The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr ISBN-13: 9781419743030 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Abrams Press Released: March 10th 2020

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies psychological research and neuroscience to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers—and also our brains—create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change. Storr’s examples range from Harry Potter to Jane Austen to Alice Walker, Greek drama to Russian novels to Native American folk tales, King Lear to Breaking Bad to children’s stories.


My Review:
The Science of Storytelling provides an evolutionary story for why humans like to tell stories. He talked about the "hallucinatory neural model of the world" and included explanations like "The controlled hallucination inside the silent, black vault of our skulls that we experience as reality is warped by faulty information. But because this distorted reality is the only reality we know, we just can't see where it's gone wrong."

He also referred to psychology when talking about building personalities and flawed characters. He occasionally referred to scientific studies that show things like how our brains like cause and effect and prefer sentences that allow us to "see" the story unfold like a movie. He admitted these principles are already found in common story writing advice like "show don't tell" and "use active rather than passive sentences."

I didn't find his musings very useful. In fact, I didn't agree with some of his conclusions--like you should build suspense by including a lot of detail to draw out a scene. I suppose it depends on what sort of suspense you're trying to create, but this is bad advice for a fast-paced thriller or suspense genre novel.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.