Story? We all know what you mean by that!
Since I returned to my first career I have become quite preoccupied by this thing called story. It's one of those things that everybody knows. We are so familiar with it yet when asked to define it a realisation grows that there is no universal standard definition. It's something that we take for granted, use and enjoy and yet know so little about.
When I began to look into story I thought about what it means to me. And most of my perceptions of it seem to come from my childhood. I remember sitting on the floor with my sister in front of the fire listening to Children's Hour on my parents' old Bush wireless. Those valve warmed voices of the BBC's Home Service mingled with the loudly glowing logs and wonder and excitement became my own as the storyteller led me through countless adventures.
Later, at boarding school, we sat in neat grey corduroy shorts around the library fireplace whilst a teacher read to us before hot milk and bed. It was where I first came across William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the book itself just a year younger than me.
And for a few summers we boys had a choice of adventure for expeditions week, a character forming break late in the summer term. I invariably chose the pony trek and with my peers wandered around the New Forest from camp fire to camp fire in sunny days free from nannyish regulation.
The highly painted gypsy caravans drawn by huge working horses pulled into a circle at the end of each day. The fire first cooked dinner then provided a focus for the evening's activities which always culminated in a sing song then a story. Tired children draped across the fronts of the caravans, we listened as the fire crackled and our teachers read.
So for me at least there is a strong link between the vicarious experience of the story and being warm and comfortable. And I imagine that countless generations have enjoyed fireside storytelling, a human activity since language became capable of adequate subtlety.
For it to run so deep within our species story must satisfy another purpose than just entertainment though that is highly satisfying if you have leisure enough. It is in illiterate cultures that you first find a deeper purpose to story. Encoding the culture's history and knowledge in a story that can be learned in a few hearings means that information passes down the generations with little loss. We tend to remember a story if we engage with it.
This engagement is why story has become so important. It's process is fascinating. The human brain is an extraordinary thing. Pull one to bits and you'll find three distinct component brains arranged like those Russian dolls one inside another.
A neurologist called Paul MacLean proposed the notion that we have three brains. Deep in our skulls and attached to the spinal chord is the R-Complex. This is the reptilian brain and it's a sort of low level housekeeper that handles basic things like balance and breathing etc.
Around this ancient processor is wrapped the limbic system, the mammalian brain that is like that of dogs, cats and other mammals. It is where we feel things, where our emotions are borne and experienced and the home of fight, flight, food and, well, our trouser urges.
Finally we come to the thing surgeons are familiar with when they take off the top of our skulls. The outer layer and our third brain is the Neo Cortex. Our New Brain is a hugely developed two thirds of the pink porridge in our heads. And it is the home of rational thought.
These brains are not separate, the neo cortex and limbic system are hugely interconnected. And despite appearances this article isn't about neural anatomy, it's about story. But we needed to drop by the wet stuff.
Each of these brains engages with a story to a greater or lesser degree. You can see evidence of this in feature films. It's quite clear which brain parts of Die Hard was designed for. The same as Blair Witch and other high tension and horror movies. The Limbic system enjoys this sort of stuff which doesn't say much for what most blokes like to watch. But there are the Limbic romances, chick flicks like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry met Sally. Along with a bit of excitement these films play to our emotions.
And then there are the films of abstraction like Matrix to appeal more to the Neo Cortex. None of these genres of film appeal to only one brain. So I have come to believe that to get a story right it has to engage each of the brains in a proportion that is appropriate to its genre and to the nature of the story.
My interest in story has led me to interesting places. In the process I discovered a theory of story that makes great sense to me.
Dramatica describes a specific type of story, what it calls grand argument story. In these stories and they are very common, there is a conflict that lies at the story's heart. It is this conflict and its resolution which concerns every character in the story. The story is the author's argument for how to deal with that conflict. And the story is like a mind wrestling with a problem. But I don't propose summarising my ignorance here - yet awhile anyway.
Dramatica theory keeps you toes and nose on the learning curve for a long time but it's worth the effort.
But one thing that I've not yet seen in Dramatica relates to how and why story is so important to humans. In cultures without writing, easily remembered stories assure that important history is not forgotten. As well as this, a story which has a place in it for the audience allows them to rehearse their own response to the events and situations in the story. And this is where it can be a valuable part of training and strategy; a tool to allow the audience to visualise themselves in a situation before having to face it for real and risk the real costs of failure. So perhaps story informs, educates and entertains. Didn't John Reith hit the spot with his mandate for the BBC?
