{"id":6776,"date":"2017-08-31T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T08:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=6776"},"modified":"2017-08-30T20:16:09","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T03:16:09","slug":"6776","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/6776\/","title":{"rendered":"So, what is a story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today\u2019s post is by Lisa Cron<\/a>, author of Story Genius<\/a> and Wired for Story.<\/a><\/p>\n

We think in story. It\u2019s hardwired in our brain. It\u2019s how we make strategic sense of the otherwise overwhelming world around us. Simply put, the brain constantly seeks meaning from all the input thrown at it, yanks out what\u2019s important for our survival on a need-to-know basis, and tells us a story about it, based on what it knows of our past experience with it, how we feel about it, and how it might affect us. Rather than recording everything on a first-come, first-served basis, our brain casts us as \u201cthe protagonist\u201d and then edits our experience with cinema-like precision, creating logical interrelations, mapping connections between memories, ideas, and events for future reference.<\/p>\n

Story is the language of experience, whether it\u2019s ours, someone else\u2019s, or that of fictional characters. Other people\u2019s stories are as\u00a0important as the stories we tell ourselves. Because if all we ever had to go on was our own experience, we wouldn\u2019t make it out of onesies.<\/p>\n

So, What Is a Story?<\/h3>\n

Contrary to what many people think, a story is not just something that happens. If that were true, we could all cancel the cable, lug our Barcaloungers onto the front lawn, and be utterly entertained, 24\/7, just watching the world go by. It would be idyllic for about ten minutes. Then we\u2019d be climbing the walls, if only there were walls on the front lawn.<\/p>\n

A story isn\u2019t simply something that happens to someone, either. If it were, we\u2019d be utterly enthralled reading a stranger\u2019s earnestly rendered, heartfelt journal chronicling every trip she took to the grocery store, ever\u2014and we\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

A story isn\u2019t even something dramatic that happens to someone. Would you stay up all night reading about how bloodthirsty Gladiator A chased cutthroat Gladiator B around a dusty old arena for two hundred pages? I\u2019m thinking no<\/p>\n

A story is . . .<\/h3>\n

A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result. Breaking it down in the soothingly familiar parlance of the writing world, this translates to<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens\u201d is the plot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone\u201d is the protagonist.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cgoal\u201d is what\u2019s known as the story question.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And \u201chow he or she changes\u201d is what the story itself is actually about.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As counterintuitive as it may sound, a story is not about the plot or even what happens in it. Stories are about how we, rather than the world around us, change. They grab us only when they allow us to experience how it would feel to navigate the plot. Thus story. . . \u00a0is an internal journey, not an external one.<\/p>\n

Articles by Lisa Cron:<\/p>\n

\u201cTen writing insights from brain science guru, Lisa Cron.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

2 Ways Your Brain is Wired to Undermine Your Story \u2013 And What To Do About It<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s post is by Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius and Wired for Story. We think in story. It\u2019s hardwired in our brain. It\u2019s how we make strategic sense of the otherwise overwhelming world around us. Simply put, the brain constantly seeks meaning from all the input thrown at it, yanks out what\u2019s important for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[1086,1088,1087],"class_list":["post-6776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-lisa-cron","tag-story-genius","tag-wired-for-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s43Dj8-6776","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6776"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6781,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6776\/revisions\/6781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}