The Science of Storytelling

by Will Storr

  We’re getting closer. Let’s go with the scientist. I can picture her immediately. She’s a beautiful, gutsy, empowered biologist who lives alone and like a drink and struggles against the establishment. Are you bored yet? We’re still in the land of cliché. The only way to escape it is to work out precisely who this person is, how she’s damaged and therefore what specific battle the plot must create for her.

  THE WHAT IF?

  What if a world-famous celebrity became their own lookalike? He decided, for whatever reason, to escape Hollywood and hide out in a small regional town. (Maybe there’s been scandal? Maybe he inherited an apartment in this obscure country town from an aunt and it was the only place nobody would look for him?) None of the townspeople would expect to see him in this place. On his first day he bumps into the owner of a beleaguered lookalike agency who realises he ‘kind of’ looks like the actor he actually is. He talks the celebrity into doing a last-minute job at a party that evening. He’ll be serving free tequila shots to a hen party.

  This is a reasonable ‘what if’ for perhaps a black or a broad comedy. I can picture the protagonist immediately. He’s past his peak but still handsome, sarcastic, dry, but lovable somewhere deep down. On his first gig he’s horrified to discover how much he’s hated by the public. What he needs, in order to heal, is to reconnect with authentic people. Back in Hollywood he’s just become engaged to a spoiled, skinny starlet. But then in walks kooky barmaid Serena. She drives a beaten-up old Mini. Some of her hair is pink. Are you bored yet? Once again, we’re drowning in cliché. How else is this ‘what if’ going to become a story that moves us and surprises us and feels as if it’s saying something real, if not by digging right down into the unique character of the protagonist?

  THE ARGUMENT

  Increasingly, writers come to the course who are angry about something that’s happening in the world. They want to write a story that highlights some perceived societal problem. Say you’re angry about the US healthcare system, so you decide to write a kind of healthcare version of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. It centres on a Gordon Gekko type who ramps up the price of an essential medication. Fine. The risk is that, if you don’t do the necessary character work, ‘a healthcare version of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street’ is exactly what you’re going to end up with.

  No matter where your inspiration came from or what kind of story you want to write, I believe no harm can ever come from rewinding to character. All stories are ultimately about how people change and your story will be all the better for having a properly designed protagonist and principal characters, all of whom have plenty of potential to do just that.

  THE IGNITION POINT (see section 2.5)

  Our first task is to work up to the ignition point. This is that magical moment, in a story, when we suddenly become engaged. The reader sits up, in the narrative, tense and expectant and excited. It’s triggered when just the right event happens to just the right character – when we sense that an unexpected change has taken place that, no matter how slight it is, strikes to the core of that character’s deepest flaw. This event triggers them. It makes them react in a surprising and specific way which makes us realise something unusual is afoot. It makes them act. It launches them into the plot.

  If you’re starting completely afresh, take a blank piece of paper and write a list of unexpected changes that might occur. It could be an ordinary everyday event or it could be magical or extraordinary. Start wherever your mind wants to go. Once you’ve finished, go back down your list and, next to each event, write a brief description of an ideal person for that change to happen to. It should be the first ripple in a flood which ultimately has the power to completely overturn who that person is. The important question is, why are we making this event happen to this person? Why will this end up being the start of a chain of events that will break who they are?

  If you’re starting with a milieu, a what-if or an argument, rewind back to a specific character and pair them with a specific event. Roughly who are they? What’s their sacred flaw? Let’s consider how this might work for an argument. One example of an argument you could build a story around is: war makes monsters of men. This is Lawrence of Arabia. Who is the character whom war and violence would most trigger? That is, who would be most likely to be psychologically overturned by war? It might be someone who has narcissistic tendencies and gets carried away with themselves. They would also be rebellious and not enjoy following orders. This is the film’s protagonist, T.E. Lawrence. He was uniquely vulnerable to the situation in which he found himself. When the drama and the character met they created a spark. When he first encountered violent conflict he reacted in an unusual way, by scolding and insulting the killer. This curious reaction signalled to us that something interesting was afoot. That’s the ignition point.

  If you’re working on a list, there should hopefully be one combination of change and character that excites you more than the others. It might give you a tingle of promise and fascination. You could even feel vague flashes of scenes pop into your head. Choose that one.

  Don’t worry about getting it right the first time. This won’t happen. From here on in, you’ll hopefully enter a process of continual revision and refinement. You have a very rough outline of a protagonist. You have a very rough idea of the unexpected change that’s going to make the ignition point. These should keep evolving as you draw further into your character work. The better you come to know your character, the more specific you can make the change event. The more specific your change event becomes, the more you can refine the character to match it, and so on.

