Chapter 7: How to Be a Better Storyteller
Will Storr, award-winning journalist and author of The Science of Storytelling and A Story is a Deal, has spent decades researching the links between storytelling, the human condition and our identities. In our interview series, we speak to him to uncover how we can harness the power of our storytelling brains and unlock the full power of the story – in changing beliefs, driving action and achieving extraordinary results. Here, he discusses how to be a better storyteller.
Never Miss A Story
Read the transcript of the film:
“I often get asked how I can tell a better story, and there are a few iron principles. You’ve got to understand how the brain tells our story of the world around us at any given moment.
“Brains are these prediction machines; they’re always trying to predict what’s going to happen next in the story of our lives.”
Will Storr on how to be a better storyteller
1. Start with unexpected change
It’s really important at the beginning of the story to grab people’s attention. Brains are these prediction machines; they’re always trying to predict what’s going to happen next in the story of our lives.
Curiosity signals to that predictive brain, “There’s something about the world that you don’t know.” When something unexpected happens around us, humans uniquely ask, “What caused it and what will happen next?”
2. Share a moral lesson
One of the reasons we tell stories as human beings and swap stories is to swap information about how the world works. A good story always tends to have this lesson about who you have to be and how you have to act in order to become more heroic.
3. Overcome obstacles
Stories fuse our brains together and get us all overcoming obstacles in pursuit of goals as one connected superorganism. And that’s why all compelling storytelling is always about obstacles and goals.
The story describes somebody who wants something, but there’s an obstacle in their way, and by overcoming their obstacle, they learn something about the world, and they achieve the rewards and the happy ending.
“It will not be one man going to the moon; it will be an entire nation.”
John F. Kennedy
In practice
NASA in the 1960s hit upon this crazy mission that they were going to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. “It will not be one man going to the moon; it will be an entire nation.”
There have been studies of the internal culture of NASA that have found it to be a galvanising story to tell about the mission of the group. Even people who were cleaning the toilets and manning the phones felt completely imbued with this powerful mission. You can picture that story. The simplicity, the specificity, the ability to visualise the happy ending.”
Get Will Storr’s new book A Story is a Deal here.
