Why is storytelling so effective?
BY JAMES WILLIAMSON
Why do we remember a good story? Why do stories, told well, make us think, act, feel differently? How do stories pull us in and connect with our brain and imagination? In this blog we look at why storytelling - especially good stories - is so effective.
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him.”
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
My father gave me The Old Man and the Sea to read when I was eleven and I was hooked (pardon the pun) from the first evocative paragraph to the last sad sentence. The first sentence - see above - tells you the whole story, yet it leaves you wanting more. Here, Hemingway in his minimalist way, brilliantly communicates the old man’s situation, his relationship with the boy, and more subtly, the old man’s desperate need to catch a fish.
Even if you hate fishing, maybe even if you hate Hemingway, it would be hard not to be at least intrigued by this story’s opening. I think I read this classic novella in one or two nights. I could not put it down. The way it was written. The feel of it. The beauty of the sea and the fish. The sad stoicism of the old man (Santiago) and his love for the boy (Manolin) were crafted by Hemingway in a way that conveys real truth.
Yes - it’s the skill, the job, of a novelist to tell stories like this. But is there something else going on here? Is there some way that our brains, psyches, imaginations, even values, work that allows stories, especially good stories, to make us remember and believe?
Yes there is. The Storytelling Animal calls it the '“witchery of story”. It’s what our brains have been biologically programmed to do. When information is conveyed through story rather than vanilla facts, our brain lights up. Our neural activity jumps fivefold. Neurons fire together in a cannon blast of activity rather than a popgun of vague and meaningless facts.
“When information is conveyed through story rather than vanilla facts, our brain lights up.”
Now back to Hemingway:
“The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.”
Say this in your head as pure facts and it comes out as banal, boring, emotionless, forgettable. Read Hemingway’s prose slowly in your head, with care, and you’re transported to the boat, the mystery of the sea, a big fish cannily watching the lines deep down.
When you read, watch, listen to a compelling story, your brain lights up in such a way that you’re in a semi-dream state. A purer plane of consciousness that makes you forget reality. Or a place where reality and imagination blend. It’s a highly focused mode of thought and feeling that’s like sleep, yet we’re awake, highly focused, highly receptive. When listening to a good story - whether it’s a novel, a movie, even a great message, article, or ad - we’re more open to the communication, less suspicious about being sold to, and more motivated to consider a new viewpoint, value, or vision.
Importantly, we remember a good story told well. “The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun” makes me want to charter a fishing boat off the Cuban coast and drop a line into the Gulf Stream. A good story, even a good line, inspires us, especially when it represents a truth we recognise and embrace.
A key element of story is that it elicits emotion. Particularly empathy. We back the hero, revile the villain. We want to visit Italy in The Talented Mr. Ripley. We want to visit Castle Howard outside Leeds, UK, when watching Brideshead or Bridgerton. Maybe we even want to stay in that quaint BnB in Daylesford after watching Movin’ to the Country on TV! ….Maybe.
Reading The Old Man and the Sea, not only do I put myself in Santiago’s worn shoes, the story is so good, told so well, that I’m living in his skin. I feel all the weight of the fish on the line. I feel his love for the fish and his bitterness for the sharks. Physiologically, we generate oxytocin when we connect with a story, a character, a situation. The more of a story we experience, the more oxytocin our brain secretes.
Evolutionary biologists believe that our brains evolved to tell stories around the same time we learned to speak. Storytelling is, has always been, tribal. A vital way to convey information, emotion, consequence, and myth. In many ways we’re still a tribal society. Today, we have technology to tell our stories, disseminate our message, evoke our emotion, connect with each other. Today, tribalism can be local or global, or both.
We’re bombarded by messages. But we remember, sometimes love, stories. The great stories are unforgettable.
“It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.”
