After years of combing through frustrating advice, The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr revolutionized how I craft stories in two ways. For one thing, it addresses the core problems I encounter whenever I’m working on a story:
- How to capture and keep the audience’s attention.
- How to create characters that “take on lives of their own.”
- How to construct a satisfying story arc.
For another — and more crucially — Storr teaches the why behind these hows. As a result, my storytelling began to feel less like cooking with an annoying recipe and more like spontaneously combining unique ingredients to whiz up a delicious dish. Not only have I found this approach creatively freeing. I think it has also helped me craft more original and profound stories.
What you’ll find below is everything I’ve learned and keep learning from The Science of Storytelling. These lessons originally started as a bunch of notes I took for myself, but eventually meshed and evolved with my own takeaways on storytelling. Whether you want to give better presentations at work, entertain your friends, or, like me, make headway on your first novel, I hope you find these lessons as valuable as I did.
0. Everything Is Story
Story emerges from human minds as naturally as breath emerges from between human lips. You don’t have to be a genius to master it. You’re already doing it.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
I used to think we live our lives and then tell stories about them. But after reading The Science of Storytelling, I must assume it’s the other way around:
We tell stories in order to live our lives.
Over many years of evolution, stories have woven the fabric of nations, religion, culture, and personal identity. Today, stories disguise themselves under all sorts of names, but they’re as present as ever. When stories explain how nature works, we call them science. When stories draw millions of people into the cinema, we call them blockbusters. When stories foster public order, we call them laws. “Stories are everywhere,” says Storr. “Stories are us.”
And it doesn’t stop there.
Observe the thoughts you’re thinking. The memories floating through your mind. The goals you have. That’s your life story. And you — your precious sense of self — is the hero at its center, finding allies, fighting villains, solving conflicts. Stories are the mind’s operating mode. Some are short, some long, but they’re always full of drama. Stories are the mind’s way of organizing a chaotic reality into one neat narrative — not by using a solemn voice of reason but a sonorous choir of stories. As the psychology professor Jonathan Haidt puts it: “The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.”
I find this insight not just fascinating but also encouraging. You don’t need to become a storyteller because you already are one. We’re all bursting with stories. It’s just a matter of finding the good ones — and telling them.
Okay, then. But what makes for a good story?
1. Building Blocks of Good Stories
“Becoming better at telling stories,” Storr says, “is simply a matter of peering inwards, at the mind itself, and asking how it does it.” Sounds complicated enough. Still, it’ll give us crucial insights into the core building blocks of stories. So, let’s uncover what the mind deems storyworthy, what captures its attention, and how it weaves stray data into powerful stories.
Unexpected change
The foundation of all stories is change. And the most important type of change is character change.
As the author John le Carré famously said, “The cat sat on the mat is not a story; the cat sat on the dog’s mat is the beginning of an exciting story.” The former is boring beyond its staccato rhyme rhythm. But once you add the dog, the scene gets imbued with the force of change. Something is about to happen. And we want to find out what it is.
Why is change so powerful? Because, as Storr says, the human mind is a “change-detecting machine.” Changes in our environment switch on our senses and make us alert. This is why we immediately turn around when we hear someone shouting our name on the street. Or why we follow the never-ending flood of news. Change activates our attention.
For this reason, many good stories begin with moments of unexpected change. For instance, when I pull Albert Camus’ The Stranger out of my shelf, the first sentence reads:
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.
Or take Kafka’s Metamorphosis:
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Or Andy Weir’s The Martian:
I’m pretty much fucked.
These lines work so great, not just because they hint at a change in the past, but also at a change that’s about to come. We want to know: How did this happen? And what’s going to happen next?
The power of change is by no means limited to literature. When I think about the movies I recently watched, the first scenes were always steeped in change. And if the first scene doesn’t feature capital-c Change, it most definitely features characters who are about to bring change.
- In The Dark Knight, masked robbers break into a bank, setting up the Joker’s dark and chaotic genius.
- In Lost in Translation, Bob Harris arrives in Tokyo, where he’s about to meet Charlotte.
- In Call Me By Your Name, an American graduate student comes to live with Elio and his family in Italy.
That said, the mere threat of change can be equally powerful. This is what the horror genre has mastered. Creaking floorboards. Creepy clowns. A childlike chuckle in the background. These hints can trigger immense anticipation and terror. But the threat of change can also be subtle and comedic. For instance, here’s how J. K. Rowling begins the Harry Potter series:
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
This sentence is pregnant with change. Filled with schadenfreude, we can sense that the Dursleys’ lives are about to be turned sideways. And we’re here to watch it go down.
But change is not the only driving force of stories.
The driving force of cause and effect
If change is the spark of stories, cause and effect is the fuel. It’s what keeps the story engine running. Here’s an example:
- “I was hungry and made myself dinner. I still ruminated about getting fired earlier that day. Then, the food burned.”
- “I was hungry and made myself dinner. Still ruminating about getting fired earlier that day, I didn’t notice the food burning.”
