We understand a story’s meaning, in part, by tracking its causality, and a story’s power stems from our sense that its causality is truthful, which is to say, that its internal logic is solid.
We understand a story’s meaning, in part, by tracking its causality, and a story’s power stems from our sense that its causality is truthful, which is to say, that its internal logic is solid.
Saved by Alex Dobrenko and
We could understand a story as simply a series of such expectation/resolution moments.
According to Will Storr in The Science of Storytelling: “Neuroscientists are building a powerful case that metaphor is far more important to human cognition than has ever been imagined. Many argue it’s the fundamental way that brains understand abstract concepts like love, joy, society, and economy. It’s simply not possible to comprehend these idea
... See moreCausality might sound like basic common sense, but Saunders says two things tend to separate writers who publish from those who don’t: 1) A willingness to revise 2) The ability to create causality. Causation is to stories, he writes, as melody is to songs.
But that’s really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality.
We might think of structure as simply: an organizational scheme that allows the story to answer a question it has caused its reader to ask.
It’s the causation, or the causal links between sentences, paragraphs, and scenes that make a story. It’s the interconnectedness of moments that brings meaning to an otherwise linear collection of events connected only by time and space.
It’s cause and effect that powers curiosity. Human brains and human stories ask, ‘Why did that happen? And what’s going to happen next?’
A good story is one that, having created a pattern of excesses, notices those excesses and converts them into virtues.