On Stories, Meaning, and Truth
"The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller." - Steve Jobs
Life is complicated. Stories can help us make sense of it.
Pillars
Relevant notes from this week’s reads.
Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling by Matthew Dicks
A Moth storytelling champion shares the value of stories and tips on how to tell great ones.
We tell stories to express our hardest, best, most authentic truths. It’s the simplest stories about the smallest moments that are often the most compelling.
Good stories involve great accomplishments, near-death encounters, or crazy nights out. Great stories reveal tiny, utterly human moments that we can all connect to, relate to, and understand.
Every great story boils down to this five-second moment in the life of a human being where something changes forever. The purpose of the story is to bring clarity to that moment.
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
Insights from psychology, biology, and neuroscience to understand the effects of storytelling on the human mind.
Human minds yield helplessly to the suction of story. No matter how hard we concentrate, we just can't resist the gravity of alternate worlds.
We are most vulnerable to change and lessons when reading stories. If you want to inspire or persuade others, disguise your message in a story.
Stories help us function better as individuals and groups. They nourish our imagination, reinforce moral behavior, and give us safe worlds to practice inside.
The Art of Storytelling by Neil Gaiman
The author of Coraline, The Graveyard Book, and The Sandman teaches his approach to imaginative storytelling in this online writing class.
Writing is a game of persistence: you have to write, you have to finish, and you have to send it into the world. After sending it out, keep writing. Keep finishing things. Do it all over again.
Great stories have stakes: elements that keep you turning the page. The four most important words for a writer are, “and then what happened?” If you or your readers don’t care about this question, the stakes aren’t high enough.
All fiction has to be as honest as possible. You have to be willing to be to show too much of yourself and be more honest than you're comfortable with.
Insights
A personal take.
1/ Creatures of Story
Just as we perceive existence in terms of time and space, our understanding of reality is bounded by story. In other words, it is only through story that we can meaningfully connect and understand the world.
However, the human mind is tuned to detect patterns and weave narratives whether or not these are actually present. This practice is seen every day:
Scientists falsify inferences and theories. Stock market analysts rationalize daily trends. Lawyers weave compelling cases out of seemingly unrelated details.
Causality is how we understand the world. Story is our attempt to rationalize causality.
2/ Truth in Fiction
In fact, fiction or non-fiction, the magic of stories is that they can reveal the truth. When we tell stories, we can use lies and people that do not exist to communicate true things about life.
Neil Gaiman based Coraline —a horror novel with alternate worlds— on a lesson that was entirely true to him. “being brave doesn't mean you're not scared.”
Stories can be about the wildest things, but they always reveal something true that the teller can stand behind. This truth manifests in those utterly human moments of realization, sadness, or pride that we can all understand.
3/ Heroes of Our Own Epics
In the same way, the only way we can truly know ourselves is through stories.
We spend our lives crafting tales with ourselves as noble protagonists. The average daydream is about 14 seconds long. We have about 2,000 of them a day.
These memories, daydreams, or personal myths can reveal so much about who we are deep down: the things we care about, the motives behind our choices, the people we want to be.
And these narratives inject our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose, two things that make life beautiful. In fact, they are the only way we can rationalize existence.
But wait…
I can understand the world through facts and numbers
Regurgitating facts or adding numbers doesn’t necessarily indicate understanding. In fact, much of what we know are mere abstractions: cognitive shortcuts that help us build off the knowledge and understanding of others. True understanding comes from causal inference.
Personal stories depend on memory. Memory is unreliable.
Sure, memories can change and be altered into mere fictionalizations. But even so, they can still reveal truths about us. In fact, changing memories can be a symptom of changing beliefs.
If we believe we are funny, our positive bias makes us recall moments where we made people laugh, thus reinforcing that beleif. If we believe we are smart, we recall the moments where our savvy was on full display, ignoring events of stupidity.
Memories change, alter, and fade. Truth arises in our pursuit to make sense of the flux.
[Actionables] Living your story
Stay alert for story moments throughout your day. This helps us find value in the simple, everyday moments. Remember, the simplest stories about the smallest moments in our lives are often the most compelling.
Keep a daily story journal and write one story-worthy moment that happened that day. When we look back after enough time, we’ll be able to find patterns that reveal things about ourselves.
Take time to think about your own character arc. The memories that surface can say a lot about who we are at the moment. Asking yourself why those memories surfaced can lead to some revelations.
Check out this story. Notice how you can’t resist imagining the scenes and locations. Even if it’s a wild story, notice how we can still relate to it. This is the power of those human moments.
Stay tuned for my notes on how to tell good stories, a collective summary of the practical tips and tools from the aforementioned books.
Thanks for reading Pillar! I hope this helps set the tone for a more thoughtful week ahead.
If you found this valuable, it would mean the world to me if you could share it. It’s as simple as forwarding this email to a couple of friends!
Also, thanks to some feedback, I’ll be moving these emails to Wednesdays at 12 PM GMT starting next week. That way, it’ll be a little mid-week dose of thoughtfulness.
With love,
Javier