created us. Or at least our perception of the world we live in. Story is built into the architecture of the brain, it’s the framework that allows us to process all the raw info that life throws at us 24/7.
Story is the lens through which we see . . . everything.
Without narrative, life would not only be meaningless, but incomprehensible. Stories don’t simply chronicle external events (plotters, beware), they make sense of those events as they relate to a specific person, given that person’s agenda. It’s that internal logic that supplies subjective meaning, thus triggering every action your protagonist takes, from walking the dog before it’s too late to taking a high paying job she detests to prove to her sixth grade teacher that she does too have what it takes to succeed in the real world.
In his book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain neuroscientist David Eagleman writes that to make a good narrative, “the brain works around the clock to stitch together a pattern of logic to our daily lives: what just happened and what was my role in it? Fabrication of stories is one of the key businesses in which our brains engage. Brains do this with the single-minded goal of getting the multifaceted actions of [the world around us] to make sense.”[pullquote]Narrative is our internal attempt to figure out how the external world works, and – most importantly – why people do the things they do, the better to not get clobbered for saying the wrong thing. [/pullquote]
In other words: narrative is our internal attempt to figure out how the external world works, and – most importantly – why people do the things they do, the better to not get clobbered for saying the wrong thing. Story isn’t what happens, externally; story is how we make sense of what happens, internally. That’s what your readers are wired to come for: we can already see what happens on the surface, we don’t need novels to tell us that. What we want to know is: how is what’s happening affecting the protagonist given her specific agenda; what subjective meaning is she reading into it; and how will it drive her action?
In other words, it’s not about what she does, it’s about why. As author Julian Barnes says, “Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t.”
And the key question is: what does our brain use to make sense of the present? In literature as in life, the answer is the past. In writer’s parlance, backstory is the lens through which your protagonist views and evaluates everything in the present. And, in combination with what she wants (her future agenda), backstory is the basis of every decision she makes.[pullquote]In writer’s parlance, backstory is the lens through which your protagonist views and evaluates everything in the present[/pullquote]
Each one of us (not just you and me, but every protagonist, every character) lives by our own internal, subjective logic, which we’ve stitched together out of the very specific experiences we’ve had. Those experiences are called up the moment life throws something unexpected at us. It’s the unexpected – a problem, an inescapable conflict, the prospect of unavoidable change — that catapults our conscious brain into action. To quote Eagleman again, “Think about when your conscious awareness comes online: in those situations where events in the world violate your expectations.” Stories are about just that: how we deal with the unexpected. And when that happens, your protagonist would instantly and innately call up her own subjective narrative – that is, her past life experience – to figure out what the hell to do. It is this internal struggle that evokes the emotion that drives the novel, and hooks the reader. It’s the struggle that tells us what things mean.[pullquote]Stories are about how we deal with the unexpected. And when that happens, your protagonist would instantly and innately call up her own subjective narrative – that is, her past life experience – to figure out what the hell to do. [/pullquote]
Thus it’s no surprise that it is the protagonist’s internal struggle that the reader’s brain is wired to respond to. That means that you must know a lot of story-specific information about your protagonist before you can develop a plot, before you can even begin to write your novel. But – and this is the game changer – not before you begin to write your story. Because your story starts in your protagonist’s past, long before your novel does.
And, here’s something that might come as a surprise: your protagonist’s past – yes, backstory — must be present on page one, in the internal response she has as she tries to figure out the meaning of the unexpected thing that’s happening in the moment.
It’s this that tells readers why what’s happening matters to your protagonist, gives them empathy, and allows them to experience, feel, and vicariously live your protagonist’s life – live it literally, as it rewires their brain, changing how they see the world.
The take away: Readers are responding to things that writers have not been taught to focus on. And those things need to become the framework of your entire novel. In a story every twist, every “sensory detail,” every bit of tension springs from one thing: the single internal struggle that spurs your protagonist’s action from the first page to the last. There are no random elements. Ever. All the workshops and lessons about beautiful writing, and three act structures, and plot-level drama come to nothing unless the internal struggle that those external events put the protagonist through is clear and present.
To that end, next month we’ll dive into exactly what that internal struggle looks like and why, given the way writing is taught, it may be exactly what you’ve been purposely avoiding when you write.
But before that, I know that you’re all miles ahead of where you were nine months ago when I signed off. What’s the most revelatory thing you’ve learned about your story since December? Aha moments welcome!
