CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The Science Of Storytelling: How Narrative Cuts Through Distraction Like Nothing Else

Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce: Humans live in a storm of stories. We live in stories all day long, and dream in stories all night long. We communicate through stories and learn from them. We collapse gratefully into stories after a long day at work. Without personal life stories to organize our experience, our own lives would lack coherence and meaning. Homo sapiens (wise man) is a pretty good definition for our species. But Homo fictus (fiction man) would be about as accurate. Man is the storytelling animal.

3 comments:

jgutierrez said...

I think a lot of what this article has to say is very accurate. We live in a constant story and I think as humans we feel the need to be able to relate our own life story if asked. We live each day creating a new story; we have a narrative ready if someone asks "How was your day?" I think we like to be able to track events and memories and being able to link events together in story form helps us do that. I think that is why it is so easy for is to be immersed in the stories infront of us. Our brains like to be able to make sense of things and so when any story is put infront of us we try to link events by putting ourselves, whether we know it or not, in that perspective.

AAKennar said...

When I was in 5th grade, my science teacher read us a book. I remember sitting on the edge of my seat listening to every last word that came from my teachers mouth. That if the class was bad he would hold the book ransom, because it was a treat for us. Story I love a good story. I believe we were made to be in a story, to be a main character in that story. Humanity tells stories from cave paintings to movies: it is a story. The article just reminded me of how I love to revisit stories of my life, gather friends and family to tell stories. This passes history on and brings people together. The Power of the Story!

Unknown said...

I think what is important to note from this article is the idea that recently story telling and the effects of stories have seemingly gone up. In what I believe is a trend towards Nostalgia. Applications like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Myspace are no longer about networking and sharing things with people but instead about telling stories about ourself, similar to keeping a journal, except the medium of memory now includes pictures, movie pictures, video's, sound, and people. I also think it is important to notice that this it is impossible to decide whether or not this article is a response to this increase in story telling or if human have always been story centric. It was only recently that we discovered reading the word 'run' activates the part of the brain that activates when we run. Could this new information be because of a fad or the time of discovery find reach the right time? To me story telling is everything, it is my morals, it is my work, it is my play, it is my sadness, it is my happiness, and I will continue to tell stories even though nobody wishes to listen.