I wrote my first novel when I was in the
6th grade and it was fan fiction about
Duran Duran and I am gonna humiliate
myself by telling you that story today
but first I need to ask you to do
something that’s a little bit hard I
need to ask you to take a second to
pretend that you are a sixth-grade girl
this will be harder for some of you than
others but don’t worry I’ll help you
that’s what narrators do you are awkward
like soul-crushing ly awkward you have
bad hair that’s too short on top and to
mullah D in the back here a little bit
plump you’ve got a little bit of acne
you have long flat feet like snorkeling
flippers and you have braces just
everywhere and crisscross rubber bands
and a headgear that you have to snap in
at night and unlike a lot of other kids
your age who do not always realize how
awkward they are you know you get it and
you basically walk around all day just
kind of hunched over an apology like I’m
sorry you know there is no excuse for
this mostly you’re just angry at
yourself all the time because you know
that pretty much everything about you is
wrong you just don’t have any earthly
idea how to fix it so this kid we’re all
imagining right now is me circa 1984
you’re welcome enjoy it was not my best
year my parents were about to get
divorced my grandmother was about to get
really sick and I was so mean to myself
all the time and pretty much the only
thing that was keeping me going that
year was my
prett passionate obsessive agonizing
love for Duran Duran and I was lucky
because I had two best friends who were
also awkward and also miserable and also
in love with Duran Duran and we had this
genius idea that we should write novels
about meeting them and we should cast
ourselves as our own main characters and
so we did we would suffer through the
school week as only sixth grade girls
can suffer and then on the weekends we
would get together and have sleepovers
and put on our PJs and read our novels
to each other in installments and sixth
grade was misery but those novels were
bliss here’s what happens in mine Duran
Duran is driving through my
neighborhoods in suburban Houston Texas
in their stretch limo when they get a
flat tire and this is the 1980s and
there are no cell phones so they have to
find a landline to call a tire guy and
so they walk up to the nearest front
door which just happens to be my front
door and I just happen to be home at the
time watching MTV and busting my dance
moves – they’re hungry like the wolf
video I hear the bell open the door find
Simon Lebon and all his beautiful band
mates standing on my front stoop for
reek out internally but play it cool
invite them in let them use the phone of
course and then we spent the rest of the
afternoon sitting politely in my
mother’s living room waiting for help to
arrive and somehow in that short span of
time amazingly impossibly like against
the laws of physics all five of them
fell in love with me and I had to spend
the rest of the novel you know deciding
that was the year I got hooked on
stories that was the year I started to
realize that stories can save you
because stories are not just
entertainment they’re not just something
we do in the margins of our lives as a
break from reality stories help us
construct our framework for
understanding reality there’s a theory
that we evolved on stories that people
who were good at stories were physically
more likely to survive to pass on their
story loving genes and it makes sense
because our first best teacher is
first-hand experience you know like if
you’ve been through something here like
trust me I know about this but our next
best teacher is stories because stories
let us learn from other people’s
experiences as if they were our own
they’re like the original virtual
reality and they teach us about the
world but they also teach us about
ourselves and the secret ingredient that
they use for doing that is empathy and
y’all know about empathy it’s basically
sympathy on steroids like sympathy is
like you get it with your head and
empathy is like you feel it in your
heart and stories rely on empathy
because stories only matter when we care
about the people in them and writers
know this better than anybody because it
is literally their job to make stories
matter and I of course grew up to be a
writer a novelist of all things and I’ve
pretty much spent my entire life from
sixth grade on studying stories and how
they work and I have figured something
out
stories are basically just empathy
machines like Rube Goldberg empathy
machines
that’s why we love them studies on the
brain have shown that when we empathize
the pleasure centers in the brain light
up like when you feel a deep human
connection with someone it prompts the
release of all kinds of feel-good
chemicals like serotonin and oxytocin
even empathizing with people over hard
things like suffering and grief does
this the pleasure of the connection
outweighs everything else that’s how
people can walk up to you in the grocery
store and go you have got to read this
novel you will cry your face off like
that’s a good thing there is no better
way to practice empathy than to read a
novel when you step into the shoes of a
main character the writer of that story
is basically walking you step-by-step
through a detailed practice of empathy
those main characters those
point-of-view characters are basically
like your avatar for the story you hear
what they hear and you see what they see
you know if it’s done right you
basically merge with that character even
though you’re just sitting there on the
sofa you become them in some essential
way and when they’re sad so are you and
when they’re frightened so are you and
when they fall in love
so do you done right it is profound done