[coffee]
Lisa Cron is the author of Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers From the Very First Sentence and Story Genius: How To Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste 3 Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere). Her video tutorial, Writing Fundamentals: The Craft of Story, can be found at Lynda.com. Her TEDx talk, Wired for Story, opened Furman University’s 2014 TEDx conference, Stories: The Common Thread of Our Humanity. A frequent speaker at writers conferences, schools and universities, Lisa’s passion has always been story. She currently works as a story coach helping writers, nonprofits, educators and journalists wrangle the story they’re telling onto the page; contact her here.
One of the books on the shelf by my bed is Incognito The Secret Lives of Brains. I picked up a copy a few years ago after hearing David Eagleman on NPR. And yes…It’s that mind blowing.
One of the things he said in that book that has always stuck with me, is to imagine a human who knows nothing about technology, and lives on an island. One day that human finds a transistor radio washed up on shore. The human hears voices and music. The human turns the radio over and finds wires. The human deduces that the voices and music come from the wires because the human knows nothing about radio towers. He theorized that that is where science is with brains at the moment. We’re just studying what we know, but the possibilities as to what we don’t know… make him a Possiblitian.
Your post is also mind blowing. There’s a lot to digest. I’m going to have to read through it a few times. And think about it. Powerful stuff. As for your question about what we’ve learned…
After learning a lot in the past few years about story structure and techniques, I’ve taken those new skills with me back to the beginning, to the reason I’m compelled to write. It starts with an explosion of emotion that is so powerful I have to let it out on paper. Spilling it onto paper requires words and those words invoke an image. And it is from that image that my story starts. This, I have learned, is what works for me… and the possibilities…oh the possibilities…
Welcome back. )
Thanks, Bernadette! Love the phrase “an explosion of emotion” — sounds like the perfect tag line. Don’t let that puppy go. Here’s to the possibilities!
Wonderful, thought-provoking post. I dig these discussions about the way our psychology connects to story and becomes apparent through craft. Looking forward to your book, Lisa!
As for an a-ha moment, I’m in the third draft of my third novel and realized a few days ago the true essence of the book–it’s about grieving and loss, and the question of life after death. My protagonist discovers herself through her healing, and finds a voice of her own, rather than being beholden to voices in her past. That being said, it’s a very plotty, intricate historical so I was delighted to find (and heighten) its true message.
Great to have you back!
Thanks so much Heather. Sounds like a compelling read — balance the inner struggle with the intricacy of the plot, so that it’s the struggle that gives the events in the plot meaning, and we’ll be right there with your protagonist. Can’t wait to hear more!
Hello Lisa,
It’s wonderful to have you back! I just spent the last two mornings making my way through your fabulous video tutorial over at lynda.com, which helped me to nail my protagonist’s inner issue. Hooray!
About Story in general, I recently finished reading The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown. Over 15,000 people have taken the time to review it favorably over at amazon.com, and I know why. Because the author understood exactly what story he was trying to tell and never once deviated from what really mattered during the course of his narrative.
And guess what? My world will never be quite the same again. He moved me, and changed me, with the power of his narrative, which was about “grit and determination in the face of overwhelming odds.”
I’m using his book as a model for my own, which is a novel based on what I believe to be an equally incredible true story. Now if I can only do what he did!
So here’s to story taking first place in my thinking, as much as I have always loved words and the amazing intricacies of the English language.
Welcome back, Lisa! Can’t wait to read your new book . . .
Deb
Oh Deb thanks! One of the most amazing things you say here is that you were moved by Brown’s book, and — this is the insanely hard part — still able to zero in on exactly why. Not the beautiful words, great writing, but by the inner story they were giving voice to. Not to mention noticing that the writer stayed true to that story, so you were never left wondering what the point was. Even small digressions can break the spell so thoroughly that you put the book down and never pick it up again. Onward!!
Yay!!! Welcome back, Lisa. I won’t begin to list the things you said here that lifted me off the chair this morning. I’ll simply say thank you. Lightbulbs were flashing in my head the whole way through. Memories, too, of my storyteller family, where nothing ever just ‘happened’ to anyone. There was always a narrative that started way before the event in question. I thought this was just peculiar to my clan. And I suppose it is, if I consider the entire human race my clan (in terms of story, I suppose it is). I so look forward to more. And I can’t wait to read the book!
It’s so good to be back, thanks Susan! Love the thought of the entire human race as our clan, glad to be part of yours!! ;- )
Lisa–wonderful post, full of truth-telling, and (forgive the alliteration) tough love of the kind all writers need. Thank you very much.
