Summary:
Wired for Story is a book of advice for writing stories, but it focuses its approach on trying to understand what makes a good story by understanding our brains and psychology. Lisa Cron connects neuroscience and psychology to specific story elements to give us a peek inside the brains of readers to remove the mystery of how the reader will react to a story. It almost completely avoids discussion of prose, metaphor, syntax and other aspects of creative writing that were the focus of my high school English classes. Each chapter starts with what Lisa calls a "cognitive secret," and then she connects it to a story secret.
These are the "cognitive" and "story" secrets from each chapter, which serve as a nice summary of the themes of the book.
- We think in story, which allows us to imagine the future
From the very first sentence the reader must want to know what happens next
- When the brain focuses its attention on something, it filters out all unnecessary information
To hold the brains attention, everything in the story must be there on a need to know basis
- Emotion determines the meaning of everything. If we're not feeling we're not conscious
All story is emotion based, if we're not feeling we're not reading
- Everything we do is goal directed, and our biggest goal is figuring out everyone else's agenda, the better to achieve our own
A protagonist without a clear goal has nothing to figure out and nowhere to go
- We see the world not as it is, but as we believe it to be
You must know precisely when and why the protagonist's worldview was knocked out of alignment
- We don't think in the abstract; we think in specific images
Anything conceptual, abstract, or general, must be made tangible in the protagonist's specific struggle
- The brain is wired to stubbornly resist change, even good change
Story is about change, which results only from unavoidable conflict
- From birth, our brain's primary goal is to make causal connections…if this, then that
A story follows a cause and effect trajectory from start to finish
- The brain uses stories to simulate how we might navigate difficult situations in the future
A story's job is to put the protagonist through tests that, even in her wildest dreams, she didn't think she could pass
- Since the brain abhors randomness, it's always converting raw data into meaningful patterns, the better to anticipate what might happen next.
Readers are always on the lookout for patterns. To your reader, everything is either a set-up, payoff, or the road in between.
- The brain summons past memories to evaluate what's happening in the moment in order to make sense of it.
Foreshadowing, flashback, and subplots must instantly give readers insight into what is happening in the main storyline, even if the meaning shifts as the story unfolds.
- It takes long term conscious effort to hone a skill before the brain assigns it to the cognitive unconscious.
There is no writing. There is only rewriting.
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Discussion questions:
- Do you agree with all of the neuroscience maxims and "cognitive secrets", given what we've learned before from books in the book club? Consider these statements:
"We think in story, which allows us to imagine the future"
"Emotion determines the meaning of everything. If we're not feeling we're not conscious"
"We don't think in the abstract; we think in specific images"
"The brain is wired to stubbornly resist change, even good change"
- There was only really one neuroscience study that was used to back up a claim. There were mostly quotes from neuroscientists. A paper from 2010 found that different parts of the brain were activated to different parts of story vignettes that had been shown in other papers to be involved in the actual experience of the activity. So for example, a motor area may become active when reading about a character executing action. This was used to support the assertion that reading simulates real world activities. What would your conclusion be if only a "reading" area of the brain was active during this study?
Was the neuroscience necessary to support or not support her points?
- Did you disagree with any of Lisa Cron's story advice?
I think I was just suspicious because I wasn't really impressed by her story exemplars. Her stories were boring to me. I'm not a big fan of Die Hard. Some elements of novels that I do like were sort of ignored. Like, I often prefer deeply insightful passages about psychology, which usually take the form of following someone's own thoughts even if it doesn't exactly connect with the story. I like it when flashbacks and other information are subtle and disconnected from exactly when you need the clues. I like the ambiguity of weird fiction, where you don't know exactly what is happening, like an abstract painting, and you get to imagine it all yourself. I often really like sci-fi ideas for the sake of the ideas, rather than a character growing. I think I like to use stories to imagine a lot of things besides a single character's situation. I like to imagine possible futures for whole species or empires or things like that.
- Even when there was neuroscience or neuroscientists quoted in the book, they were often pretty loosely applied to the writing concept. Like this example:
"As neuroscientist David Eagleman says, "when you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something larger than the sum. The concept of emergent properties means that something new can be introduced that is not inherent in any of the parts. " What emerges is your vision, seen through the eyes of your readers, experienced by your readers."
Did you think that the neuroscience presented was supportive/helpful or just a sales gimmick?
- I thought that neuroscience and psychometric data could have actually been applied better to answer questions relevant to writing. Here are some of my questions. Can you think of others?
How many characters can an average person track over what amount of time?
How many levels of intention can an average person track? (like who knows what about who)
How long can the average person remember a detail containing important information for predicting something later on?
What salient ways can you draw the reader's attention to extra important information?
How much suffering can a reader read about before they get depressed?
- A lot of the Goodreads reviews for this book were really positive and then there was another set of reviews that were kind of bored and unimpressed. The five-star reviews were in the spirit of "this advice is so insightful and will completely change your writing." and the more middling three star reviews were in the spirit of "this advice is good, but consists of things that everyone knows." Which of those matched more with what you felt?
Did you learn anything that surprised you?
For me it was that subplots and flashbacks have to me immediately important; not important down the line. I always sort of thought of stories more like dust clouds coming together under gravity and in the end you get your asteroid. But she advocates for much more of a linear approach, where actions and their resolutions lead immediately to the next action and resolution, etc, until the protagonist faces their issue.
Payel: Who should write a book about writing?
Comments:
- For those interested, Lisa Cron has a newer book published in 2021 called "Story or Die: How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life.
- Pop neuroscience writer (oft-cited in this book) was Jonah Lehrer, whose career was ruined when he came out is having made up a bunch of stuff in his pop science books. I believe he was discredited the same year that the book was published.