The first sequence seems like a random collection of events. In the second sequence, however, each sentence builds on what came before it. This infuses the story with consequence. And because of that, it’s far easier to follow for most brains.
I find this crucial to remember: the most natural language in which human brains construct stories is cause and effect. As Storr puts it:
The issue isn’t simply that scenes without cause and effect tend to be boring. Plots that play too loose with cause and effect risk becoming confusing, because they’re not speaking in the brain’s language.
Some stories, of course, intentionally bend cause and effect. In fact, as Storr points out, this is often the decisive difference between literary and mass-market storytelling: “Change in mass-market story is quick and clear and easily understandable, while in high literature it’s often slow and ambiguous and demands plenty of work from the reader.”
I like to remember that cause and effect is a spectrum. You don’t want to dim it down too much and leave the audience in complete darkness. But also, you don’t want to turn it up all the way, dazzling the audience with elaborate explanations. The best literary worlds, I found, move in between the extremes, dropping just enough hints for the reader to get the gist but leaving enough mysteries unsolved so the story can linger in the mind.
Which brings us to the next point.
Information gaps and mysteries
The wildly popular ABC series Lost demonstrates another way how stories hook the brain’s attention: information gaps. In the US alone, the show glued fifteen million viewers to their screens by following the surviving passengers of a plane that crashed on a mysterious island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
In the second episode, some survivors set out to explore the jungle inside the island. Suddenly, they hear a roar. Then something charges at them. One person pulls out a gun and fires. Turns out, the thing that charged at them, lying now dead before their feet, was a polar bear.
Yes, a polar bear. On a tropical island.
I remember watching this scene, thinking, “Well, I guess I’m gonna pull an all-nighter and binge the entire first season.” What makes this scene — and many of Lost’s cliffhangers so addictive — is that it forces the storytelling brain to connect unrelated bits of information. The brain is posed with a seemingly unsolvable puzzle: how the hell did that polar bear get on that island? If polar bears are on this island, what else will they encounter? And besides, why does this guy have a gun after being on an airplane?
Just like change, information gaps make us curious. And curiosity is most alive when we get some clues while the enigma remains. “Curiosity,” Storr says, “is shaped like a lower-case n.” Which means we’re drawn into a story when we have a reasonable amount of information but enough mystery to wonder what might happen next. As Storr puts it:
The place of maximum curiosity — the zone in which storytellers play — is when people think they have some idea but aren’t quite sure.
This isn’t just why Lost became wildly popular and addictive; it’s also the trusted formula of Agatha Christie and other murder mysteries and thrillers. They leverage the core principles of inducing curiosity in humans that the psychology professor George Loewenstein summarizes as follows (examples in brackets):
- Posing a question or presenting a puzzle. (In Stranger Things, a boy disappears, and the only clue seems to be a young psychokinetic girl.)
- Portraying a series of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution. (In Game of Thrones, the attack of the White Walkers is heavily foreshadowed, while its outcome remains unknown until the end.)
- Violating expectations that trigger a need for explanations. (In Lost, the survivors encounter a polar bear on a tropical island.)
- Knowing that someone possesses crucial information. (In Harry Potter, Dumbledore clearly knows more about Harry’s past and Voldemort’s nature but only reveals these details at a few essential moments.)
And yet, these mechanisms will only get us so far. Next, we need a credible world in which our story unfolds.
2. How to Build an Unforgettable World
By building its model of the scene, in all its vivid and specific detail, it experiences what’s happening on the page almost as if it’s actually happening. Only that way will the scene truly rouse our emotions.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
Building an immersive world comes down to a process called modeling. For instance, when you see the word TREE, electrical impulses are sent to your brain, which then builds a mental model out of those impulses. Right now, you probably see a tree before your mind’s eye. And yet, since I didn’t provide any vibrant details about that imaginary tree, it still feels vague and fuzzy.
Good storytellers go one step further. They mold words into complex models that feel as real — or even more real — than reality. They give you not just the word “tree” but also describe all its salient detail so that the tree comes alive inside your mind. That’s how they create unforgettable worlds. And luckily, Storr gives some pointers that help us do the same.
Filmic word order
Our minds start modeling worlds as soon as we start reading. Which means that the order in which we place words, sentences, and scenes matters. To illustrate, Storr compares these two sentences:
- “Jane gave a kitten to her Dad.”
- “Jane gave her Dad a kitten.”
Which sentence reads better? According to The Science of Storytelling, the first sentence feels smoother for the mind because it allows us to visualize the events more similarly to the real-world sequence.
One way to remember this is that each word invokes a snapshot as soon as someone reads it. Good storytellers intuitively align these snapshots on the page like film directors in a cutting room. If we had to shoot the sentence above, we’d first show Jane, then Jane handing over a kitten, and finally Jane’s Dad receiving the kitten.
