so if there’s anybody out there in the
audience today that has any interest
whatsoever in becoming a great
storyteller
I have amazing news you already are one
you’re a fantastic storyteller now I
know what you’re thinking you’re
probably thinking something like oh wow
fucking out this guy’s seen way too many
TED Talks but I really mean it it’s
absolutely true assuming that you’re in
possession of a basically functional
human brain you have at your disposal a
device there’s been shaped by millions
of years of evolution to tell and to
understand the world through stories and
but understanding exactly how it does
this not only can we make ourselves
better storytellers but we can even
glimpse answers to some of humanity’s
most profound questions such as how
should I live my life well and happily
and even what is the meaning of life
so as herb said I’ve spent my life
telling stories I’m a journalist
and I’m a novelist and I write all these
kind of science II non-fiction books and
but also a teacher and for the last few
years I’ve been kind of traveling the
world teaching writers how to use
science to make themselves better
storytellers and my interest in the
science of storytelling began around a
decade ago and I was researching a book
on the psychology of belief and at the
time I was also kind of struggling with
my first novel and because I was
struggling I bought all these books on
storytelling and so I started reading
all these books and I noticed something
weird and that is that the thing is that
the storytellers were saying about how
to tell stories were the same as the
things that the psychologists I’ve been
interviewing have been telling me about
how we experience our everyday lives so
the scientists and the storytellers had
started off in completely different
places but I’d ended up discovering the
same things so that was weird
within I realized it actually makes
perfect sense because story is what
brain does story isn’t something that
was designed by clever people
of years ago writing with quills it’s
more like a product of biological
evolution so story emerges from human
brains as naturally as breath emerges
from between human lips and assuming
that you’re in possession of a basically
healthy one you’re going to be spending
a lot of your time experiencing your
lives as if you’re the plucky hero at
the center of an unfolding plot
struggling against great odds to make a
better life
so by interrogating how the brain does
this we can get to these clues and hacks
on storytelling and I’m going to share
just six of those tips with you over the
next sort of 10 or so minutes so the
first one so all story is changed that’s
what it is whether it’s a 60 word news
piece in the tabloid about Kim
Kardashian’s shoe falling off or it’s a
1200 page work of high literature like
Anna Karenina all story is change now
why is that it’s because brains are
obsessed with change they have to be and
for lots of interesting reasons but one
of them is because of a peculiar ‘ti
about how our senses work so we think
our senses are amazing but actually with
the exception of the skin our senses
give very limited and partial
information to the brain so if you hold
out your arm and look at your thumbnail
that tiny dot in the center is all you
can see in high-definition and full
color at once
color ends around 20 to 30 degrees out
of that high-definition core and it’s
all fuzzy outside of that core so how is
it then that we feel that we can see so
perfectly well it’s because the brain is
obsessed with change that big fuzzy area
outside the high-definition core is
sensitive to changes in your environment
and when your brain detects those
changes it sends that high-definition
core out to investigate it
and your eyes constantly doing that it’s
the fastest movement in the human body
it’s called a sac aid and you do four to
five saccades every single second and so
now imagine your face not as a face but
as an amazing machine for detecting
change there’s barely a millimeter on it
isn’t dedicated to it somehow so you’re
walking down the street you’re not
really aware of what’s going to and
you’re thinking about some argument you
just have with some idiot on Twitter or
something
this change in your environment is like
a a bang or someone calls your name what
happens will you stop your internal
monologue ceases and you turn this
amazing change detecting machine out in
the direction of the change to answer
the question what was that
now psychologists call that an orienting
response and that’s what storytellers
are doing they’re creating moments of
unexpected change which are generating
orienting responses in the brains of
their kind of readers and viewers of
their TV shows and this is such an
important principle that really good
writers lots of them put these moments
of unexpected change in their very first
sentences of their story so I’m gonna
show just a few quick examples here you
guys need a new clicker right so here we
go first instance of where spots very
famous children’s book that spot he
hasn’t eaten his supper where can he be
so unexpected change spots gone missing
but there’s also something else in there
there’s the threat of change where can
he be where is he we don’t know he could
be under a bus oh you know so there you
go so that’s changing the threat of
change in the in the first sort of three
short sentences here’s another one JK
Rowling of course we all know who JK
Rowling is first sentence of Harry
Potter
mr. and mrs. Dursley if number four
privet drive were proud to say that they
were perfectly normal thank you very
much that’s a great first sentence
because it’s absolutely pregnant with a
threat of change as storytellers we know
that something’s going to happen so
puncture that perfect life of mr. and
mrs. Dursley so that’s you know that
that’s great and here’s another really
good one
Charles Dickens Marley was dead to begin
with I mean that’s amazing change and
the threat of change in just six words
so that’s really good writing but I know
you might be thinking by now you might
be thinking yeah yeah but these are all
kids stories right
surely the big literary gods aren’t
doing the same thing as we’re spa well
how about Jonathan Franzen is he
literary enough for you so this is the
first sentence two sentences of Jonathan
Franzen’s literary masterpiece the
corrections the madness of an autumn
Prairie cold front coming
you could feel it something terrible is
going to happen so Jonathan Franzen
doing the same thing as where spot there
and here’s another one
hanif khureshi another literary god
first sentence of his classic intimacy
it is the saddest night for I am leaving
and I’m not coming back change that’s
what it is and that’s how your story
should continue to a really
well-constructed story is a sequence of
causes and effects one change leading to
the next change leading to the next
unexpected effect and that’s because
that’s how brains understand the world
so your what your brains are doing is
they’re looking for these moments of
change and they’re automatically
building little stories about how one
change led to the nap that led to the
next so we’ve got our moments of change
how do we make people care about our
moments of change well for the answers
of that question we have to go back tens
of thousands of years to the IRRI in