  ORIGIN DAMAGE (see section 3.11)

  Now we know roughly how our story will begin. But we’re still dealing in outlines. It’s time to get specific and work out who our protagonist is. The flaws that characterise us typically have their origins in events that happen in the first two decades of life. This is when the brain is in its heightened state of plasticity and its neural models of the world are still being formed. Because these traumatic experiences get built into the structure of our brains, they become folded into who we are. We internalise them. They become part of us.

  It’s common in story for there to be a moment when the protagonist reveals their origin damage to another character, or we see it in flashback, and we gain a sudden insight into them. Although it’s by no means compulsory that such scenes be included, I believe it’s important that the writer knows what these moments are. This task involves working out exactly when the damage that created their flaw took place. Write out the scene in which your character came upon this faulty idea. And do it in full – the characters, the setting, the dialogue.

  By fully imagining this moment of damage, your character will begin to come alive in your mind. You can almost hear them taking their first tentative breath. It’s now that you start to get beyond cliché. Fully conjuring the scene forces you into thinking specifically, so it’s not merely a case of ‘her father beat her’ or ‘his mother didn’t love him’. This is an actual, detailed incident that had a highly specific outcome.

  It doesn’t necessarily have to be obviously traumatic. For James Stevens in The Remains of the Day, it was hearing an inspirational story about his father behaving with supernatural levels of emotional restraint. For Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, it was her parents’ popular ‘Amazing Amy’ children books that made her believe, ‘People only love me when I appear perfect and amazing’ (although we’re not given a specific incident in the novel). But it could, just as easily, be a moment of pain. As we’ve discovered, because of our tribal evolution, experiences of being ostracised and humiliated are tremendously hurtful for humans. Perhaps the origin of their damage lies in a moment in which such feelings were powerfully felt?

  Now that you have the scene, you can nail the flaw down with greater precision. Exactly what did this incident make them believe? What damaging idea did it create? There are various ways you can conceptualise it but, essentially, their sacred flaw should be a mistake about
themselves and how the human world works. You might think of it as a statement that begins in one of the following ways:

  • I’m only safe when I …

  • People only love me when I …

  • The one thing nobody is ever allowed to know about me is …

  • The most important thing of all in life is that I …

  • The terrible thing about other people is …

  Or it could be some variation on these. The crucial point is that it should be a specific mistake that has serious future consequences for their interactions with other people. This sacred belief is the seed around which their flawed character grows. It ultimately explains why they’re so uniquely triggered by the moment of unexpected change that sets off the story.

  PERSONALITY (see section 2.1)

  At this stage, you might also want to consider their personality type. What version of self do they become when you run them and their flaw through the filter of one of the ‘big five’ traits?

  CONFIRMATION BIAS (see section 2.5)

  Now we need to begin turning this flaw into a person and a life. This means allowing the character to internalise it in such a way that they don’t see it as a flaw at all. We’re going to mimic the process by which a brain does this. We have our moment of origin damage and the belief about the world that it created. In this next step, the character needs to see powerful evidence that their belief is correct. In life, we have a bias that means we only tend to notice things in our environment that confirm what we already instinctively believe. We’re going to imagine such a moment of ‘confirmation bias’ now.

  This means writing a detailed scene in which confirmation bias is in full effect. Something happens to the character in which they become fully convinced that this flawed belief is not flawed at all, but true. This should be a pivotal moment in their young life. It’s also an opportunity to aim them towards the ignition point we’ve already outlined. You first came to think of them as the person they were at that moment of ignition – in a particular place and time, perhaps with a particular job. When sketching out these key formative moments of change, you should be setting them on the road to getting there.

  This should be a scene that involves some jeopardy. Something’s got to be at stake. They also should be active in it. They need to let this flawed belief guide their behaviour at a moment at which they’re strongly challenged – and find it works out for them. This key incident makes them feel (or, at least, they’re able to thoroughly convince themselves) that this flawed belief is correct. Not only is it correct, it’s the most correct belief they can possibly imagine anyone ever having. As far as they’re concerned it’s the key to how they’re going to behave, from now on and forever.

  From this moment forwards, their flawed belief becomes sacred. It becomes how they see themselves in the context of the human realm. It becomes their key to controlling the world.

  THE HERO MAKER (see sections 2.6 and 2.7)

  The brain is a hero-maker. No matter how wrong we are, it excels at seducing us into believing that we’re right. The next stage of the approach is about firming up the character and properly embedding their flaw into their neural models. Place your character in a position in which they’re being challenged by authority over a decision they’ve made on the basis of their flaw – and that has got them into trouble. It could be a police officer. It could be a teacher. It could be a romantic partner (as long as they’re sufficiently aggressive in arguing back). Really put them in a position in which they have to powerfully defend themselves and, by extension, their sacred flaw. Remember, the brain makes us feel heroic in various ways:

  • It makes us feel morally virtuous

  • It makes us feel like a relatively low-status David being threatened by more powerful Goliaths

  • It makes us believe we’re deserving of more status

  • It makes us believe we’re selfless, somehow, and that our enemies are selfish

  Once again, use this confrontation as an opportunity to move your character towards the ignition point – that magical moment when the event takes place which triggers them into action. Make this incident a key part of their back story. It’s a formative experience that partly explains who they are when we first meet them in act one.