It’s for the same reason that many writers advise avoiding passive structures whenever possible. In most cases, active structures like “Jane took a kitchen knife and stabbed her Dad” correspond closer to our experienced world than “Dad was stabbed by Jane with a kitchen knife.”
The real meaning of “show, don’t tell”
Unless you’ve been living under a colossal, mossy rock, you’ve heard the advice “Show, don’t tell.” But what does this actually mean? In terms of modeling, it’s the difference between spoon-feeding models to readers or giving them the chance to build their own models. As C. S. Lewis famously advised:
Instead of telling us the thing is “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description.
Here are some examples.
- Telling a place. The place looked run-down.
- Showing a place. From a crack in the ceiling small droplets fell into a yellow plastic bucket. In the corner lay an unhinged door with white paint chipping off. The air stenched of mold.
- Telling an emotion. At the end of the phone call, Anna felt angry.
- Showing an emotion. Anna told the salesperson to fuck off, hung up, and slammed the phone on her desk.
- Telling a character trait. John was the sort of person who was easily distracted.
- Showing a character trait. Already running late, John couldn’t find his keys. Did he leave the stove turned on? Better to double-check. He should really get going now. But where did he put his keys?
That said, I think telling can sometimes be far more practical than showing. From what I’ve observed, good storytellers employ a mixture of the two. When they need to pick up the pace, they tell. When they need to heighten emotion or immersion, they show.
So, it’s not about deluging the reader with details. It’s about picking the right detail at the right time. Speaking of which…
Specificity brings scenes alive
When it comes to modeling a vivid scene, I like to recall Storr’s tip to combine at least one sensory cue with one visual cue. “Precise and specific description,” Storr says, “makes for precise and specific models.”
Let’s say, for instance, I want to write a scene where I walk down a road. If I only use that description —“I walked down a road” — you’ll only get a vague, watered-down model of the road. So, let’s spice it up with another visual cue:
- “I walked down a gravel road in a dark forest.”
And a sensory clue, which is smell in this case:
- “I walked down a gravel road in a dark forest that smelled like horse droppings and pine trees.”
In the same way, “I lay down on the carpet” might transform into “I lay down on a red oriental carpet [visual cue], whose surface felt scratchy on my skin [sensory cue].” Precise details often trump pages of surface-level descriptions.
If you don’t know which details to choose, take the most salient ones. That is, the details that would “jump out” at you if you were present at the scene. The other day, for instance, I was at a lake, simply observing my surroundings. I noted: children screaming, water splashing, my skin baking in the sun, the scent of warm grass, the sounds of bicycle chains, an eagle drawing circles in the sky.
Pick the first impressions that come to mind and trust them.
The importance of gibberish
Strangely enough, our minds can build models from made-up words — as long as they’re well-chosen. That’s why sci-fi and fantasy worlds feel so real. When Tolkien writes that “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” the brain starts modeling a hobbit, simply based on context. Slowly, we get the strange feeling that we know precisely what a hobbit is. The same applies to Jedis, the Ministry of Truth, the Demogorgon.
In The Lord of the Rings prologue, we hear of Elves, Dwarves, Mordor, Mount Doom, powerful rings, and other gibberish. And yet, the world immediately comes to life. “As ridiculous as some of this language actually is,” Storr says, “rather than taking us out of the storyteller’s fictional hallucination, it gives it even more density.”
Metaphors build bridges
Metaphors and similes help the mind visualize vague concepts with well-known models. Love, politics, the economy — all these fuzzy words require metaphors, so we can truly begin to ‘grasp’ them. In fact, many metaphoric words have ‘slithered’ into our language so subtly that we stopped ‘conceiving’ them as metaphors altogether.
But what distinguishes good metaphors from bad ones? Here are some guidelines from The Science of Storytelling:
- The best metaphor is a fresh metaphor. If your evoked image feels familiar, you’re using a cliche, not a metaphor. Consider this sentence from Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk: “I feel hollow and unhoused, an airy empty wasps’ nest, a thing made of chewed paper after the frosts have murdered the life within.” This image works so well because I’ve never connected the feeling of emptiness to a frozen wasp’s nest. And yet, weirdly, that’s exactly what it is.
- Metaphors trigger curiosity by opening information gaps. When you can connect two unrelated but similar images (e.g., “the clouds are hordes of bulls, stampeding across the sky”) the mind will then wonder how clouds can behave like buffalo.
- Sensory or visual words are stickier than abstract ones. “She had a rough day” is more memorable than “She had a bad day.” “He shouldered the burden” activates more neural regions than “He carried the burden.” As Storr says, “We feel the heft and strain of the shouldering, we touch the abrasiveness of the day.”
What fascinates me about all these world-building tools is that they work best when combined with the lessons we’ve learned about curiosity: give some hints, but don’t reveal everything. Yes, be hyper-specific, use fresh metaphors, and show what’s happening, but don’t drown us in details. Instead, provide a few salient, relevant hints about the environment so the reader can model their own world rather than copy yours. Besides, that’ll keep them coming back for more details.
