The Science of Storytelling
Описание книги
SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER‘If you want to write a novel or a script, read this book’ Sunday Times‘The best book on the craft of storytelling I’ve ever read’ Matt Haig‘Rarely has a book engrossed me more, and forced me to question everything I’ve ever read, seen or written. A masterpiece’ Adam RutherfordWho would we be without stories?Stories mould who we are, from our character to our cultural identity. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions, and shape our politics and beliefs. We use them to construct our relationships, to keep order in our law courts, to interpret events in our newspapers and social media. Storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human.There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story – from Joseph Campbell’s well-worn theories about myth and archetype to recent attempts to crack the ‘Bestseller Code’. But few have used a scientific approach. This is curious, for if we are to truly understand storytelling in its grandest sense, we must first come to understand the ultimate storyteller – the human brain.In this scalpel-sharp, thought-provoking book, Will Storr demonstrates how master storytellers manipulate and compel us, leading us on a journey from the Hebrew scriptures to Mr Men, from Booker Prize-winning literature to box set TV. Applying dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to the foundations of our myths and archetypes, he shows how we can use these tools to tell better stories – and make sense of our chaotic modern world.
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Will Storr. The Science of Storytelling
THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING. Will Storr
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: CREATING A WORLD
1.0
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
1.9
CHAPTER TWO: THE FLAWED SELF
2.0
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
CHAPTER THREE: THE DRAMATIC QUESTION
3.0
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
3.10
3.11
CHAPTER FOUR: PLOTS, ENDINGS AND MEANING
4.0
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
4.8
APPENDIX: THE SACRED FLAW APPROACH
EMBRACE THE REWIND
THE MILIEU
THE WHAT IF?
THE ARGUMENT
WHERE TO START
THE SACRED FLAW
THE UNSACRED FLAW
FINDING THE FLAW
ORIGIN DAMAGE (section 3.11)
PERSONALITY (section 2.1)
THE HERO-MAKER (sections 2.6 and 2.7)
POINT OF VIEW (section 2.3)
CREATING A CHARACTERISTIC WORLD
THE STORY EVENT (section 4.1)
THE PLOT (section 4.1)
ACT I
ACT II
ACTS III AND IV
ACT V
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
NOTES AND SOURCES. INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About the Author
Also by Will Storr
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
For my firstborn, Parker
Or what’s a heaven for?’
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In Star Wars, when Han Solo boasts that his ship the Millennium Falcon ‘made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs’ we have the strange experience of knowing it’s an actor doing gibberish whilst simultaneously somehow feeling as if it’s real. The line works because of its absolute specificity and its adherence to what sounds like truth (the ‘Kessel Run’ really could be a smuggling route while ‘parsecs’ are a genuine measurement of distance, equivalent to 3.26 light years). As ridiculous as some of this language actually is, rather than taking us out of the storyteller’s fictional hallucination, it gives it even more density.
Those C-beams! That gate! Their wonder lies in the fact that they’re merely suggested. Like monsters in the most frightening horror stories, they feel all the more real for being the creations, not of the writer, but of our own incessant model-making imaginations.
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