Science me up a story

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, storytelling, writing, scientific approach

"You can't catch fish with a straight pin." This Evangelical trope about Gospel preaching applies to all storytelling. A fish hook has a bent end and a barb. Author and educator Will Storr writes in The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better that the way our brains work makes us pay attention to stories that hook us and then snag us, while we're bored with what I would call "straight pin" narratives.

There are reasons the ancient Five-Act Play model of telling a story works so well. Author Storr tries to explain them to us. In the process he gets into the metaphysics of how an "I" emerges from the brain in its dark and silent box, the skull. Of course, bereft of communication with "the outside", a brain could do nothing but cogitate on whatever might occupy its memory materials. He tells how the product of all our senses is a "hallucination" (his word) that is a rough map of "the outside". In this conceptual world built of our sense impressions, we are the hero of a continually-running play. We can't abide not being the hero, so change is threatening.

The key to story is that stories are about change. If nothing changes there is no story to tell. Stories that catch our interest, that grip us, that move us, are about changes in persons caused by changes in their circumstances coupled with their reactions thereto, particularly when their control methods fail.

For example, most of us know how to handle a rainy day. We look outside, see that rain is falling, so we take an umbrella, a raincoat, perhaps galoshes, and we're usually good to go. We leave early so we won't be late, because we know getting somewhere will take longer in the rain. Now suppose what we see out the window is no ordinary rainstorm, but a historic hurricane, with torrential rainfall in the three-inch-per-hour range and hundred-mph winds. And we absolutely, positively, somebody-will-die-if-we-don't, need to go somewhere. I don't own appropriate gear to venture into such a storm, which would need to include a car that will stay on the road in those conditions. But what if you simply can't go, and somebody really does die as a result. Now what? Do you berate yourself? Commit hara-kiri? Blow it off with an "Oh, well, things happen" attitude? If we have just described Act I and Act II of a 5-Act story, the next three acts will follow a person who changes, or one who does not change, as a result of the foregoing action.

We are resistant to change, particularly change to who we are and how we want to be perceived. We typically can't endure the thought of being seen as "bad." When a big enough change occurs, even a tragedy, it's hard for anyone to come out a true hero.

My wife and I and a dozen others were seriously affected when a close friend and his wife and children died in a carbon monoxide gas poisoning event in their home. Everyone was badly shaken. Some blamed themselves, except among them, nobody (other than my wife and I) even knew that carbon monoxide existed. Some got angry at God, "for letting it happen." Some learned from it and others walled it all off inside themselves. Of the 14 of us, my wife and I and three others did the inside work, the spiritual work, to learn and even gain something valuable from the experience. The rest soon "vanished into the woodwork." None of us 14 knew initially how to cope with such a tragedy. The coping skills we had were inadequate or were dramatically unhelpful. We had to grow and to change…or to decline to do so.

Someone could have written 14 stories about the extended event, or a 14-part story. I could not do so. Having read the book, and having done my best to pay attention, I realized I don't have the right personality or skills to actually craft such a story. I'm a straight-pin kind of man; if I had read this book fifty years ago, perhaps I could have incorporated the author's work into my skill set, but these things take time to learn effectively.

Mr. Storr calls his work "The Sacred Flaw Approach". We are all flawed. Our inadequate coping skills are examples of such flaws. What worked before isn't useful in the new situation. Good stories show us a flawed person, let us observe them in action, bring them into a new situation (often with the opening sentence), let us observe their failure, and then show us how they either permit themselves to change, or deny the change.

When I have counseled others who are struggling to cope, I've told them the definition of a neurosis: a defense or coping mechanism that is out of date. One woman asked, "Am I neurotic, then?" I said, "In that sense we all are." And I remember what the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, "Be transformed by the renewing of the mind." This is the meaning of "repentance," a change of mind. It happens to be just about the hardest thing anyone can do. It was no "easy believe" gospel that Jesus proclaimed, when His first word was "Repent." So the kind of stories that this book analyzes come down to practical repentance when the old ways stop working…or to failure to repent.

The book's four chapters, and 40 sub-chapters, discuss all the pieces. The extended Appendix details a kind of recipe for the 5-Act story, and uses the book The Godfather by Mario Puzo to brilliantly show how it fits that formula (the film is simplified and takes a sidestep, which actually enhances the story's power). One could have as easily used Jurassic Park; a colleague of mine many years ago had been the college roommate of Michael Crichton, who at that time was building his skills and methods for writing, and he told some of us the formula Crichton used for his books.

So we are all control freaks, and when our control methods fail, we may grow or we may descend into depression and obscurity, the true opposite of a happy ending. The best stories, according to Will Storr, tell of someone who is faced with such a transition, however it may turn out.