The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan GottschallMost of us humans like stories.
In fact, we love stories.
But why and how do we seem to love them?
For science, that may still be a puzzle. Nevertheless, our understanding of the human mind leads the way to the insight which streams in the backdrop while we’re immersed in a story and our mind is processing, forming connections, feeling emotions, rewiring neural pathways and churning information presented to us through the story.
The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall takes us through an immersive wordscape that is peppered with oodles of metaphors, pointers, insights, and lessons, pertaining mostly, to the topic of storytelling. The book features an interesting embroidery woven together with the intricate threads of researches related to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and various other sciences.
Encapsulating several stories-within-stories and pop-modern terminology, the book delves deep into some of the fundamental concepts and quintessential elements that make up the overall idea of storytelling. In this review, I’m going to share with you, 18 interesting pointers that I learned and curated after reading the book. Basically, my primary takeaways from the book…
So, let’s get started with these!
#1 The Origin of Storytelling
Storytelling is not some new-age science. But rather, it is as old as the existence of life itself on earth. Mr. Jonathan says that human beings are creatures of an imaginative realm called as Neverland. He also says that the primate version of human was not merely Homo Sapiens but also Homo Fictus that is, the great ape with the storytelling mind!
"And long before any of these primates thought of writing Hamlet or Harlequins or Harry Potter stories – long before these primates could envision writing at all – they thronged around hearth fires, trading wild lies about brave tricksters, and young lovers, selfless heroes and shrewd hunters, sad chiefs and wise crones, the origin of the sun and the stars, the nature of God and spirit and all the rest of it." – Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal
#2 ON SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF FICTION
The book describes how bringing science into fiction is not the best suited thing to do. We should not do intellectual dissection of fiction, as Wordsworth also said, "To dissect is to murder".
However, this doesn’t at all mean that fiction is by any means in conflict with science. Fiction, as a matter of fact, is deeply rooted in science. It enables the reader to envision new and creative ideas by requiring their willing suspension of disbelief.
The main thing, Mr. Jonathan writes, is to pry away the veneer of familiarity and to accept the bizarreness and strangeness of the story worlds, as they really are.
"Fictions, fantasies, dreams – these are to the humanistic imagination, a kind of sacred preserve. They’re the last bastion of magic. They’re the one place where science cannot – should not – penetrate, reducing ancient mysteries to electrochemical storms in the brain or the timeless warfare among selfish genes." - The Storytelling Animal
#3 Humans are Addicted to stories
We, as human species, are addicted to stories. Of all, there are three main reasons to that.
First, we can’t resist the gravity of the alternate worlds. Secondly, our mind is addicted to patterns. The human mind is tuned to detect patterns. The same mental software that makes us very alert, to human faces and figures, causes us to see animals in clouds or jesus in griddle marks. This is part of the “mind design” that helps us perceive meaningful patterns in our environment.
"Our hunger for meaningful patterns translates into our hunger for stories." - The Storytelling Animal
Thirdly, humans conjure gods, spirits and sprites to fill the explanatory voids.
What we don’t understand, that’s a story!
#4 Reader’s imagination is the catalyst for the storyteller
Writers and storytellers merely create storyscapes. But it’s the reader’s imagination that acts as a catalyst, churning the received information into an experience.
#5 Writing IS ANALOGOUS TO painting
"Each word is a daub of paint. Word by word – brushstroke by brushstroke – the writer creates images that have all the depth and crispness of real life. But writers are merely drawing, not painting. Our minds supply most of the information in the scene – most of the colour, shading and texture." - The Storytelling Animal
#6 Children are natural storytellers
Kids & children – what do they do? Mr. Jonathan writes that they do story mostly. The world of make-believe and pretend play is spontaneous and natural to children – they don’t need to be taught how to create stories. They are natural storytellers.
And even though we may grow up into full-fledged adults, but this inner child prevails within us.