Because of the riches here, the only thing for a commenter to do is to single out something specific. For me, it’s your discussion of how the narrative impulse (maybe it’s a gene) organizes and rationalizes the chaotic flood of experience. This is incontestable. It explains how each person develops a world view; it explains why people’s political opinions are virtually immune to anything that shows those opinions to be wrong-headed (you could call it the toxicology of political loyalty).
But as a writer, I see this idea in action through the re-wiring that I work on myself in the process of writing a novel. I am exposed to the narrative for so long, in so many repeated encounters that I become all too convinced of the story’s truth, of its inviolable movement from start to finish. As a consequence, I am very reliant on other people (editors) seeing what I’ve become blind to–the progression that seems so right to me, but that leaves others shaking their heads. My wife, for instance. I asked her to read the first fifty pages of my current WIP. I had worried over the narrative a long time, and expected high praise. No such luck. With some reluctance (a sure giveaway), she told me that I had confused her by introducing far too many characters too soon.
But: is she right? Can’t I show her lots of examples in which successful novelists have done what I did? Yes, I can. But here’s the difference: those writers have built up a following of admirers. These readers have expectations–wiring–established by previous books written by the same author. It has generated expectations that lead them to assume this latest book will deliver as have previous novels.
Thanks again. I’m tired of the expression, but this is a “must read.”
Oh Barry, I couldn’t agree more — there ARE writers whose work I give the benefit of the doubt to because I’m already familiar with their work. Usually, for me, it’s when I’m reading something of theirs that maybe doesn’t quite grab me the way they usually do, but I hang in there anyway because I know what they’re capable of. Hate to say this, but it’s sometimes true of David Sedaris; and I dearly love the work of Raymond Chandler, but The High Window. Really? And The Little Sister. I read them anyway, because I love his work, and was willing to settle for crumbs when before I’d gotten to wolf down the whole delectable cake. Or like the fifth season of The Wire (best show ever, okay, okay, in the top ten), anyway the last season sucked, but I watched every minute of it, and was sorry when it ended. Not because it was a good story, but because I was saying good bye to characters who I’d come to love.
It’s great to see you back, Lisa! I love reading your insights on Story. I could not agree more that the tension of a story springs from my protagonist’s (or any point of view character’s) internal struggle from first page to last. Right away I’m thinking of your live wire concept — which, by the way, has become an integral part to my process.
Speaking of live wires, my aha moment: since December, I’d say my biggest lesson has been how in any given scene, the point of view character tends to tell me what I need, often trumping whatever I might have planned to write. It feels now like there’s a dichotomy whenever I jump into the current scene I’m writing: the track where I’m connected to the character and their changing world, and the potential to derail it with the notes I leave for myself as plot reminders. I can’t just ignore the latter, but the former is so powerful it often will take me places I don’t expect, like a cat getting tangled in yarn. That said, even if it screws me up a bit, I go with it, then step back and question how / if what the character showed me really does advance their story. Usually it does. The inconvenience for me is reconsidering plot, and often finding that what I thought was plot was really guesswork. Story, I’m learning, is not something we can fully comprehend until we’re living in it fully, and even then, to use your David Foster Wallace joke, we’re like fish in water. Therein lies the true freedom.
Welcome back.
Inner struggle is central. It’s the point. It’s the true story. It’s the part to which readers relate more than to what’s happening, which is often far out of their range of experience.
But I don’t care about everyone’s inner struggle. I must first care about that person.
Your posts are always so persuasive. I guess what I’d add to this brain tsunami today is that the struggle that engages us ought to be one which we recognize. It helps if it’s human, a struggle that I could be having myself this very day.
Also, to your point on making backstory present, I would rather say one should make it palpable: not dumped into the stream but the force of the current that we can feel even if we can’t see it.
Ah, there you go. You’ve got me thinking. Wrestling. Going back to my WIP to see if I’ve got it going on, on every pages. Rats. More work. Your post is doing its job. I’m glad–or maybe sorry–we have to wait another month for more.
Hi Lisa, read every word of this. I enjoy reading backstory. I enjoy writing backstory. And yes how wonderful to feel some of it on the first page. But a plethora of writing “advisers” are looking down on backstory because it slows down the plot. Maybe we need to give our readers more credit and not be trying to write a Hollywood movie, but a “novel” and all that that means. Thanks for this.