right it lets you step outside yourself
and take a turn as someone else but it’s
not easy imagining what it’s like to be
another human being so completely that
you actually feel their feelings is a
heck of a thing it’s like this
astonishing feat of the human
imagination that lets us cross the
boundaries between ourselves and other
people and it takes a lifetime of
practice but it’s worth it because that
connection is at the core of human
experience this is not trivial
stuff stories matter and that’s why I
have to call your attention to a little
problem that we have in the way that we
do stories in our culture that I keep
running over into over and over we tell
a lot more stories about boys than we do
about girls the statistics bear this out
you know the vast majority of stories
that we admire and talk about and give
prizes to and throw money out and make
movies out of our by guys about guys
doing guys stuff only about a third of
the novels that are written every year
are by women and women are more likely
to write male main characters than the
other way around
and so just mathematically it’s not good
for heroines take picture books for
example 30% of main characters in
picture books are girls although if main
characters are non-human like a bug or a
dog which is super common in kids books
that number actually goes down to 7% one
study on middle grade fiction found that
it’s 48 percent male main characters 36
percent female and 16 percent one of
each although my son who’s a big reader
and he’s 12 has told me that often when
it’s one of each the sister gets
when I first started noticing this I
felt like it wasn’t fair to girls but
the more I think about it the more I
have decided that it is really not fair
to boys either there’s an idea out there
and it is everywhere that girls will
read stories about boys but boys won’t
read stories about girls the idea is if
you write a female main character in
your kids novel you’re automatically
limiting your potential audience by half
like if Harry Potter had been Harriet
Potter nobody would have read that book
but I am here to state for the records
that I just don’t think that’s true or
if it is it’s not because of the kids
I’m a mom and I’ve been a creative
writing teacher for little kids and I
volunteered in the library and I’m just
generally like a huge enthusiast and
reading and I have recommended tons of
stories to boys and girls and I have
never once had a kid say to me what is
little kids don’t care there is a sweet
spot at least your grammar school where
all they want is a good story I think
it’s us I think it’s the grown-ups I
think we put our limitations on them
because if we look at a third grade boy
and decide he can’t possibly be
interested in a story about a girl how
does that not become a self-fulfilling
prophecy if we never give him a chance
to practice how does he ever get good
and then worst case scenario he grows up
and gets on Twitter to protest the
female Ghostbusters of course that’s not
a worst case scenario the worst case
scenario is a lifetime of loneliness and
isolation the worst case scenario is
depression and anger the worst-case
scenario is boys who grow up so unable
to empathize with the women in their
lives that they get angry if you even
ask them to try girls imagine what it’s
like to be guys all the time we are
constantly putting ourselves in the
shoes of male main characters from The
Hungry Caterpillar to Captain Underpants
to Holden Caulfield to Yossarian to
Humbert Humbert and on and on we root
for them and we relate to them and we
cheer them on and we feel for them and
we yearn for them to get what they want
even if it’s the girl
it doesn’t threaten our identities to do
this it just makes us better at stepping
outside of ourselves it doesn’t change
who we are it just makes us better at
understanding who other people are we
have
[Applause]
we have got to give boys that same
opportunity to practice stepping outside
their own skin otherwise they run the
risk of getting trapped in it stories
have always been a way out for all of us
and it’s so crucial that we understand
how important they are for teaching us
how to be good at being human so the
next time your nephew has a birthday
maybe don’t get him a book about a boy
on the baseball team who’s exactly like
him or do get him that book if you want
to but also get him a book about a town
that is burned to the ground by a
vengeful dragon and one kid survives and
that kid has to go on an epic quest to
find that dragon and seek revenge that’s
an awesome story sell him on the story
and then just make sure that the kid on
that quest is a girl that way when he
reads it he gets a twofer right a great
story and some full-immersion empathy
there’s a reason I walked in here today
talking about my Duran Duran story from
30 years ago and it is not just because
everything in my life seems somehow to
relate back to Duran Duran it is the
worst novel ever written look if they
gave a prize for worst novel ever I
would have it my sister has explicit
instructions to burn it if I am ever hit
by a bus but it is proof that stories
can save you back then when I wrote it
the last shoes I wanted to stand in were
my own I was my own female ghostbusters
if I could have protested myself on
Twitter I would have but I wasn’t just
the writer of that story
I was also the reader and when I read it
I found a main character that I could
root for and relate to and empathize
with I didn’t even like that girl but I
read her story and it changed the
framework of my thinking and if I could
learn to do that for her boys can learn
to do it for girls truly if I could do
it for her anyone can do it for anyone thank you
