The Science of Storytelling. Will Storr
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THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING
Will Storr
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019
Copyright © William Storr 2019
Cover design by Jack Smyth
William Storr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008276935
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008276959
Version: 2020-02-18
For my firstborn, Parker
‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?’
Robert Browning (1812–1889)
Contents
1.1 Moments of change; the control-seeking brain
1.4 World-making in fantasy and science fiction
1.6 Salience; creating tension with detail
1.7 Neural models; poetry; metaphor
1.8 Cause and effect; literary versus mass-market storytelling
2.0 The flawed self; the theory of control
2.3 Personality and point of view
2.4 Culture and character; Western versus Eastern story
2.5 Anatomy of a flawed self; the ignition point
2.8 How flawed characters create meaning
CHAPTER THREE: THE DRAMATIC QUESTION
3.0 Confabulation and the deluded character; the dramatic question
3.1 Multiple selves; the three-dimensional character
3.2 The two levels of story; how subconscious character struggle creates plot