Welcome back, Lisa. We’ve missed you! Thanks for sharing more wisdom on the brain’s capacity for story. My ah-ha moment was drilling down to my main character’s true internal struggles and discovering she really was not as ‘black and white’ as I had drawn her in previous drafts. Hard work, but necessary.
Stimulating post!
The content for me unifies and extends on previous excellent WU contributions.
Porter Anderson’s discussion of biologic response and the potential for directly measuring impact of story on the reader (physical responses) goes to the reality of reading as stimulus that triggers “real” response.
Donald Maass has emphasized and shared multiple times that the internal struggle and emotion within and beneath the story are its essence. (Apologies PA and DM if characterized poorly)
What I take away from your contribution today is that evidence supports that story is not just read or heard and interpreted but is “experienced” in a real way. We respond and process story very much as we respond, process,and change in response to actual life events. Stories influence our view of reality and color our interpretation of subsequent life events.
This may be a simplistic summary of a complex dynamic but curious if the following makes sense to you. The stories we read become part of our “backstory” so that, as you note for the effect of backstory on protagonists, “it rewires their(our) brain”. It seems that science and reason are revealing that story, in a very real way, changes people as if they’d “lived” the story themselves.
Wow – heck of a post, Lisa. A feast for thought. Thank you and welcome back!
BTW – eager to get my hands on “Story Genius”!
Well said, Tom, it not only makes total sense, it’s dead on true. Doesn’t get better than that!
What I’ve learned is that you can have a great narrative, but you’ve got to hook the reader in tight with a great opening. The spicy tingle of a mystery, a dash of backstory, a bite of action, a sense of place. The hook is important.
Couldn’t be truer, Thea! After all, if you don’t hook the reader on page one, they won’t get to page two.
Welcome back, Lisa.
Your new book sounds fascinating and I look forward to next month’s segment.
Since January I’ve been participating in WU’s monthly Flash Fiction Contest hosted by Jo Eberhart. Besides giving me practice in accelerating my writing process (participants have one week each month to submit a 250-word story based on a photo prompt) it has given me a different perspective on how transportable story is. With different settings each month, I came to realize that story happens regardless of where it happens or to whom it happens. So for me, starting with story, and what needs to be told, opens the channels for the other streams to flow.
Sounds simple but it was an awakening moment for me.
Wow…there’s so much goodness in this to unpack, study, and incorporate. This is definitely one of those posts that I’ll be rereading and taking notes on. This gem in particular has been sitting with me since I read this the first time this morning: author Julian Barnes says, “Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t.” What a great way to get a glimpse of exactly what we’re attempting to do when we write. Thank you for this! Looking forward to the next one in the series.
With presents like this for us, I’m thrilled to welcome you back. This post goes in my WU file, it’s a keeper.
As for aha moments, there have been two big ones: the first came from a comment on a Jo Eberhart post a few months back when I realized that because of my age (66) and late start on this trek (about 3 years ago), I had been writing as though I had entered a race and was struggling to catch up. Now, there is a note on my desk lamp: “You’re not in a race, you’re just telling a story.” This may seem a bit sophomoric to some, but it reminds me it’s okay if I run out of life before I run out of stories–in fact, now I hope i have enough stories to fill the next 20-30 years. I had been close to giving up, and now I can hardly wait to get that first cup of coffee and sit down at the keyboard each morning.
The second aha moment was just this morning, thanks to you. Plot vs story has been driving me nuts. A while back, I put away the story I had been working on for a year or so when someone asked me to describe the plot and I couldn’t. My answer was, “I’m not sure, exactly.” But, feeling a need to defend it, I added, “But it has a point.” Now, it seems it does have a plot, I’ve just been seeing plot and story as the same thing. The plot had evolved as the vehicle for carrying the story. The plot is the “what, how, and when”, the story is the “why”. (By, George, I think she’s got it!)
When I set aside my “big” WIP, I still wanted to keep writing. Because my grandchildren always want me to tell them stories, I decided to work on stories for each of them (ages 6-11), with each story featuring one of them as the MC, and they each got to pick one thing they wanted in their story. I thought it would be fun as well as good practice. About three weeks ago, my nine year-old grandson was visiting, and I read him the first third or so of his cousin’s story, a little mystery that I thought would help me develop “plot”. His reaction: “Some of it’s really good. But it doesn’t sound like when you just tell us stories.” He then asked me a lot of questions–mostly why questions.Today, I realized he was asking for the story (and back story). When I tell stories to my grandkids,it’s interactive–they stop me to ask questions if something doesn’t make sense. Obviously, that can’t happen when we’re writing. I created a nifty little mystery plot (at least my grandson likes it), but it has no point other than ‘mystery gets solved’. Shrug. All plot, no story.