6th grade and it was fan fiction about
Duran Duran and I am gonna humiliate
myself by telling you that story today
but first I need to ask you to do
something that’s a little bit hard I
need to ask you to take a second to
pretend that you are a sixth-grade girl
this will be harder for some of you than
others but don’t worry I’ll help you
that’s what narrators do you are awkward
like soul-crushing ly awkward you have
bad hair that’s too short on top and to
mullah D in the back here a little bit
plump you’ve got a little bit of acne
you have long flat feet like snorkeling
flippers and you have braces just
everywhere and crisscross rubber bands
and a headgear that you have to snap in
at night and unlike a lot of other kids
your age who do not always realize how
awkward they are you know you get it and
you basically walk around all day just
kind of hunched over an apology like I’m
sorry you know there is no excuse for
this mostly you’re just angry at
yourself all the time because you know
that pretty much everything about you is
wrong you just don’t have any earthly
idea how to fix it so this kid we’re all
imagining right now is me circa 1984
you’re welcome enjoy it was not my best
year my parents were about to get
divorced my grandmother was about to get
really sick and I was so mean to myself
all the time and pretty much the only
thing that was keeping me going that
year was my
prett passionate obsessive agonizing
love for Duran Duran and I was lucky
because I had two best friends who were
also awkward and also miserable and also
in love with Duran Duran and we had this
genius idea that we should write novels
about meeting them and we should cast
ourselves as our own main characters and
so we did we would suffer through the
school week as only sixth grade girls
can suffer and then on the weekends we
would get together and have sleepovers
and put on our PJs and read our novels
to each other in installments and sixth
grade was misery but those novels were
bliss here’s what happens in mine Duran
Duran is driving through my
neighborhoods in suburban Houston Texas
in their stretch limo when they get a
flat tire and this is the 1980s and
there are no cell phones so they have to
find a landline to call a tire guy and
so they walk up to the nearest front
door which just happens to be my front
door and I just happen to be home at the
time watching MTV and busting my dance
moves – they’re hungry like the wolf
video I hear the bell open the door find
Simon Lebon and all his beautiful band
mates standing on my front stoop for
reek out internally but play it cool
invite them in let them use the phone of
course and then we spent the rest of the
afternoon sitting politely in my
mother’s living room waiting for help to
arrive and somehow in that short span of
time amazingly impossibly like against
the laws of physics all five of them
fell in love with me and I had to spend
the rest of the novel you know deciding
that was the year I got hooked on
stories that was the year I started to
realize that stories can save you
because stories are not just
entertainment they’re not just something
we do in the margins of our lives as a
break from reality stories help us
construct our framework for
understanding reality there’s a theory
that we evolved on stories that people
who were good at stories were physically
more likely to survive to pass on their
story loving genes and it makes sense
because our first best teacher is
first-hand experience you know like if
you’ve been through something here like
trust me I know about this but our next
best teacher is stories because stories
let us learn from other people’s
experiences as if they were our own
they’re like the original virtual
reality and they teach us about the
world but they also teach us about
ourselves and the secret ingredient that
they use for doing that is empathy and
y’all know about empathy it’s basically
sympathy on steroids like sympathy is
like you get it with your head and
empathy is like you feel it in your
heart and stories rely on empathy
because stories only matter when we care
about the people in them and writers
know this better than anybody because it
is literally their job to make stories
matter and I of course grew up to be a
writer a novelist of all things and I’ve
pretty much spent my entire life from
sixth grade on studying stories and how
they work and I have figured something
out
stories are basically just empathy
machines like Rube Goldberg empathy
machines
that’s why we love them studies on the
brain have shown that when we empathize
the pleasure centers in the brain light
up like when you feel a deep human
connection with someone it prompts the
release of all kinds of feel-good
chemicals like serotonin and oxytocin
even empathizing with people over hard
things like suffering and grief does
this the pleasure of the connection
outweighs everything else that’s how
people can walk up to you in the grocery
store and go you have got to read this
novel you will cry your face off like
that’s a good thing there is no better
way to practice empathy than to read a
novel when you step into the shoes of a
main character the writer of that story
is basically walking you step-by-step
through a detailed practice of empathy
those main characters those
point-of-view characters are basically
like your avatar for the story you hear
what they hear and you see what they see
you know if it’s done right you
basically merge with that character even
though you’re just sitting there on the
sofa you become them in some essential
way and when they’re sad so are you and
when they’re frightened so are you and
when they fall in love
so do you done right it is profound done
right it lets you step outside yourself