which these brains were still doing much
of their evolution and for the last
forty of our time on this earth we’ve
not been living in sophisticated towns
and cities we’ve been roaming around in
large hunter-gatherer tribes and we
still have these tribal brains so life
was very dangerous back then and it was
precarious and we all had to work
together to survive and we all know what
people are like we’re not so good at
working together a lot of the time so
how do we manage that how do we police a
tribe of people without a police force
well we do it with gossip we’d swap
stories about people and gossip is
universal it still is because we still
have these struggle brains and it
contains valuable information and it’s
information that back in the day would
have kept us alive now it’s for this
reason that many psychologists now argue
that the reason we evolved humans
evolved language in the first place is
to swap gossip and if this is true its
ramifications for storytellers could
barely be more immense because it means
that all human storytelling emerges from
gossip so how does gossiped work how
does gossip a police a tribe well how do
you feel when you hear a gossipy story
about someone doing something terrible
to somebody else
will you feel a very specific and
sometimes dangerous and ancient human
so moral outrage is really interesting
cuz Murrow narration motivates us to act
so when you hear that more that that
gossipy story you’re motivated to step
in and rescue that vulnerable victim and
you’re motivated to kind of want to see
the transgressor you know dealt with in
some way and in the modern reader who
still has this trouble brain that moral
outrage transient translates as a
motivation to keep turning the page and
keep watching the movie because we still
crave primary the experience of seeing
that victim rise up and that villain
dealt with but what is it hero and what
is a villain what are these kind of
nebulous terms would the answer to that
also lies in these ancient tribes it’s
thought that they core kind of quality
that we humans consider as being heroic
a morally good is selflessness whilst
the core quality of what human see is
morally bad villainous is selfishness
and that’s why in gossip and in story
very often you see here as behaving
selflessly somehow and villains being
selfish because stories are kind of
tribal propaganda for us tribal species
what it tells us over and over and over
again is if we want to be safe we need
to be selfless see beyond our pressure
cells and into the wider tribe whereas
in a villains people who can’t do that
well it’s very dangerous for them so
moral outrage it’s the ancient lifeblood
of humans storytelling selfish and
powerful versus selfless and vulnerable
is what makes us care and storytellers
can trigger these effects in all kinds
of different ways so it could be very
subtle and delicate as in a story like
mrs. Dalloway or in The Grapes of Wrath
we don’t feel moral outrage about a
human but about the weather it’s the
drought that’s forcing that noble Joad
family out onto the road so those are
the two elements your plastic beginning
when something surprising and unfair
happens to a character we have to know
what happens next
and this brings me to my next principal
something has to happen next humans
aren’t active we have to be the cause of
effects we are a goal-directed species
and this is such an important
it’s called effectiveness motive
psychologists call it so important to
the human-animal the psychologists argue
the effects is as important for our
sense of well-being as is food and water
so effective is why solitary confinement
is such a terrible punishment for human
beings effect sense is why when
psychologists put people in flotation
tanks and cover their eyes and ears very
quickly within seconds usually they’ll
start making these little rippling
motions with their fingers because we
just have to be the cause of effects and
it sounds mad but those little rippling
motions are ineffably heroic because
when change comes when trouble strikes
when it feels like all of the world has
turned against us humans act and when we
do the most important thing of all
changes the hero herself expands who she
is learning and growing and becoming
ever more capable of controlling the
world so there’s another really
important principle God eudaimonic
happiness because this is how we should
feel so use a monic happiness
psychologists too so the you don’t wanna
happiness which is the happiness that we
get from pursuing goals that are
meaningful to us but somehow difficult
argue that it’s actually good for our
health people hi new demonic happiness
have higher levels of antiviral response
and lower levels of damaging information
whereas further studies show that people
who live their lives with a greater
sense of purpose actually live longer
than other people do even when other
factors are controlled for so we’re
built for story when we struggle
successfully against great odds we
thrive ok so then what happens we do we
slap into this story mode you know when
the train’s late yet again we’re going
to be late for our meeting we you know
we slap into it you know how am I gonna
get there what am I going to do how am I
going to battle the great the the
obstacles that the great greedy powerful
train company is thrust in my path
standing on that windy platform coffee
in hand we become David fighting Goliath
Luke Skywalker fighting the evil empire
seeing the obstacles of the road it’s
because the human brain is a hero maker
it uses an armory of tricks and biases
to make us feel like we’re heroes it
makes us feel that we’re better looking
than we are be more morally worthy than
we are we’re smarter than we are and it
defines the world into a simplistic
narrative of goodies and baddies all
right so then what happens what’s the
end of a story the classic end of a
story well what does a brain ultimately
want or what the brain wants is the
answer to a simple question how do I
control the world when unexpected change
happens when chaos strikes what do I
have to do and who do I have to be in
order to control it
well the perfect archetypal ending we
find our answer after a plot filled with
escalating dramatic unexpected change
for one amazing moment our hero has
complete control they have control over
their inner world over who they are and
over the external world – so when Luke
Skywalker finally finds it within him to
destroy that Death Star for one amazing
moment he has become God he has control
over everything and that is ultimately
what all storytelling is about as the
famous psychologist Roy Baumeister says
life is changed that yearns for
stability changes a fact of life but
it’s terrifying story is a form of play
that teaches us how to manage it to
control the world it’s a roller coaster
but not one built from nuts bolts and
steel rails but from love hope dream you
fear unexpected change and moral outrage
and what else is there because we all
know how this story really ends you’re
going to die and so is everyone you know
and then there’s going to be heat death
all the change in the universe will
cease and there will be nothing left of
anything but infinite dead freezing void
so in the face of that awful truth the
only thing we have to keep us going are
our amazing thrilling roller coasters
thank you very much you