"We are all more like Peter Pan than we know. We may leave the nursery, with the toy-trucks and dress-up clothes, but we never stop pretending. We just change how we do it. Novels, dreams, films and fantasies, are provinces of Neverland." - The Storytelling Animal
But at the same time, this doesn’t mean that the worlds of make-believe are all rainbows and sunshine. Actually, they are far from this. Explaining this, Mr. Jonathan says,
"Grown-ups have a tendency to remember the land of make-believe as a heavenly, sun-kissed bunny land. But the land of make-believe is less like heaven and more like hell. Children’s play is not escapist. It confronts the problem of the human condition, head on.
Pretend play is deadly serious fun. Every day children enter a world where they must confront dark forces, fleeing and fighting for their lives...
This play is the work of children."
- The Storytelling Animal
What we don’t understand, that’s a story!
#4 Reader’s imagination is the catalyst for the storyteller
Writers and storytellers merely create storyscapes. But it’s the reader’s imagination that acts as a catalyst, churning the received information into an experience.
#5 Writing IS ANALOGOUS TO painting
"Each word is a daub of paint. Word by word – brushstroke by brushstroke – the writer creates images that have all the depth and crispness of real life. But writers are merely drawing, not painting. Our minds supply most of the information in the scene – most of the colour, shading and texture." - The Storytelling Animal
#6 Children are natural storytellers
Kids & children – what do they do? Mr. Jonathan writes that they do story mostly. The world of make-believe and pretend play is spontaneous and natural to children – they don’t need to be taught how to create stories. They are natural storytellers.
And even though we may grow up into full-fledged adults, but this inner child prevails within us.
"We are all more like Peter Pan than we know. We may leave the nursery, with the toy-trucks and dress-up clothes, but we never stop pretending. We just change how we do it. Novels, dreams, films and fantasies, are provinces of Neverland." - The Storytelling Animal
But at the same time, this doesn’t mean that the worlds of make-believe are all rainbows and sunshine. Actually, they are far from this. Explaining this, Mr. Jonathan says,
"Grown-ups have a tendency to remember the land of make-believe as a heavenly, sun-kissed bunny land. But the land of make-believe is less like heaven and more like hell. Children’s play is not escapist. It confronts the problem of the human condition, head on.
Pretend play is deadly serious fun. Every day children enter a world where they must confront dark forces, fleeing and fighting for their lives...
This play is the work of children."
- The Storytelling Animal
#7 Stories DOMINATE OUR LIFE
Story’s role in human life extends far beyond conventional novels or films. Story, and a variety of storylike activities, dominates human life. From the skills we learn to the conversations we have with people, stories dominate nearly every aspect of our life. And its not only the writers and the storytellers and the filmmakers who tell stories but everybody including archaeologists, business executives, political commentators, and all.
"We are soaked to the bone in story. Human mind was shaped for story, so that it could be shaped by story." - The Storytelling Animal
The reason for this, could be, that stories universally focus on the great predicaments of human condition. Story is where people go to practice the key skills of human social life. They help us with real-world problem solving. And "Like a flight simulator, fiction projects us into simulations of problems that run parallel to those we face in reality. And like a flight simulator the main virtue of fiction is that we have a rich experience and don’t die at the end.We get to simulate what it’d be like to confront a dangerous man or seduce someone’s spouse, for instance, and the hero of the story dies in our stead." - The Storytelling Animal
"Story = Character + Predicament + Attempted Extrication" - The Storytelling Animal
#8 Stories & REPETITION
Repetition of fictional problem solving enhances the skill of real life problem solving too.
#9 Hell is story-friendly
Mr. Jonathan points out a brilliant insight pertaining to stories. That is, there is a huge difference in desirability between what we desire in real life and what is desired in stories.
He writes,
"There is a yawning canyon between what is desirable in life (an uneventful trip to the grocery store) and what is desirable in fiction (a catastrophic trip). In this gap, I believe, lies an important clue to the evolutionary riddle of fiction." - The Storytelling Animal
While in real world, we may not like to face conflicts and dilemmas and troubles, in the matter of storytelling, conflicts, dilemmas & troubles make the bread-and-jam of stories.