But no matter how spectacular literary world, none of it matters if there aren’t actual people involved. Storr says it best: “A shark tank has no meaning without a 007 to fall into it.”
3. The Character Framework That Drives Great Stories
At this point, we get to the core of it all: developing real, breathing, acting, thinking, emoting characters. It’s them who should be the heart of any story.
The key to unlocking vibrant characters is what Storr calls “theory of control.” A character’s theory of control is their intricate web of beliefs by which they perceive, interpret, and — most importantly — control their environment. The word “control” may sound a little Machiavellian. But what Storr means to say is that we all inhabit (unconscious) codes of behavior that help us attain what we desire and avoid what we fear.
Here are some examples of beliefs within a theory of control:
- “If I smile at strangers, they’ll perceive me as friendly.”
- “If I don’t go above and beyond the expected, I can’t prove my worth.”
- “If I haven’t been productive, I don’t deserve to rest.”
If these beliefs sound irrational to you, that’s exactly the point. Because essentially, a theory of control boils down to this formula:
- “If I do X, good things will happen” (i.e., I’ll be loved, safe, admired, successful, etc.)
- “If I don’t do X, bad things will happen” (i.e., I’ll be shunned, disliked, worthless, endangered, etc.)
We’ve all inherited ideas like this. Typically, we derive them from culture, society, family upbringing, genetic factors, and personality. To create a character that bursts from the page, the task is simple but not easy: uncover your character’s unique and flawed theory of control.
I know this might sound a little cruel, but it helps me to imagine my characters as robots I can program. As in: What’s the character’s default mode to respond to specific triggers, like rainy weather, losing their keys, or meeting new people? To put it more mathematically: If X happens, what thoughts, emotions, and actions does X trigger? Of course, human behavior is far messier and complicated than that. But it serves as a guideline.
What I also find fascinating is that a character’s theory of control doesn’t just dictate how they behave but how their mind perceives reality. For instance, when a biologist, a lumberjack, and a philosopher look at the same tree, they “see” three different things. The biologist sees cells, the lumberjack sees resources, and the philosopher wonders whether the tree exists. And of course, this isn’t limited to professions. The same applies to social classes. Political camps. Nationalities.
Good storytellers infuse their characters with varying language and thinking patterns, depending on their respective theories of control.
From character to conflict to story
Now, the dark twist is that most of us are unaware of our theory of control — and particularly, its limits. After all, this is how we learned to control and predict our surroundings. As far as we’re concerned, it’s as truthful as the laws of physics. Our theory of control is our reality. It is us. Why would we ever question it?
This ignorance makes us all the more prone to attacks on our theories of control. And it’s what makes stories so fascinating. When a character’s theory of control is challenged in a story, it’s often called conflict. That is, the plot tests the character’s flawed beliefs, often through unexpected change (see above). The character, of course, tries to fight back because an attack on their core beliefs is an attack on their identity. “It’s these kinds of beliefs, and these kinds of attacks,” Storr says, “that drive some of our greatest stories.”
As a result, storytellers create dramatic tension: They design a character, demonstrate how their (flawed) theory of control functions, and then brutally but slowly expose their flaws, thus forcing the character to change.
I find designing characters the most daunting task of crafting stories. Our theories of control are endless after all. Luckily, Storr suggests a trick: find one particularly flawed axiom within their theory of control that binds all the other parts together.
This is what Storr calls the sacred flaw.
The sacred flaw: designing maximally characterful characters
It’s called the sacred flaw, because there are certain beliefs we deem (subconsciously) sacred. We’ll do anything to protect our sacred flaws. Often, we’re proud of them. Even if all evidence tells us to let go, we’ll hold on to them. However, once we turn these beliefs over, look underneath, and examine them closely, we find rampant irrationality.
The sacred flaw can be as simple as one atomic sentence that captures the character’s personality, childhood, and desires. You know that you’ve found a fruitful sacred flaw when it suggests a series of personality traits and acts as a decision guideline for almost any situation.
To find the sacred flaw, Storr provides a few sentence completion exercises that I find supremely useful:
The thing people most admire about me is…
I’m only safe when I…
The most important thing of all in life is…
The secret of happiness is…
The best thing about me is…
The most terrible thing about other people is…
The big thing I understand about the world that nobody else seems to get is…
The best advice anyone ever gave me was…
Here’s my attempt to retrace sacred flaws for well-known characters:
- Harry Potter (The Harry Potter series): “I must go out of my way to protect everyone from the evil force that killed my parents.” Suggests: courageous, impulsive, self-sacrificing, loyal.
- Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby): “If I could only recreate my past, I’d finally be happy.” Suggests: romantic, naive, hopeful, insecure.
- Hamlet (Hamlet): “If I act impulsively, I’ll lose everything.” Suggests: passive, indecisive, rational, conflicted.
- Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games): “If I show weakness, I’ll lose everyone I love.” Suggests: fiercely independent, emotionally distant, protective, distrustful.
- Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader (Star Wars): “I must protect my family, no matter the cost.” Suggests: destructive, vengeful, passion-driven, broken.
- James Bond (James Bond series): “I must remain cool and detached to save the world.” Suggests: emotionally numb, confident, solitary, reckless.
In this sense, a character’s sacred flaw is like a psychological lie they tell themselves to preserve their identity. We all tell these lies. In gripping stories, though, the flaw is taken to the extreme and constantly tested by external forces (aka the plot). We, as the audience, recognize our own flaws in the characters. That’s why we relate to them.
Let’s see how this unfolds in practice.
Character case study: Finding Nemo
One of the stories that, in my opinion, perfectly demonstrates theories of control and sacred flaws is Finding Nemo. It just so happens that it’s also one of the best-rated movies ever.
Why does it work? Based on The Science of Storytelling, I’d say it’s because the three protagonists’ theories of control perfectly feed into each other.
- First, we have Marlin, a clown fish, who, after a barracuda attack, loses his wife and all their eggs but one. He vows to keep his only child safe. That’s where Marlin gets his theory of control: “If I’m extremely cautious of my only surviving child, I can protect him from the dangers of the ocean.”
- Next, we have Nemo, Marlin’s only surviving son, who has a shortened fin. And if that weren’t enough, as the only child, Nemo grows up under an overly protective and anxious, albeit loving, dad. Thus, his theory of control is one of hubris and recklessness: “If I can spectacularly prove myself to my dad, I’ll show him that I can take care of myself.”
- Later on, we meet Dory, a blue reef fish, who has a really short memory. Dory’s theory of control is this: “If I’m cheerful and bubbly, I can mask my mental limitations; otherwise, I’ll be excluded.”
The result is a self-reinforcing ecosystem. Nemo is trying to prove himself, which triggers Marlin’s anxiety. Marlin’s anxiety, in turn, makes Nemo feel boxed in, thus provoking more recklessness.
Then, the plot strikes: After Nemo swims too close to the surface (to prove himself), a diver captures Nemo with a ziplock plastic bag. This confirms exactly what Marlin has feared the whole time. It’s his theory control, case in point.
The story begins to unfold. To find Nemo, Marlin enlists Dory, who initially seems like an unlikely companion. As it turns out, though, Dory’s cheerfulness and living in the moment counteract Marlin’s anxiety. He’s forced to change, even though he thinks that his anxiety has always served him well. Meanwhile, Marlin’s overthinking serves as an anchor for Dory’s forgetfulness.
And so, on their way through the vast open ocean, Marlin and Dory face sharks, jellyfish, and other dangers. Simultaneously, several dramatic questions loom over the story: Will they survive? Will they find Nemo? And will they overcome their flaws or return to being the same old person — ahem, fish?
These types of questions bring us to the next point — and perhaps the one secret to all great storytelling: the dramatic question.
4. The Single Secret to Storytelling
If there’s a single secret to storytelling then I believe it’s this. Who is this person? Or, from the perspective of the character, Who am I? It’s the definition of drama. It is its electricity, its heartbeat, its fire.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
Put simply, the dramatic question is this: Who is the protagonist going to be? Phrased differently: Who is this person, this character, really? Are they going to rise above themselves or succumb to dark forces? These questions keep us engaged. When posed correctly, we can’t not find out how the story ends.
But before we learn to leverage the dramatic question, let’s figure out why it’s so powerful.
The power of the dramatic question
For one thing, the dramatic question relates to one of the greatest philosophical problems of all time: Who am I? As Storr puts it, “None of us really know the answer to the dramatic question as it pertains to ourselves.” We have no clue who we really are or who we’re going to be.
What adds to this is that we’re obligatorily social animals. Because humans evolved in tribes of about 150 people, the dramatic question is far more than a tool to keep us hooked to stories. It’s a matter of survival. Think about it — if our ancestors had misguessed the true character of others in the tribe, and deemed someone as trustworthy rather than treacherous, they could’ve ended up with empty stomachs or slit throats. And although we deem ourselves as civilized these days, the dramatic question is no less relevant: Who is this politician, really? Who is this person I’m marrying? Who is my boss when they’re not at work? You get the idea.
The great thing about stories is that they actually reveal a character’s true nature. When we turn the last page or see the credits roll on the screen, we receive a clear-cut answer — or at least powerful cues — to the dramatic question. That’s why a well-told story feels so satisfying and sometimes escapist: For a change, we finally find out who a person really is, where they come from, and who they will become. In real life, these answers are often frustratingly hidden under the cover of darkness.
In fact, when applied correctly, the dramatic can leave us turning pages, even if the underlying story material is mediocre. Here’s a controversial example.
The anatomy of a bestselling novel
Although many critics tore it to shreds, Fifty Shades of Grey remains one of the fastest- and bestselling books of all time, peddling 15.2 million sales in the US alone. And that’s only counting between 2010 and 2019.
Why is that? How can a mediocre novel attract such masses?
