One study concluded that, to make vivid scenes, three specific qualities of an object should be described,

Fairytales take those scary inner selves and turn them into fictional characters. Once they’ve been defined and externalised, like this, they become manageable. The story these characters appear in teaches the child that, if they fight with sufficient courage, they can control the evil selves within them and help the good to become dominant.

‘There is a natural inclination to resolve information gaps,’ wrote Loewenstein, ‘even for questions of no importance.’

Many stories begin with a moment of unexpected change.

Even sleep is no barrier to the brain’s story-making processes. Dreams feel real because they’re made of the same hallucinated neural models we live inside when awake.

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.

Brain stories have a basic structure of cause and effect. Whether it’s memory, religion, or the War of the Ghosts, it rebuilds the confusion of reality into simplified theories of how one thing causes another. Cause and effect is a fundamental of how we understand the world.

In fairytales, human-like minds are everywhere: mirrors talk, pigs eat breakfast, frogs turn into princes.

Human environments are rich with clues about those who occupy them.