As we already know, change is a powerful stimulus that triggers our perception, and as a result of this, captivates our attention. With a sudden turn in the story, we get excited and curious to learn what’s going to happen next, that’s why the best plots are hard to predict. Since we’ve learned the virtue of change let’s dive deeper into the abyss of our brains, and see how they can teach us to master the art of storytelling.
Since your brain pays attention to a very limited number of changes in the surrounding environment, your story then is made of the sequences of events, where one thing succeeds another. A storyline is a succession of events that go one by another.
Because of that, the easiest way for your readers to keep up with your story is to narrate it in active voice and in transitive construction (don’t get freaked out, you’ll learn what those mean in a sec). Active voice means is that it is you (or your character) who perform a certain action upon smth or smb, e.g.: I killed Martha (compare with passive voice: Martha was killed by me).
Transitive construction is when: I brought good news to you, compared to ditransitive: I brought you good news. With all that being said, make sure your stories are full of active and transitive sentences. This is also called a filmic narration, meaning that you narrate the story as it would happen in the film, shooting a killer murdering his victim (X kills Y, not Y is killed by X).
For your brain to tell a story it has first to reconstruct it into a meaningful sequence. This means, it has to relate one event to another as they appeared to you. This is how your sense-making of the world and yourself works. Off course, it can’t handle all the details, and the events are only reproduced from your personal standpoint, therefore the memories are always incomplete.
But, doing this, your brain creates a sort of virtuality, that involves your five senses through which we apprehend our reality. The world as you see is nothing by information encoded in your senses. Your perception is a lived story made of what you felt, saw and thought, but it’s not an ideal replica - you tell not the facts, but how you experienced the events yourself.
As goes the old saying: “The Devil is in the details,” is very relevant to the science of storytelling. The most intriguing, vivid and captivating stories are those that can evoke an image full of immersive details. Remember, I’ve mentioned about five senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch - these are your secret weapon.
The more sensual image you create the more realistic it feels to your reader. The five senses can amplify the images generated by your brain, making them more melodic, aromatic, tastier, softer and brighter. Your real world is a material from which you craft your stories, use it to imprint your images onto the minds of your readers.
Immersive storytelling is when your reader can hallucinate the world you’re retelling, experience it with every fiber of his soul. To make your story effective, fuel it with actors and their actions. With every sentence told, make your images look even more realistic than the real world.
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