# What and why stories exist Our minds are wired to process stories: - We glue perceptions together with prior [perceptions](people-image-why.md), [feelings](mind-feelings.md), [purpose](purpose.md), and [expectations](imagination.md) to create a string of connections that form [conclusions](logic.md). - Good [mnemonics](mind-memory.md) build stories out of perceptions and expectations. - We form stories out of [images](people-image-why.md) that condense into [symbols](symbols.md) which represent [feelings and sensations](mind-feelings.md). APPLICATION: It's no coincidence we enjoy stories. The best way to [communicate](awareness.md) an idea is through a good story, and we find tremendous [meaning](meaning.md) through living out another character's experience. Different people (e.g., [social classes](classes.md), [age groups](maturity.md)) see stories differently because their [value systems](values.md) are different. Wealthy people find [meaning](meaning.md) in winning, while poor people find it in trying your best. Young people find meaning in exploration, while old people find meaning in receiving closure. The majority finds a good story that references their experience acceptable, while critics are more concerned about the [art](values-quality.md) of the story. ## The structure of a story Each story has a beginning, middle, and an end. The order is critical to how we [understand](understanding.md) that story and the [values](values.md) attached to it. APPLICATION: A story is relatively simple to [make](mind-creativity.md) and [understand](understanding.md) if you can attach it to your [feelings](mind-feelings.md): 1. Character 2. Needs 3. To Go 4. Searches 5. Finds 6. Takes 7. Returns 8. And Changes The scope of things that qualify as stories is vast. There's literally no limit to its size, length, or [medium](creations.md). - A few seconds or a single perception: - Someone says something and the other responds. - A piece of trivia or small [fact](reality.md). - "[For sale, baby shoes, never worn.](symbols.md)" - A painting. - A round of a small game. - A jingle of a song. - Combine the events together to create a short story: - Verbal [exchange](people-conversation.md) among people. - Short story or novella. - Chapter of a textbook or book. - Website landing page or internet article. - Short videos. - An episode of a TV show. - Independently designed electronic game or board game. - Songs. - A sales pitch. - Combine small events into a larger picture or spanning a few days: - An event, with its repercussions and aftermath. - A website or large essay like this one. - Movies. - A song album. - Popular paperback novels. - AAA games. - Attach the large images into a [trend](trends.md): - A TV show season. - A book series. - Every creation one specific creator makes. - A life stage. - Role-playing games. - Multiple trends weave into the maximum possible experience of living: - A saga/epic across multiple lives. - A creator's entire life and their [legacy](legacy.md). - Operas and most older plays. - A video game or book franchise. - A person's entire life, with their [afterlife](religion.md). - The history of a [corporation or nation](groups-large.md). - Further, we can mix-and-match stories into seemingly unrelated realms: - The fan base who follows a popular [trend](trends.md), and their relationship with the [created work](creations.md). - Associated media which provide indirect details, such as movie adaptations of books. - Using historical settings with fictional characters (historical fiction) or vice versa (alternate reality stories). Mechanically, there are only a few ways to build a story: - Narration - use a third party to move the story from one point to another. - Description - use a third party to give context around the story. - Dialogue - explain [thoughts](understanding.md) and [feelings](mind-feelings.md) with some sort of [conversation](people-conversation.md). - Expression - Use sensory cues like visuals or sounds to paint an [image](people-image-why.md). - Interaction - use the audience's [decisions](people-decisions.md) and [expressions](results.md) to [influence](influence.md) how the audience [feels](mind-feelings.md) by drawing them into the experience. APPLICATION: The most applicable and enjoyable nonfiction uses plenty of examples to expand and clarify the idea, and gives discussion topics for everyone to [discuss](people-conversation.md) at the end. This makes the experience more interactive for the audience and, thus, more memorable. Conventionally, a feature-length story uses 40-60 scenes that form 12-18 sequences that build into 3+ acts that merge and weave into each other. Accomplishing this without boring the audience with repetition requires [making](mind-creativity.md) *hundreds* of scenes and throwing out most of them. It also means most creators should pare down their feature-length stories to maximize [impact](power-influence.md). APPLICATION: To be [influential](power-influence.md), we must learn to be great [storytellers](stories-storytellers.md). Further, there is a very specific [form that stories always end up taking](stories-form.md) ## The purpose of stories Stories are crudely drawn [maps](people-image-why.md) that point to [meaning](meaning.md), and they give us a clear pathway to ideas we can easily remember: - Every [popular](trends.md) song made across history has a very limited number of starting chords, and has the same set of possible ending chords to evoke specific feelings. - People usually engage more easily with movies and novels