I just read The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gotschall. The title caught my attention. We humans learn things more effectively if information—fictional or nonfictional—is shared in the form of a story or a game. That's one reason school is so boring; not enough storytelling going on. Factual information is no different than fictional information, it can be presented in a story format. We could argue that much of what is presented as history is actually fiction. But sidestepping that debate, even something as fascinating as history—a natural story—can be obliterated by pundits with stuffy presentations.
I'm interested in how to weave a good story. The Storytelling Animal gave several insights to the process, but also went down several loosely related tangents. Like how the human mind will fabricate stories from a limited amount of information in order to make sense of something that happened, or what dreams mean. Some of these tangents were interesting; some strayed farther from storytelling than was interesting for me. Gottschall addresses all areas of storytelling which includes eroticism. There may be some brief sections that are offensive to some individuals.
1 comment:
The book sounds interesting. I think I'll check it out!
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