and take a turn as someone else but it’s
not easy imagining what it’s like to be
another human being so completely that
you actually feel their feelings is a
heck of a thing it’s like this
astonishing feat of the human
imagination that lets us cross the
boundaries between ourselves and other
people and it takes a lifetime of
practice but it’s worth it because that
connection is at the core of human
experience this is not trivial
stuff stories matter and that’s why I
have to call your attention to a little
problem that we have in the way that we
do stories in our culture that I keep
running over into over and over we tell
a lot more stories about boys than we do
about girls the statistics bear this out
you know the vast majority of stories
that we admire and talk about and give
prizes to and throw money out and make
movies out of our by guys about guys
doing guys stuff only about a third of
the novels that are written every year
are by women and women are more likely
to write male main characters than the
other way around
and so just mathematically it’s not good
for heroines take picture books for
example 30% of main characters in
picture books are girls although if main
characters are non-human like a bug or a
dog which is super common in kids books
that number actually goes down to 7% one
study on middle grade fiction found that
it’s 48 percent male main characters 36
percent female and 16 percent one of
each although my son who’s a big reader
and he’s 12 has told me that often when
it’s one of each the sister gets
when I first started noticing this I
felt like it wasn’t fair to girls but
the more I think about it the more I
have decided that it is really not fair
to boys either there’s an idea out there
and it is everywhere that girls will
read stories about boys but boys won’t
read stories about girls the idea is if
you write a female main character in
your kids novel you’re automatically
limiting your potential audience by half
like if Harry Potter had been Harriet
Potter nobody would have read that book
but I am here to state for the records
that I just don’t think that’s true or
if it is it’s not because of the kids
I’m a mom and I’ve been a creative
writing teacher for little kids and I
volunteered in the library and I’m just
generally like a huge enthusiast and
reading and I have recommended tons of
stories to boys and girls and I have
never once had a kid say to me what is
little kids don’t care there is a sweet
spot at least your grammar school where
all they want is a good story I think
it’s us I think it’s the grown-ups I
think we put our limitations on them
because if we look at a third grade boy
and decide he can’t possibly be
interested in a story about a girl how
does that not become a self-fulfilling
prophecy if we never give him a chance
to practice how does he ever get good
and then worst case scenario he grows up
and gets on Twitter to protest the
female Ghostbusters of course that’s not
a worst case scenario the worst case
scenario is a lifetime of loneliness and
isolation the worst case scenario is
depression and anger the worst-case
scenario is boys who grow up so unable
to empathize with the women in their
lives that they get angry if you even
ask them to try girls imagine what it’s
like to be guys all the time we are
constantly putting ourselves in the
shoes of male main characters from The
Hungry Caterpillar to Captain Underpants
to Holden Caulfield to Yossarian to
Humbert Humbert and on and on we root
for them and we relate to them and we
cheer them on and we feel for them and
we yearn for them to get what they want
even if it’s the girl
it doesn’t threaten our identities to do
this it just makes us better at stepping
outside of ourselves it doesn’t change
who we are it just makes us better at
understanding who other people are we
have
[Applause]
we have got to give boys that same
opportunity to practice stepping outside
their own skin otherwise they run the
risk of getting trapped in it stories
have always been a way out for all of us
and it’s so crucial that we understand
how important they are for teaching us
how to be good at being human so the
next time your nephew has a birthday
maybe don’t get him a book about a boy
on the baseball team who’s exactly like
him or do get him that book if you want
to but also get him a book about a town
that is burned to the ground by a
vengeful dragon and one kid survives and
that kid has to go on an epic quest to
find that dragon and seek revenge that’s
an awesome story sell him on the story
and then just make sure that the kid on
that quest is a girl that way when he
reads it he gets a twofer right a great
story and some full-immersion empathy
there’s a reason I walked in here today
talking about my Duran Duran story from
30 years ago and it is not just because
everything in my life seems somehow to
relate back to Duran Duran it is the
worst novel ever written look if they
gave a prize for worst novel ever I
would have it my sister has explicit
instructions to burn it if I am ever hit
by a bus but it is proof that stories
can save you back then when I wrote it
the last shoes I wanted to stand in were
my own I was my own female ghostbusters
if I could have protested myself on
Twitter I would have but I wasn’t just
the writer of that story
I was also the reader and when I read it
I found a main character that I could
root for and relate to and empathize
with I didn’t even like that girl but I
read her story and it changed the
framework of my thinking and if I could
learn to do that for her boys can learn
to do it for girls truly if I could do
it for her anyone can do it for anyone thank you
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