I used to think this was because Fifty Shades was one of the first suspenseful novels that seamlessly integrated explicit erotica and BDSM. Softporn, ready for the mass market. But after reading The Science of Storytelling, I learned that much of the novel’s spectacular success came from its skilled wielding of the dramatic question.
Fifty Shades’ constantly recurring dramatic question is quite simply whether or not Ana is going to submit to Christian. Who is Ana going to be?
In what I found to be a mind-blowing passage, Storr cites the researchers Archer and Jockers, who graphed the plot’s emotional tension. The graph revealed that Fifty Shades takes us on a plot rollercoaster with five perfectly spaced out peaks and four valleys. As I understand it, those peaks are where Ana faces the dramatic question. That’s what keeps us hooked.
In this sense, the goal of the dramatic question is to repeatedly puncture a character’s theory of control, like hundreds of mosquito bites. “A gripping plot,” says Storr, “is one that keeps asking the dramatic question.” Slowly, painfully, the dramatic question reveals the protagonist’s flaws, thus revealing their true character. Eventually, these pricks are driven to a point — often called a story’s climax — where the character must either overcome these flaws or get crushed under their weight.
How to leverage the dramatic question
As I kept thinking about Storr’s concept of the dramatic question, I noticed something: A story’s thrill compounds with each character facing the dramatic question. To see why, let’s return to Finding Nemo. Each of the three main characters must face their very own dramatic question:
- Is Marlin going to be an anxious wreck for the rest of his life, or will he learn to let go?
- Is Dory going to outjoke her shortcomings or is she going to face her vulnerabilities?
- Is Nemo going to control his hubris responsibly, or will it be his downfall?
As the story unfolds, the plot tests these questions over and over again until they reach a climax, where the characters need to decide — once and for all — who they’re going to be. This is what happens in the ending of Finding Nemo. For a short moment, Dory, Marlin, and Nemo reunite. But then, suddenly, a fishing boat casts its menacing net into the ocean, capturing a swarm of fish, including Dory. And so, the final test begins.
“Help! Help!” Dory screams as the net pulls her away.
“I know what to do!” Nemo says and heads toward the net, but Marlin grabs his fin. “Are you crazy?” Marlin says. “You’re going to get caught.” But the little one insists. “You need to trust me. It’s the only way to save Dory.”
“You’re right,” Marlin says. “You got this. I know you do.”
In an epic scene, Nemo slips through the net’s mesh and tells all the caught fish to keep swimming downward (“just keep swimming” is Dory’s famous tagline). And sure enough, the fishing boat’s crane can’t lift the net out of the water. The force of the fish swarm is so strong that the crane breaks, whereby the net opens, the fish spew out, and our three heroes are reunited.
It’s the perfect climax, because all the dramatic questions are answered successfully. Nemo takes a somewhat responsible risk. Marlin learns to let go. Dory realizes that she’s an essential part of the trio as she embraces her secret superpower.
So, the remaining question is, how can we do the same? How can we craft these amazing characters, confront them with conflict, and send them on a nail-biting journey? Here’s Storr’s supremely practical approach from The Science of Storytelling.
5. The Sacred Flaw Approach: How to Construct a Story from Start to Finish
[T]he most common and fundamental problem I encounter in my students is that their plot and protagonist are essentially unconnected. In reality character and plot are indivisible. Life emerges from self and is a product of it. This is how story ought to work too.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
In the appendix of The Science of Storytelling, Storr offers a framework to build a fictional story “as a brain builds a life.” Storr calls it “the sacred flaw approach” since it draws on the character models we’ve discussed above. Thus, the focus of this approach is on character change. Accordingly, we’ll first develop a character with subconscious needs and goals, so we can then build a gripping plot around them.
What you find below is how I interpret this approach, binding everything together that we’ve talked about so far. I’ll also try to give examples by developing a fresh story as I go through each step. (Admittedly, this might get a little messy, but I, for one, love watching the imperfect process of how characters and stories are developed.)
Step one: kindle the spark
Where to begin? Well, as we’ve seen, the heart of our story should be a changing, dynamic character. Hence, Storr’s suggestion: “If you have an idea for a character, you can dive straight in.”
You don’t have to start with a character, though. You can also start with an argument (e.g., war makes monsters of men), a milieu (e.g., a dystopian future where humans create clones to farm organs), a specific event (e.g., a raven lands at your windowsill and starts talking to you), or any other spark. In these cases, you’ll have to reverse-engineer your character to match the spark.
As such, your guiding question will be this: What kind of character will be maximally transformed by your argument, milieu, or story event? For instance, if we take the argument that war makes monsters of men, the protagonist of our story could be an average, likable guy. Once this guy is forced to serve in the military, however, his darker, more violent side starts bubbling to the surface. And when he’s dropped into a war zone, he turns into a reckless killing machine.