than with documentaries and textbooks. - [Every society](humanity-universals.md) uses [folklore and myths](stories-myths.md), as well as [proverbs](lawsaxioms.md), that communicate important [lessons](understanding.md). - The motivation to convey a story is always driven, at least partly, by the [emotion of anger](mind-feelings-anger.md). APPLICATION: Popular [trends](trends.md), especially [formal media](creations.md/), are fulfilling the secret latent desires of its surrounding [culture](people-culture.md). It's the reason their base splits along age-based, gender-based, and lifestyle-based lines. Since it's a map and not an accurate depiction, a story is always an exploration of extremes. Every story communicates a [value](values.md). The stories people remember will communicate values that reference beyond itself and add meaning to the audience's life beyond the story. To achieve this, the [creator](mind-creativity.md) *must* draw from associations the audience [already had](understanding.md) before the story started. One of the most critical messages in most stories involves how we must [decide](people-decisions.md) in the face of [scarcity](economics.md). This leads to *severe* [conflict](people-conflicts-inner.md), so all stories revolve and move from [conflict](people-conflicts-why.md). The best way to detect a good story is from how much everyone in the audience observes [quality](values-quality.md) as they experience it. People only stay [interested](purpose.md) in stories as long as they see anything [unexpected or unusual](imagination.md), which requires a vast [emotional range](mind-feelings.md) to trigger the audience's attention. Usually, we set ourselves at the center of the story while we're engaged with it, with a comparison/contrast with the main character's [decisions](people-decisions.md). As we [mature](maturity.md) to perceive others' views as having equal merit, we're able to imagine ourselves as the character in that story while suspending judgment about the quality of their decisions until the end of the story. APPLICATION: If you're reading story lore, a wiki, or listening to a company presentation, *you're* the main character of a relatively uninteresting story. ## Theme/expansion Since it's the implementation of a set of [values](values.md), every decent story can fit into a single sentence. This sentence essentially alludes to a "theme" that covers the [meaning](meaning.md) behind the entire story: - The Hero embodies the theme. - The Villain embodies the counter-theme. - The Inciting Incident is the beginning of the theme. - *Everything* should ramp up to the climax of the story, which should resolve that theme. - Genre-defying stories will keep the hero and villain, but move them around (e.g, antihero, sympathetic villain). Stories can sometimes take hours and days to expand details in many directions, but they always correspond to the same theme. These themes float around a few possible [conflicts](people-conflicts-inner.md): - The balance between life and [death](legacy.md). - The realm of the [conscious](people-decisions.md) versus [unconscious](habits.md). - The distinction between [order](understanding-certainty.md) and [chaos](unknown.md). Any one detail can dramatically change the values of *everything* in that story, especially near the ending. One out-of-place remark or body language gesture may demonstrate ideas the creator secretly hid in the story's message. In this sense, observant consumers who detect details and understand a story entirely differently than less observant or more [immature](maturity.md) consumers will interpret. APPLICATION: The details dictate everything. We must be *very* mindful of the elements inserted into stories, what they imply, and the [values](values.md) they define. APPLICATION: Interesting stories must have dramatic shifts. This requires empathy with what can create emotional range, meaning the creator has to have had significant experience with [the good life](goodlife.md) compared to their audience. ### Plot patterns Frequently, most plots tend to fall into a few predictable patterns: - Maturation - a [coming-of-age](maturity.md) story. - Redemption - a [moral](morality.md) change where a character becomes good. - Punitive - a good character turns bad and is [punished](people-rules.md). - Testing - a character's [resolve](purpose.md) is tested against [hardship](hardship.md). - Education - a character must [change](people-changes.md) their negative [understanding](understanding.md) of something. - Disillusionment - a character's must change their [positive](understanding-certainty.md) [expectations](imagination.md). Generally, the first-person [perspective](people-image-why.md) is difficult for most people to handle because it constantly reminds them that *they're* not experiencing the story. Instead, writers tend to prefer second-person viewpoints whenever possible, and they tend to add factual inconsistencies to keep the audience guessing about [reality](reality.md) within the story's context. ### World-building By world-building, the [storyteller](stories-storytellers.md) is giving more details that give the audience something to [feel](mind-feelings.md). While everything in world-building *could* express as a dry fact sheet, an expert creator will weave those details into the story, often expanding the world while advancing the plot. ### Story-building Story-building is communicating the [changes](people-changes.md) that take place, specifically in the amount *and* scale of things happening. Without changes, the