Why is Storytelling so powerful?

Who is that person really? How did they become who they are?

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CREATING A WORLD

Many stories begin with a moment of unexpected change. And that’s how they continue too.

Change is endlessly fascinating to brains. ‘Almost all perception is based on the detection of change’ says the neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott. ‘Our perceptual systems basically don’t work unless there are changes to detect.’ ”

Ultimately, then, we could say the mission of the brain is this: control. Brains have to perceive the physical environment and the people that surround it in order to control them. It’s by learning how to control the world that they get what they want.

This is what storytellers do

They create moments of unexpected change that seize the attention of their protagonists and, by extension, their readers and viewers. Those who’ve tried to unravel the secrets of story have long known about the significance of change. Aristotle argued that ‘peripeteia’, a dramatic turning point, is one of the most powerful moments in drama, whilst the story theorist and celebrated commissioner of screen drama John Yorke has written that ‘the image every TV director in fact or fiction always looks for is the close-up of the human face as it registers change.

Dopamine

The anticipation of most types of rewards increases the level of dopamine in the brain. Every new information, every new acquisition, every new image triggers the brain to produce DOPAMINE.

In popular culture and media, dopamine is often seen as the main chemical of pleasure, but the current opinion in pharmacology is that dopamine instead confers motivational salience;in other words, dopamine signals the perceived motivational prominence (i.e., the desirability or aversiveness) of an outcome, which in turn propels the organism's behaviour toward or away from achieving that outcome .

Oxytocin

Studies have looked at oxytocin's role in various behaviours, including orgasm, social recognition, pair bonding, anxiety, in-group bias, situational lack of honesty, autism, and maternal behaviours.

Oxytocin is strongly associated with empathy. Empathy is effecting generosity by increasing empathy during perspective taking: Trust is increased by oxytocin. Disclosure of emotional events is a sign of trust in humans. When recounting a negative event, humans who receive intranasal oxytocin share more emotional details and stories with more emotional significance.Romantic attachment: In some studies, high levels of plasma oxytocin have been correlated with romantic attachment.

Storytellers have used the power of story to create empathy from the reader or the viewer to the protagonist of the story by placing him in situation and events where he is suffering or undergoing a turmoil events.

Injustice, suffering and pain are the most powerful factors to provoke empathy.

Endorphin

Endorphins are naturally produced in response to pain. Laughter and humour are great if you want your brain to produce endorphins.

Skilful storytellers always use humour and laughter in their works and communications in order to reduce the anxiety and create joyful and memorable experience.

Serotonin

It has a popular image as a contributor to feelings of well-being and happiness, though its actual biological function is complex and multifaceted, modulating cognition, reward, learning, memory, and numerous physiological processes.

The magical science of storytelling

Watch this amazing TED talk if you want to learn more about the science of storytelling.

Conclusion

We’re a hyper-social species with domesticated brains that have been engineered specifically to control an environment of humans. We’re insatiably inquisitive, beginning with our tens of thousands of childhood questions about how one thing causes another.

Being a domesticated species, we’re most interested of all in the cause and effect of other people. We’re endlessly curious about them. What are they thinking? What are they plotting? Who do they love? Who do they hate? What are their secrets? What matters to them? Why does it matter? Are they an ally? Are they a threat? Why did they do that irrational, unpredictable, dangerous, incredible thing?

What drove them to build ‘the world’s largest pleasure ground’ on top of a man made ‘private mountain’ that contained the most populous zoo ‘since Noah’ and a ‘collection of everything so big it can never be catalogued’? Who is the person really? How did they become who they are?

Good stories are explorations of the human condition