But right now, I’d like to work with the idea for a story event I’ve had above: a raven sits down at a windowsill and starts talking to someone. Now, what kind of character would be triggered by this sort of event? My first instinct is that the character is quite lonely, desperately craving social contact. The image that’s forming inside my mind is a child or teenager who spends their days withdrawn into their room because they can’t bear the outside world. They hear their parents’ agitated voices from the kitchen. They struggle to make friends at school. And so, they (unknowingly) create an imaginary world, where adults hush and ravens talk. Let’s call this character Ava.
So far, so good.
At this point, however, Ava is still laden with clichés. To create a unique and dynamic character, we must find out who this person really is. In other words, we must unearth this character’s sacred flaw.
Step two: unearth the sacred flaw
We’ll now develop our character’s theory of control — that is, their web of (flawed) beliefs about the world. To jumpstart a character’s theory of control, we figure out their sacred flaw. This flaw should follow the rough structure of “If I commit myself to behavior or belief X, I can avoid what I fear and gain what I desire.” It should then suggest a series of character traits. It should also be able to predict the character’s default reaction to most situations. The more specific the belief, the better.
As Storr frames the question:
What’s the flawed belief they have about themselves and the human world that they cling onto, and that has come to largely define them?
Ava’s belief centers around her dissociating from reality and retreating into her fictional world. I think her sacred flaw looks something like this: “I’m only safe when I can withdraw into my daydreams, where my real friends live.”
It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start. This sacred flaw suggests that Ava’s nature is distrustful, introverted, imaginative, detached, and anxious. But this is only the beginning. Next, we need to find out how Ava came to this belief.
Step three: origin damage
Sacred flaws don’t come from nowhere. As we’ve seen, we inherit them from society, genes, and — most of all — our upbringing. Usually, one piercing or several sneaky events in the character’s childhood molded a particular belief inside them. This is what Storr calls their “origin damage.”
As a storyteller, you should know these events in detail. However, how much you reveal to the audience is up to you. Based on what we’ve learned about curiosity, I think it’s often better not to reveal my entire hand to the reader. As Storr says:
[S]pelling out the causes of a character’s actions overtly can be a mistake. Leaving only clues, or even excising origin damage information completely, can add profundity and fascination to your story.
But again, this doesn’t spare us from figuring out our character’s precise background, on which they formed their beliefs, behaviors, and values. According to Storr, we need to find a specific moment in which the character understands that “if they don’t behave like this, then that might happen.”
With that in mind, let’s return to Ava. Roughly speaking, Ava’s origin damage moves along the following lines: “If I don’t find a companion right now, I’ll be forever alone.” This implies that there was a formative period in Ava’s life when she was starving for connection, and the only way to regain control was to surround herself with imaginary friends. So, I’m looking for a moment in Ava’s early childhood when she was completely alone.
Here’s an idea. When Ava is three years old, her Mom — an acclaimed ecologist — goes on a month-long research trip to the Amazon rainforest. While she’s gone, her Dad watches over Ava. The problem is, for one, that her Dad never really understood Ava, and two, he’s had his problems with drinking too much. And so, in the absence of his wife, he tries a new strategy for dealing with Ava: he puts her crib in front of the TV to watch Disney’s Cinderella (“Because that’s what young girls like, right?”).
Sure enough, Cinderella seems to absorb Ava, making her fall asleep after thirty minutes into the movie. After a day of lots of crying and smelling diapers, the Dad is so proud of having found this strategy that he rewards himself by going to the pub. As far as he’s concerned, he’s terrific at being a Dad: he can bring his daughter to bed and enjoy a late-night out.
Or so he thinks. Because what he doesn’t know is that he wakes Ava whenever he shuts the door on his way to the pub. And what Ava wakes up to is being trapped in her crib with no Mommy or Daddy in sight. The only thing that consoles her is Cinderella and, particularly, those blue little birds that seem to assist Cinderella whenever she needs help.
When Ava’s Mom returns from the Amazon, her husband reports that he put Ava to bed every single night. It’s only months or years later that the mother will notice her child being quite distressed and withdrawn and, for some strange reason, strongly drawn to birds.
How this will lead to the talking raven, I don’t know yet. And maybe it doesn’t even need to. But I think it’s moving into an interesting enough direction. We’re getting a background story with cause and effect structures.
Step four: confirmatory event
We almost have a full-fledged sacred flaw. All we’re missing now is a confirmatory event. That is, the character must encounter one or more decisive situations in their life, where their sacred flaw “proves” useful. Once again, we need a precise incident where things are at stake. The outcome will be that the character (wrongfully) internalizes their flaw as their one true superpower.
As Storr puts it in The Science of Storytelling:
This incident makes them feel (or, at least, they’re able to thoroughly convince themselves) that this belief is not only correct but the most correct belief they can possibly imagine anyone ever having.
Let’s recall Ava’s updated sacred flaw: “I’m only safe when I can withdraw into my daydreams, where my real friends live who won’t abandon me.”
A couple of confirmatory events come to mind here.