story is merely a list of things. Those changes must bring relatable [feelings](mind-feelings.md) to the audience. In the case of any story longer than a few minutes, there *must* be at least 3 major events that change everything. ### Character-building Through character-building, the [creator](mind-creativity.md) is designing the personality of the character. While all characters merely need a [purpose](purpose.md), a story will allude to their [past decisions](people-decisions.md), [prejudices and sense](understanding-certainty.md), and [who they are](humanity.md). An excellent storyteller can create someone so vivid that the audience will [identify](identity.md) with the character and be able to approximately [predict](imagination.md) what they will do next. An interesting mechanism of character-building is to create within that character irreconcilable, competing motivations. They can be simple (and often generates [humor](humor.md)), subtle (and more easily generate drama), or elaborate (which can create both humor *and* drama). ### Symbolism One of the most critical components of story-telling is through repeated [patterns](symbols.md). A small, subtle object or expression is typically mundane at first, but creates its own theme as it's recycled throughout the story. By the end of the story, its final state creates a wave of [meaning](meaning.md) to the audience. Some of the story's patterns *must* expose secrets of the characters ("exposition"). These secrets should exist in small segments throughout the chronology of the story. Any character that's fully self-aware, flawless, or without [contradiction](people-conflicts-inner.md) will be boring to the audience. A well-made story has a buildup to something, which means there's always a [public notice](people-image-why.md) before dropping something fantastic on people ("foreshadowing"). Otherwise, that [creator](mind-creativity.md) won't handle the story well enough to make a broad effect, and someone else will tell that story better and receive more [glory](people-image-why.md) from it. ### Additional characters Creators can also add other characters. Those characters can complicate the situation or add more to the story world, but *always* connect to the main character somehow: - Shape-shifters will have obscured motives that vacillate between helping and hurting the protagonist. - Tricksters will add [humor](humor.md) to lighten the situation. - Dragons will be secondary antagonists to add more drama to the conflict. To add value to the story, every additional character should be able to evoke unique [emotional states](mind-feelings.md) in the other characters of the story. It becomes too many characters when a side character doesn't draw a new feeling out of a main character. ## The impact of stories Extremely effective stories *all* carry the same highly polished components: 1. The story is simple enough to hit the audience's [feelings](mind-feelings.md). The audience will find it amusing and want to continue consuming it, usually because there's a [new](people-image-why.md) experience inside the story and because it's fulfilling a [wish](purpose.md) embedded in the audience's [culture](people-culture.md). This only comes from the [creator](mind-creativity.md) having a fierce [belief](understanding-certainty.md) they want to share through that story. 2. The [storyteller](stories-storytellers.md) will intentionally omit information. They [understand](understanding.md) a more elaborate concept, but they use simpler ideas to articulate smaller ideas, then require the audience to connect the larger picture. 3. Few or no [facts](reality.md) refute the story, which implies that it's true or could easily be true. The creator will often obscure the details by using their [authority](power.md) or something unknown instead of [logic](logic.md) for the audience to [feel persuaded](influence.md): - Describing the story firsthand, but explaining how all evidence of it was lost (older fiction) - Setting the story in a hypothetical far future or alternate reality (science fiction) - The world operates with science behaving very differently (fantasy) - Unknowable [fears](mind-feelings-fear.md) take on a more tangible form (horror) 4. The entire story will [appear](people-image-why.md) as if the creator had specifically [purposed](purpose.md) the story for the audience to hear. While the message may be vague, the [action](people-decisions.md) the creator wants for the *audience* must be explicit. If possible, the creator gives clearly defined [consequences](results.md) for those actions. While a coincidence can bring a character into that story, they'll only come out of it with a coincidence if the message is to [trust](understanding-certainty.md) the unknown. Audiences have a limited attention span, so less details mean more impact. To maximize details that create meaning for certain [cultures](people-culture.md), most genre styles *heavily* expand details of a story: - Sci-fi/fantasy focuses on the world, with sci-fi emphasizing [technical details](technology.md) and fantasy expanding [long-term history](legacy.md) and [myths](stories-myths.md) with at least some emphasis on [religion](religion.md). - Biographies and small-scale stories focus on characters. - Romance focuses on relationships between characters. - Drama expands on story. - Horror and thrillers focus on the antagonist: - Horror focuses on the antagonist's [actions](results.md). - Thrillers focus on the antagonist's [decisions and motivations](people-decisions.md). One component of every story is its suspense. Before the creator reveals the ending, the audience can interpret any [uncertain](understanding-certainty.md) details to have any form of implication they want. Expert storytellers give enough suspense to keep people somewhat reliably guessing the end, but with enough details that they were alluding to that ending all along. Too much suspense will frustrate the audience from lack of [understanding](understanding.md). We usually make stories retroactively. The season finale of a TV show or the plot twist of a movie can change *everything* about it and destroy or enrich the experience. Sometimes, creators will try to merge a completely fictional story with reality by making it an origin or future story of *our* world (especially in sci-fi). APPLICATION: Our subconscious can't tell fact from fiction, so we must be mindful of the kinds of [creations](creations.md) we consume from others. Many of them carry [philosophical poison](philosophy.md). ## Meta-stories We often see a story as an [abstracted](values.md) existence, but it's part of a greater whole: - Each story is composed of *many* mini-stories woven together. - Every story you consume is part of a grander story that spans your entire life, and [beyond](religion.md). In the case of a speech or nonfiction facts, the *audience* is the main character of the story, unveiled as the audience member makes [decisions](people-decisions.md) and [acts](results.md) with those [ideas](values.md) in mind. Sometimes the story will begin with the narrator, but it always ends with the audience. Taken far enough, our understanding of a single word, data point, or sensation is a separate story, and *all* [human understanding](understanding.md) is a vast collection of connected stories. We retroactively make stories automatically about our lives. History is the stories of our past woven into one large story that leads to the present day. [Journalism](stories-storytellers.md) is stories about the present, with varying degrees of [truth](reality.md) to them. Mentally well people use plenty of [humor](humor.md) throughout any story they make. Unfortunately, we tend to make the present moment or the [foreseeable future](imagination.md) the end of our stories unless we [believe in something](understanding-certainty.md). This makes it very difficult to stay [satisfied or happy](mind-feelings-happiness.md) in hardship. Since every story is [inspired](mind-creativity.md) by other stories and [reality](reality.md), stories can be [analyzed](logic.md) and reproduced by observing specific [values](values.md) called "[tropes](http://tvtropes.org)". Every decent [storyteller](stories-storytellers.md), beyond conveying [feeling](mind-feelings.md), is also aware of where a trope's [trend](trends.md) currently is for their audience. APPLICATION: A powerful story will [feel](mind-feelings.md) more real than [reality](reality.md) itself. Often, many [storytellers](stories-storytellers.md) use existing [tropes](values.md) that overshadow reality's rules (e.g., how [automobiles](autos.md) are used). Often, they'll use their story to invalidate legitimate points of view (e.g., [politics](politics-conservativeliberal.md)). Other times, they'll use their stories to attach untrue things they [speculate](imagination.md) to legitimately true things. APPLICATION: The truth, in all its normalcy, is a relatively dull story. Often, we prefer a stylized, artistic depiction of reality over reality itself. We must constantly examine anything considered [true](reality.md) which also evokes strong [feelings](mind-feelings.md) because it may veer away from reality into [trust](trust.md). To the degree we want to feel [safe](safety.md), we will revisit a story we love. We already know the ending, so we find more pleasure in seeing retroactively how the beginning and middle contributed to it. Often, story writers will create ordinary people, then put them in odd situations. By contrast, performers will place odd people into ordinary situations. For those reasons, jumping across media can be [emotionally](mind-feelings.md) dissonant. ## Downsides This story-based means of understanding has a few issues. While we can capture [feelings](mind-feelings.md) and [values](values.md) precisely (especially [morals](morality.md)), we tend to misrepresent [facts](reality.md). Our information-gathering is too poor to accurately [understand](understanding.md) all things. Our brains don't have segmented areas for fiction versus nonfiction, so the experiences we consume (such as movies or books) will bleed together with our real-life experiences. At its extreme, [habitual](habits.md) liars start losing track of reality. Because of stories, it's humanly impossible to *not* have a [bias](people-image-why.md). The very order of how we read information and [data](math.md) changes how we feel about the conclusion. [Logic](logic.md) itself is a story. We *can* understand facts better with more patience and [rigor](science.md), but must always [believe](understanding-certainty.md) in something we can't prove entirely. We tend to [believe](understanding-certainty.md) our stories *are* [reality](reality.md) and make [expectations](imagination.md) based on those beliefs. Our decisions often mean we compromise on large benefits (e.g., extreme safety) and receive small gains (e.g., exposure to *extreme* risks). The only way to [influence](influence.md) people otherwise is to use dramatic characters that portray extreme examples of what people [ought](people-rules.md) to do or not do.