  As you did previously, it’s important to fully imagine the scene. Write it out in detail. Your job is to inhabit your character, and their flaw, in such a way that you’re arguing so well in the defence of the stupid decision they’ve made that you practically convince yourself. We’re seeing their sacred flaw taking over who they are – controlling their decisions and behaviour. It’s become a core part of their identity, one they’ll fight to defend.

  POINT OF VIEW (see section 2.3)

  Try rewriting the James Baldwin passage on page 77, but from the point of view of your character. They’re walking into a jazz club in Harlem in the 1950s. How do they experience it? What details do they fix upon in their environment? What’s the hero-maker narrative in their head? Make them feel intimidated or threatened in some way. Perhaps someone directly challenges them. How do they talk to themselves about these feelings? How do they make themselves feel better? What do they do?

  This is the person we’re going to meet on the first page of your story. If you want to immediately persuade an editor or producer that you’re an exceptional talent, I believe the best way of doing so is by hurling a fully imagined character right at them.

  THEORY OF CONTROL (see section 2.0)

  By now, I hope you’ll know your character well enough that you have a real feeling for their theory of control. This is their brain’s overarching strategy for getting what they want out of the human world. It’s the totality of their flaw, their personality and life experience, which you’ve sketched out in your previous scenes. It’s how they typically respond to all the daily challenges that life, and other people, present.

  Now it’s time to take them to your ignition point – that electric moment when your story begins. Your character’s theory of control, and the sacred flaw it’s built around, will have made a particular life for them. It’ll have led them on a particular journey – into a particular job with a particular romantic history, into a particular neighbourhood and particular home with a particular front door with a particular colour and state of repair. They’ll have particular values and particular friends and enemies. We’ll need to imagine what they are.

  Say we’re making a three-hour biopic of the children’s book Mr Nosey. His sacred belief is something like: ‘I’m only safe if I know everyone else’s business.’ What career might this flaw have made for him? Perhaps he’s a domestic cleaner for the rich and famous. Perhaps he’s a social worker. Perhaps he’s responsible for judging prospective foster parents and, because of his origin damage, he takes his role of peering into their deepest crannies all too seriously, which gets him into trouble.

  The important thing to remember, at this stage, is that their sacred flaw (as far as they’re concerned) will probably have largely been of benefit to them. So think about:

  •How do they get status from this flaw? How does it make them feel superior? How has it brought them professional standing? As odd as it might sound, even if your character has extremely low status and is even self-loathing, there will be a way in which their flaw makes them feel somehow better than other people. (If they simply think they’re worthless, and wrong about all their most precious beliefs, they’re probably not a vastly interesting character.)

  •How has their sacred flaw brought them closeness with friends, colleagues or lovers? What do they think of this person’s flaw? How do they enable it? How do they challenge it? How do they cope with it?

  •What joy does it bring them? For example, when the bourgeois, status-obsessed Emma Bovary attends an opulent ball, she takes great pleasure at marvelling at all the symbols of status, such as their wealthy guests’ complexions that are the kind that ‘comes with money’ and ‘look well against the whiteness of p
orcelain’.

  But, although the character will be probably be in denial of it, this flaw will also represent a huge vulnerability for them. It will be damaging their life in some way, even if they can’t see it.

  •What do they dread will happen if they act against their flaw? What, in their minds, will they lose, materially and socially?

  •What will actually happen?

  •What enemies has it made them?

  •What hidden risks has their flaw caused them to develop, such as for their marriage or financial security?

  How far you allow your character to inhabit their flaw is your own creative decision. If it’s taken too far, you risk ending up not with character but caricature. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that many of the most memorable and popular characters in film and literature – the ones that seem to burst, Scrooge-like, from the screen or page utterly alive and compelling – are the ones who seem the most possessed by their mistaken idea.

  All story is change, and the most important change of all that takes place is to your protagonist. The further you pull back the bow, at this stage, the further your narrative arrow will be able to fly. The more concentrated they are, the more tantalised we’ll be on meeting them, because we’ll sense that huge dramatic change must be coming.

  This is the point at which you need to really let your imagination run wild. Try to keep a playful frame of mind. Take your time. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Don’t sit in front of a blank sheet of paper or an empty screen and expect genius to fill it up. Ideas are more likely to come when you’re filling the dishwasher or walking the dog. Your job is to build a life for your character that’s full of detail and potential jeopardy. It’s to lead them up to that moment of change that ignites the story.