When I began to look into story I thought about what it means to me. And most of my perceptions of it seem to come from my childhood. I remember sitting on the floor with my sister in front of the fire listening to Children's Hour on my parents' old Bush wireless. Those valve warmed voices of the BBC's Home Service mingled with the loudly glowing logs and wonder and excitement became my own as the storyteller led me through countless adventures.
Later, at boarding school, we sat in neat grey corduroy shorts around the library fireplace whilst a teacher read to us before hot milk and bed. It was where I first came across William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the book itself just a year younger than me.
And for a few summers we boys had a choice of adventure for expeditions week, a character forming break late in the summer term. I invariably chose the pony trek and with my peers wandered around the New Forest from camp fire to camp fire in sunny days free from nannyish regulation.
The highly painted gypsy caravans drawn by huge working horses pulled into a circle at the end of each day. The fire first cooked dinner then provided a focus for the evening's activities which always culminated in a sing song then a story. Tired children draped across the fronts of the caravans, we listened as the fire crackled and our teachers read.
So for me at least there is a strong link between the vicarious experience of the story and being warm and comfortable. And I imagine that countless generations have enjoyed fireside storytelling, a human activity since language became capable of adequate subtlety.
For it to run so deep within our species story must satisfy another purpose than just entertainment though that is highly satisfying if you have leisure enough. It is in illiterate cultures that you first find a deeper purpose to story. Encoding the culture's history and knowledge in a story that can be learned in a few hearings means that information passes down the generations with little loss. We tend to remember a story if we engage with it.
This engagement is why story has become so important. It's process is fascinating. The human brain is an extraordinary thing. Pull one to bits and you'll find three distinct component brains arranged like those Russian dolls one inside another.
A neurologist called Paul MacLean proposed the notion that we have three brains. Deep in our skulls and attached to the spinal chord is the R-Complex. This is the reptilian brain and it's a sort of low level housekeeper that handles basic things like balance and breathing etc.
Around this ancient processor is wrapped the limbic system, the mammalian brain that is like that of dogs, cats and other mammals. It is where we feel things, where our emotions are borne and experienced and the home of fight, flight, food and, well, our trouser urges.
Finally we come to the thing surgeons are familiar with when they take off the top of our skulls. The outer layer and our third brain is the Neo Cortex. Our New Brain is a hugely developed two thirds of the pink porridge in our heads. And it is the home of rational thought.
These brains are not separate, the neo cortex and limbic system are hugely interconnected. And despite appearances this article isn't about neural anatomy, it's about story. But we needed to drop by the wet stuff.
Each of these brains engages with a story to a greater or lesser degree. You can see evidence of this in feature films. It's quite clear which brain parts of Die Hard was designed for. The same as Blair Witch and other high tension and horror movies. The Limbic system enjoys this sort of stuff which doesn't say much for what most blokes like to watch. But there are the Limbic romances, chick flicks like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry met Sally. Along with a bit of excitement these films play to our emotions.
And then there are the films of abstraction like Matrix to appeal more to the Neo Cortex. None of these genres of film appeal to only one brain. So I have come to believe that to get a story right it has to engage each of the brains in a proportion that is appropriate to its genre and to the nature of the story.
My interest in story has led me to interesting places. In the process I discovered a theory of story that makes great sense to me.
Dramatica describes a specific type of story, what it calls grand argument story. In these stories and they are very common, there is a conflict that lies at the story's heart. It is this conflict and its resolution which concerns every character in the story. The story is the author's argument for how to deal with that conflict. And the story is like a mind wrestling with a problem. But I don't propose summarising my ignorance here - yet awhile anyway.
Dramatica theory keeps you toes and nose on the learning curve for a long time but it's worth the effort.
But one thing that I've not yet seen in Dramatica relates to how and why story is so important to humans. In cultures without writing, easily remembered stories assure that important history is not forgotten. As well as this, a story which has a place in it for the audience allows them to rehearse their own response to the events and situations in the story. And this is where it can be a valuable part of training and strategy; a tool to allow the audience to visualise themselves in a situation before having to face it for real and risk the real costs of failure. So perhaps story informs, educates and entertains. Didn't John Reith hit the spot with his mandate for the BBC?
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