If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Did you know that your brain is biologically hardwired to crave specific narrative patterns, and that mastering them can give you near-total control over an audience’s attention?
- Have you ever wondered why the most unforgettable characters are always the most flawed, and how you can use neuroscience to craft a protagonist that feels hauntingly real to your readers?
- What's the secret to using 'stimulating details' to bypass your audience's logic and speak directly to their subconscious mind?
Listen to The Science of Storytelling — Free Audiobook
Key Takeaways from The Science of Storytelling
- Discover how the human brain constantly constructs reality as a narrative, automatically casting you as the morally superior hero and forcing cause-and-effect relationships onto random events.
- Understand why audiences are irresistibly drawn to flawed characters, which provide a safe psychological space to explore our own hidden faults and deeply ingrained beliefs.
- Learn how to keep your audience hooked by emphasizing meaningful goals, a technique proven by best-selling novels that use action words like 'do,' 'need,' and 'want' twice as often as other books.
- Master the art of plotting by giving your protagonist a 'flawed theory of control,' allowing a rich storyline to naturally unfold when their warped worldview is tested by unexpected change.
- Find out why confronting a character's deeply held beliefs creates such gripping conflict, triggering a neurological response in the brain that feels exactly like surviving a physical attack.
The Science of Storytelling — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Human brains are wired to love stories.
Chapter 3: We’re especially drawn to flawed characters.
Chapter 4: A well-crafted character is essential; if you shape the right one, a rich plot will inevitably follow.
Chapter 5: A compelling plot should spur us to ask, “Who is this character, really?”
Chapter 6: You can further energize the story by giving the brain room to fill in the gaps.
Chapter 7: In the end, most great stories are fundamentally about a change in status.
Chapter 8: Stories possess a singular power to reshape our view of the world.
The Science of Storytelling Summary & Overview
The Science of Storytelling (2019) shows you how to craft a compelling story using lessons from psychology and neuroscience. These blinks walk you through the steps of creating a narrative that grips your audience by subtly manipulating their brains. From demonstrating how to create a perfectly flawed character to explaining the power of stimulating details, Will Storr reveals the crucial elements that go into building a great story.
Who Should Listen to The Science of Storytelling?
- Aspiring writers
- Creatives whose work involves storytelling, like journalists or advertisers
- Anyone who wants to look at stories more critically
Books Similar to The Science of Storytelling
Readers who enjoyed this also liked these titles.
The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
How Stories Make Us Human
Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling
Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling