Have you ever wondered why storytelling is such an omnipresent theme of human life? Welcome to another guest segment of “The Writer s Brain” where I pick the brain of a neuroscientist about elements of great writing.
Research scientist Michael Grybko — of the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington — returned to the podcast to help me define storytelling from a scientific standpoint.
If you missed the first two installments of The Writer s Brain — on How Neuroscience Defines both Creativity and Empathy — you can find them in the show notes as well as on writerfiles.fm and iTunes.
In this file Michael Grybko and I discuss:
Why Storytelling is the Default Mode of Human Communication
How Empathy Makes Storytelling Such an Effective Tool
Why Hollywood Continually Taps into ‘The Hero’s Journey’
How Blueprints Help Writers Connect with Their Audience
Why Reading Fiction Makes Us More Empathetic
Writers’ Addiction to Stories (Especially the Dark Ones)
Where Humanity Would Be Without Storytelling
The Show Notes
How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Creativity
How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Empathy
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee
“Reading literary fiction improves empathy, study finds” from The Guardian
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
Kelton Reid on Twitter
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How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Storytelling | The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
