The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better

characters in story aren’t only at war with the outside world. They’re also at war with themselves. A protagonist is engaged in a battle fought largely in the strange cellars of their own subconscious mind. At stake is the answer to the fundamental question that drives all drama: who am I?

All the principles of storytelling combine into the art of dialogue. Dialogue should be changeful, it should want something, it should drip with personality and point of view, and it should operate on the two story levels – both conscious and subconscious.

As well as having models of everything in the world, inside our heads, we have different models of self that are constantly fighting for control over who we are.

Meaning is created by just the right change-event happening to just the right person at just the right moment.

We’re wired to find selfless behaviour heroic and selfish deeds evil. Selflessness is thought to be the universal basis of all human morality.

It’s testament to the powers of the storytelling brain that many psychologists argue that human language evolved in the first place in order to tell tales about each other.

Story time is compressed time. An entire life can be told in the space of just ninety minutes and still somehow feel complete. It’s this compression that’s the secret of arresting dialogue.

We’re all fictional characters. We’re the partial, biased, stubborn creations of our own minds.

Human environments are rich with clues about those who occupy them.