This book was the lens and light which showed me how humans think and how to reach them more than any other. So I have trouble seeing from the perspective of the majority and their needs and motives. I am in a 1% psychological group on many measurements including openness, agreeableness, and IQ. Just know that there are people who do not have a need to control in some instances for whatever reason. This was the first book I have ever read out of thousands that truly changed my view of writing forever and so to me it has instantly become my most favorite and influential writing book.

My main motivation is truth, and it has set me at odds with the social world, and with most humans eventually. I have taken many psychological tests over the years and went to graduate school in behavioral neuroscience and evolutionary psychology but never finished because I never automatically developed the control function he speaks of so eloquently. I hardly expected the book to go so deep into the unspoken motivation which has dogged me my whole life. The motives he describes, the self-domestication of the human mind, are what has been the primary alienating factor in my life.

I loved this book, even though I fundamentally was shocked and alienated by it. With chapters such as 'The Dramatic Question' and 'Plot, Endings, and Meaning' and a practical, step-by-step appendix dedicated to 'The Sacred Flaw Approach', The Science of Storytelling is destined to become an invaluable resource for writers of all stripes, whether novelist, screenwriter, playwright, or writer of creative or traditional nonfiction.

Storr’s superbly chosen examples range from Harry Potter to Jane Austen to Alice Walker, Greek drama to Russian novels to Native American folk tales, King Lear to Breaking Bad to children’s stories. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change. How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach.

The science of storytelling will storr