"In life, conflict often carries a negative connotation. yet in fiction, be it comic or tragic, dramatic conflict is fundamental because in literature, only trouble is interesting. Only trouble is interesting. This is not so in life. As Charles Baxter puts it in another book of fiction, 'Hell is story-friendly'." - The Storytelling Animal
However, this doesn’t at all imply that fiction is absolutely an escapist entertainment. An escapist entertainment is meant to be pleasant, on the flip side, a good fiction is far than pleasant. Instead, it is webbed with the tentacles of conflict and drama.
"If fiction offers an escape, it is a bizarre form of escape. Our various fictional worlds, are, on the whole – horrorscapes. Fiction may temporarily free us from our troubles, but it does so by ensnaring us in new sets of troubles – in imaginary worlds of struggle and stress and mortal woe." - The Storytelling Animal
"Stories of pure wish fulfillment don’t tempt us but what about stories that show us life as it is actually lived?" - The Storytelling Animal
"Trouble is the fat red thread that ties together the fantasies of pretend play, fiction and dreams, and trouble provides a possible clue to a function they all share: giving us practice in dealing with the big dilemmas of human life." - The Storytelling Animal
.
#10 Practical People, Story people & The Riddle of Fiction
The book mentions the metaphor of two groups of people - Practical People and Story People.
Story people fill their leisure time with rest, gossip and stories but practical people don’t waste their time on stories – they keep on working for their bellies – the story people prevail more often than the practical people – and this is the great riddle of fiction.
#11 Even Music Tells stories!
"Of course, not all music tells a story. There are also symphonies, fugues and avant-garde soundscapes blending wind chimes and bunny screams. But the most popular brand of music tells stories about protagonists struggling to get what they want – most often a boy or a girl. Singers might work in meter & rhyme, and alongside guitarists & drummers, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the singer is telling a story, it only disguises it." - The Storytelling Animal
#12 Daydreaming, Fantasies & Imagination – The Witchery of Life
"Daydreams are hard to study, scientically, but if you tune into your stream of consciousness, you’ll discover that daydreaming is mind’s default state." - The Storytelling Animal
"We spend half of our waking hours – one-third of our lives on earth – spinning fantasies. We daydream about the past: things we should have said or done, working through our victories and failures. We daydream about mundane stuff such as different ways of handling conflict at work. But we also daydream in a much more intense, storylike way. We screen films with happy endings – in our minds, where all our wishes – vain, aggressive, dirty – come true. And we screen little horror films, too, in which our worst fears are realized.
Imagination is an awesome mental tool. While our bodies are always locked in a specific here and now, our imagination frees us to roam space-time. Like powerful sorcerers, all humans can see the future – not a clear & determined future, but a murky, probabilistic one." - The Storytelling Animal
#13 CHARACTER CREATION IS A NATURAL TALENT
Good fiction means skillfully-crafted characters. Mr. Jonathan writes that, character creation is an innate process that we begin learning while we are still a kiddo.
"2-year olds begin learning how to develop a character. When playing the king, they pitch their voices differently than when they’re playing the queen or the meowing cat." - The Storytelling Animal
#14 STORY STRUCTURE IS THE BONY SKELETON & THE UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Mr. Jonathan says in the book that stories, nearly all stories, follow a pattern of structures. Every story is confined to this structural pattern.
"Think of this structure as a bony skeleton that we rarely notice beneath its padding of flesh and colorful garments. This skeleton is somewhat cartilaginous – there is a flex in it. But the flex is limited and the skeleton dictates that stories can be told in a limited number of ways." - The Storytelling Animal
Story’s role in human life extends far beyond conventional novels or films. Story, and a variety of storylike activities, dominates human life. From the skills we learn to the conversations we have with people, stories dominate nearly every aspect of our life. And its not only the writers and the storytellers and the filmmakers who tell stories but everybody including archaeologists, business executives, political commentators, and all.
