Your Brain Inherited Story Telling Capability
Telling stories is the most ancient widespread way of communicating and making meaning from experience.
In fact, we can say the brain is a story-making machine. Research shows imaging studies of the brain connect the right hemisphere of the brain connected to making meaning and visual images with story making. We are wired to make characters and narratives out of whatever we see in the world around us. Stories have a unique power to persuade and motivate, because they appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy. Success as a storyteller involves using words to evoke feelings and images.
That is why the goal of the writer is to make us feel, to touch the emotional psyche. From the standpoint of psychology, Aristotle had it right, he said you want to tell a story that evokes emotions. The first emotion is pity which is what gets us to empathize with the character. The second one is fear which keeps us engaged. All of this leads to tension, the heart of conflict, uncertainty and the key to keeping your reader or viewer wanting more that leads to redemption. If you sustain attention, it is more likely that the people hearing or reading the story will start to the share the emotions of the main characters in the story.
It Not Just What You Say, But How You Say It
So, our appetite for story is not the problem, it’s how we write the story that is so critical. That is why story structure, understanding and applying what we are calling the essential ingredients to all great or powerful stories is so critical. But first we must understand a concept called narrative transport, a term coined by Melanie Green that causes us to connect with the protagonist and for a story to be persuasive.
When you create transport, stories can be likened to a mental simulation that the reader or viewer experiences. It’s as if we are transported into the shoes of the protagonist. We start to experience the events as if they are happening to us. Experiments show when the reader engages in the story, it activates one’s brain. The reader can mirror actions the protagonist takes. Reading fiction or watching a movie is like a mental simulation that runs on the mind.
Neuroscience Explains How Stories Told in a Certain Way Engage the Imagination
When we are engaged in stories, it has a neurochemical effect on us. Paul Zak’s research showed that the neurochemical oxytocin is produced when people are engaged in the story. This would result from having engendered the emotion of pity or empathy, as oxytocin, it plays a critical role in social bonding. Once you have that you bring on the conflict which stimulates the cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal gland. This is the hormone that ratchets up when we experience stress… the conflict of the story feels real as if we are in danger. That’s why we stay riveted to the story. If you develop tension in the story you will sustain attention.
Fiction and even more so than films can engage us if they are told in a way that Aristotle calls “an imitation of action… the structural union of the parts being such that if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed.” In other words, it must feel real and make sense. Readers want to be hooked. To do that you will also need a powerful beginning to knock them out of apathy and into empathy and sustain interest with tension.
It makes all the difference in your story getting read and successfully engaging the audience in the story. Identifying these nine ingredients was the work of independent filmmaker Tom Laughlin and his co-writer Robin Hutton. They are based on proven research and grounded in psychology. Once again, they are not rules, they are ingredients that help build a story structure that works. Feel free to spice your story up as you feel called to do. If you want to learn the ingredients and how to apply them, check out our upcoming workshop.
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