I’ve had a great morning. I began re-writing my granddaughter’s story. I promised them stories, not plots. For now, I’m going to stick with the writing that feels natural to me, storytelling, and let the plots evolve from the stories.
Wow, what a great article that reflects what I have been saying for years. We writers do have a greater impact on readers than just the momentary pleasure of reading a good book. And I have always thought we have an ethical responsibility not to misuse that power. I wrote about that in one of my posts for The Blood-Red Pencil blog, and there were some interesting responses. One of the points I made was one that a Criminology professor told me when I was researching my nonfiction book about school violence in the early 90s.
The professor pointed out the influence of all the violence kids are exposed to through film and television. As an example, he said there was a real danger of kids being desensitized to death and murder and violence after watching slasher film after slasher film. He believed that a young person who was immersed in violent games and movies could too easily begin to see that violence as normal.
That is not much different from what you write about how story rewires our brains without any conscious decision on our part. Kind of scary, but exciting, too. I know that reading has changed my world view considerably, and I hope that my writing can someone do that for another reader.
It’s great to have you back Lisa! And to kick us off with mind control and the Pentagon … are you working for them? Is that why you’ve really been away?
When I was in school, I always struggled to barely pass history or current events because they were so boring in the way they were structured: teachers and professors spewing out facts that we had to memorize and then regurgitate only to forget them after the testing … Then came a History professor in college who turned the facts into stories and the historical figures into characters … I earned an A in his class and was one of his favorite students … Story is everything and it is how we learn and process information on a more natural level. A fish is always happier in water (at least I think so).
Thanks for coming back to us, and I can’t wait to buy Story Genius!
Hey, Lisa:
Well, if the Pentagon’s going to weaponize story, I’d like to be killed by Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins.
What always troubles me about the elevation of story above all other cognitive functions is that this seems to minimize another way of interpreting the world, the scientific method. It is precisely because story so easily gets co-opted by fundamental prejudices and misconceptions that some sort of corrective is necessary. Fact-checking, for lack of a better term. God created the world in seven days is the story, and it’s widely believed. It doesn’t hold up very well under scrutiny, however.
David Eagleman would probably agree that a “pattern of logic” is not necessarily a story, any more than Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics is. And if our only test of truth is how rewarding a story is, we’re in trouble, because false stories can be very rewarding.
That’s my concern, especially given military or political interest in storytelling. When story becomes all, truth and propaganda can all too easily become indistinguishable.
This is the same problem with money and fame. When good stories are equated with wildly popular and financially successful ones, no one seems terribly concerned that the tale’s popularity may result from the fact it reinforces a convenient, reassuring lie.
I believe stories are indeed key cognitive tools. But so are circumspection and the desire for proof. Truth in stories is inherently analogous, metaphorical. The laws of gravity aren’t. Verification matters. As writers, it’s important to keep that in mind, so we don’t oversell the worth of our inventions, or get co-opted by political or financial powers eager to have us sell a good story to an unwitting public.
My two cents. I will step down from Ye Olde Soape Boxe now.
As for backstory, I heartily agree that it must be present on page one. I teach my students: Backstory is embedded in behavior. The past is revealed not just through what the character thinks or feels but in what he does.
Very thought-provoking post. Welcome back!
David
Indeed, the Pentagon should consider writers the ultimate source for story composition. If they contracted more of us, the information they spit out might be more credible.
I had to read this twice, it’s so packed with good stuff. And I think I’ll read it a few more times. I’m so glad you’re back! I’m in revisions at the moment on an MS I thought was close to done. But I changed the inciting incident and moved it on stage to the first chapter (where it should have been all along). In doing that, I’ve had to rethink a number of things about how my protagonist would act given her family history and her job and where she finds her meaning/worth. It now draws upon the backstory that I’d had there all along, but in a much more interesting and honest way.
Totally amazing post. One to reread many times. It earned “Shared on FB AND Twitter” status!
Wired For Story is brilliant. I can’t wait for the next one. This subject is so dear to me. Keep writing. Your voice is crucial to many of us, and we miss it when it’s not there.
Welcome back, Lisa. So good to see you! I love this post, and I’m so looking forward to your next ones, and to your book when it comes out. I’ll have to think on your questions a bit, but just wanted to say hello straight away. :)