"We are soaked to the bone in story. Human mind was shaped for story, so that it could be shaped by story." - The Storytelling Animal
The reason for this, could be, that stories universally focus on the great predicaments of human condition. Story is where people go to practice the key skills of human social life. They help us with real-world problem solving. And "Like a flight simulator, fiction projects us into simulations of problems that run parallel to those we face in reality. And like a flight simulator the main virtue of fiction is that we have a rich experience and don’t die at the end.We get to simulate what it’d be like to confront a dangerous man or seduce someone’s spouse, for instance, and the hero of the story dies in our stead." - The Storytelling Animal
"Story = Character + Predicament + Attempted Extrication" - The Storytelling Animal
#8 Stories & REPETITION
Repetition of fictional problem solving enhances the skill of real life problem solving too.
#9 Hell is story-friendly
Mr. Jonathan points out a brilliant insight pertaining to stories. That is, there is a huge difference in desirability between what we desire in real life and what is desired in stories.
He writes,
"There is a yawning canyon between what is desirable in life (an uneventful trip to the grocery store) and what is desirable in fiction (a catastrophic trip). In this gap, I believe, lies an important clue to the evolutionary riddle of fiction." - The Storytelling Animal
While in real world, we may not like to face conflicts and dilemmas and troubles, in the matter of storytelling, conflicts, dilemmas & troubles make the bread-and-jam of stories.
"In life, conflict often carries a negative connotation. yet in fiction, be it comic or tragic, dramatic conflict is fundamental because in literature, only trouble is interesting. Only trouble is interesting. This is not so in life. As Charles Baxter puts it in another book of fiction, 'Hell is story-friendly'." - The Storytelling Animal
However, this doesn’t at all imply that fiction is absolutely an escapist entertainment. An escapist entertainment is meant to be pleasant, on the flip side, a good fiction is far than pleasant. Instead, it is webbed with the tentacles of conflict and drama.
"If fiction offers an escape, it is a bizarre form of escape. Our various fictional worlds, are, on the whole – horrorscapes. Fiction may temporarily free us from our troubles, but it does so by ensnaring us in new sets of troubles – in imaginary worlds of struggle and stress and mortal woe." - The Storytelling Animal
"Stories of pure wish fulfillment don’t tempt us but what about stories that show us life as it is actually lived?" - The Storytelling Animal
"Trouble is the fat red thread that ties together the fantasies of pretend play, fiction and dreams, and trouble provides a possible clue to a function they all share: giving us practice in dealing with the big dilemmas of human life." - The Storytelling Animal
.
#10 Practical People, Story people & The Riddle of Fiction
The book mentions the metaphor of two groups of people - Practical People and Story People.
Story people fill their leisure time with rest, gossip and stories but practical people don’t waste their time on stories – they keep on working for their bellies – the story people prevail more often than the practical people – and this is the great riddle of fiction.
#11 Even Music Tells stories!
"Of course, not all music tells a story. There are also symphonies, fugues and avant-garde soundscapes blending wind chimes and bunny screams. But the most popular brand of music tells stories about protagonists struggling to get what they want – most often a boy or a girl. Singers might work in meter & rhyme, and alongside guitarists & drummers, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the singer is telling a story, it only disguises it." - The Storytelling Animal
#12 Daydreaming, Fantasies & Imagination – The Witchery of Life
"Daydreams are hard to study, scientically, but if you tune into your stream of consciousness, you’ll discover that daydreaming is mind’s default state." - The Storytelling Animal
"We spend half of our waking hours – one-third of our lives on earth – spinning fantasies. We daydream about the past: things we should have said or done, working through our victories and failures. We daydream about mundane stuff such as different ways of handling conflict at work. But we also daydream in a much more intense, storylike way. We screen films with happy endings – in our minds, where all our wishes – vain, aggressive, dirty – come true. And we screen little horror films, too, in which our worst fears are realized.
Imagination is an awesome mental tool. While our bodies are always locked in a specific here and now, our imagination frees us to roam space-time. Like powerful sorcerers, all humans can see the future – not a clear & determined future, but a murky, probabilistic one." - The Storytelling Animal
#13 CHARACTER CREATION IS A NATURAL TALENT
Good fiction means skillfully-crafted characters. Mr. Jonathan writes that, character creation is an innate process that we begin learning while we are still a kiddo.
"2-year olds begin learning how to develop a character. When playing the king, they pitch their voices differently than when they’re playing the queen or the meowing cat." - The Storytelling Animal
#14 STORY STRUCTURE IS THE BONY SKELETON & THE UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Mr. Jonathan says in the book that stories, nearly all stories, follow a pattern of structures. Every story is confined to this structural pattern.
"Think of this structure as a bony skeleton that we rarely notice beneath its padding of flesh and colorful garments. This skeleton is somewhat cartilaginous – there is a flex in it. But the flex is limited and the skeleton dictates that stories can be told in a limited number of ways." - The Storytelling Animal
This, however, at first, may appear to be a limitation in the way of a writer or storyteller, but these structural constraints actually free the writer or the storyteller to tell their stories more expressively.
"The idea that stories slavishly obey deep structural patterns seems at first vaguely depressing. But it shouldn’t be. Think of the human face. The fact that all faces are very much alike doesn’t make the face boring or mean that particular faces can’t startle in with their beauty or distinctiveness. As William James wrote, “There is a very little difference between one man and another, but what little there is, it is very important. The same is true for stories." - The Storytelling Animal
Patterns of complications, crisis & resolution, a universal grammar, a deep pattern...
#15 Human Brain AND fiction
How does the human brain respond to the stimulus of fiction? Well, to understand this, we’d need to understand the basics of the mind design. How our brain is designed? There are neurons firing information and linking with each other to form connections. Then, there are certain type of neurons called as the mirror neurons.
When we read or watch a work of fiction, these mirror neurons cause our brain to respond to it as if the fiction was happening in real life.
"Knowing that fiction is fiction doesn’t stop our emotional brain from processing it as real.
When we see something scary or dangerous in a film, our brain lights up as though that thing were happening to us, not just to a cinematic figment." - The Storytelling Animal
We feel what the protagonist is feeling.
And that is stupendous, isn’t it?
Well, moving on…
#16 DREAMS – NIGHT STORIES & Alternate Dimension of Reality
Driven by the rule of fight or flight, the dreaming consciousness is a form of nature’s storytelling. In the book, Mr. Jonathan writes that dreams are the night stories with their own plot, setting, scenes, point of view, characters, perspective and theme. Dreams are encrypted messages from the spirit or in Freudian terms, from the Id.
"While the body lies dormant, the restless brain improvises original drama in the theater of our minds." - The Storytelling Animal
#17 Ink People – they change the world
Using the metaphor of Ink People for storytellers, Mr. Jonathan says in the book,
"The characters in fiction are just wiggles of ink on paper. They are ink people. They live in ink houses inside ink towns. They work at ink jobs. They have inky problems. They sweat ink and they cry ink and when they’re cut, they bleed ink. And yet ink people press effortlessly through the porous membrane separating their inky worlds from ours. They move through our flesh-and-blood world and wield real power to it. They shape our behaviours and our customs, and in doing so, they transform societies and histories." - The Storytelling Animal
#18 Story is the glue of the world
"Story is the grease and glue of society. Story is the center without which the rest cannot hold." - The Storytelling Animal
Taking the example of a movie, Mr. Jonathan explains that if the movie is good, people watch it as a single organism. They laugh together. They gasp together. They react to the movie together as if, in a psychic unity. And this way, story ends up binding people together.
"Fiction writers mix the powder of a message with the sugary jam of storytelling. People bolt down the sweet jam of storytelling and don't even notice the undertaste of the powder." - The Storytelling Animal
In a nutshell, whether you are a writer or a storyteller or just an avid reader, I hope that you love stories. Because, I do and you should too!
Thank you! 🙂✍️💟
Comments
Post a Comment