When Ava is ten, she and a few friends meet weekly for a game of hide and seek. Ava always wins. The games get longer and longer until one day Ava’s friends stop looking for her. They think it’s no longer fun to play with Ava. Ava stays hidden in an old tree trunk until late at night when a search squad finds her. “Are you crazy?” her Mom says, “You could’ve — ”
“But Mom,” Ava says, “I won! I won the game! And besides, my birds were with me the whole time.” From this day on, Ava loses touch with her friend group and gets more and more absorbed with her imaginary world.
Events like these mold the character’s personality into a three-dimensional shape. Which is why, at this point, you can delve even deeper into the character’s reality.
Step five: building a life
For a start, you can take a personality test in your character’s stead (I like this one). Then, you can think about how your character might’ve built a life around their sacred flaw. Here are some of the questions I adopted from Storr to figure this out:
- How has their flaw shaped their career and income?
- What life goals did the flaw generate?
- How does their flaw make them feel superior?
- What brings them joy?
- How has their flaw shaped their social life (friends, family, colleagues)?
- What would they risk losing if they acted against the flaw?
- What do they fear would happen if they stopped believing in the flaw?
The more precisely you can answer these questions, the easier it’ll be to tackle the next step.
Step six: gnaw on the flaw
All the work we’ve done until this point is backstory. Our goal now is to take that established sacred flaw and start challenging it with story events — aka the plot. Like a beaver gnawing at a wooden log, well-chosen story events will slowly expose and tear down the character’s sacred flaw — and their sense of identity along with it.
Time and again, this forces them to answer the dramatic question: Who am I going to be? Eventually, this question will culminate in the story’s end. If it’s a happy ending, the protagonist has overcome their sacred flaw and become a better person. If it’s a tragic ending, the protagonist commits to — perhaps even doubles down on — their old, flawed theory of control.
I won’t spell out the rest of Ava’s story here, but one of my ideas for an inciting incident is that Ava gets engaged. Her fiancée will be a person who finally gives her the care and attention she’s always wanted. Simultaneously, Ava’s imaginary friends will feel abandoned by her (mirroring the reason why Ava created them in the first place).
Hopefully, this push-and-pull motion between Ava’s imaginary friends and her fiancée will lead to her facing the dramatic question: Who am I going to be? A loner who retreats to her perfect fantasy world, or a partner who commits to the messy, imperfect reality of human relationships?
Step seven: scaffolding
Now we have all our pieces together. To start writing, it can help to give the story some structure. But once again, the goal here is not to force-push the character in a premeditated direction; it’s to place something before the character and observe what happens.
In The Science of Storytelling, Storr suggests combining the tried and tested five-act structure with the sacred flaw. The goal of these acts is above all to demonstrate character change. So, we first need to establish a character’s sacred flaw, and then challenge it with a story event. Then, in a see-saw motion, the character will move between their old and new theory of control until they face the dramatic question.
Here are the five acts in detail.
Act I: This is me, and it’s not working.
- We meet our protagonist and their sacred flaw.
- Unexpected change in the form of a story event challenges the protagonist’s sacred flaw.
- The protagonist’s default reaction fails to respond to the change.
Act II: Is there another way?
- The protagonist realizes their theory of control is limited.
- They experiment with different solutions.
- They glimpse into what a new, improved theory of control might look like.
Act III: There is. I have transformed.
- The plot fights back.
- The protagonist tests their new theory of control and commits to it.
Act IV: But can I handle the pain of change?
- The plot fights back as vigorously as ever.
- The protagonist is at a low point.
- They question their new theory of control and maybe revert to their old one.
Act V: Who am I going to be?
- The “final battle” and its aftermath.
- The protagonist answers the dramatic question.
Of course, this scaffolding is just one of many ways to tell a story. I find it helpful to remember that the story’s goal is change. And change isn’t bound to dramatic happenings. Just as much, our character might simply meet another character, say, with an opposing theory of control. If you previously worked out their sacred flaws, the plot will take care of itself.
And if, at this point, you feel like this approach feels over-constructed or too detached from “real life” (I know I once did), let this clip from the movie Adaptation convince you otherwise.
Seeing Life Through the Lens of Stories
After I finished The Science of Storytelling, something fascinating happened. Even though I hadn’t memorized all storytelling principles in detail, I began to understand why some stories work and others don’t. I could see these principles all around me — character change, information gaps, world-building, dramatic questions. They were in every movie I watched. Every book I read. Dinner anecdotes.
In fact, I think that’s where the real magic begins: Simply seeing life through the lens of storytelling principles. For one thing, it has been fascinating to figure out my own sacred flaws (yes, there are more than one). For another, as I go through my days, I now tow a virtual fishing net behind me, where I capture the best nuggets for my next story. So, if you don’t feel inspiration rushing through your veins right now, don’t worry. Cast out your net, and it’ll come.
I’m convinced there are as many ways to tell a story as there are humans. And yet, The Science of Storytelling was the book that — for me, at least — laid down the groundwork. It showed me how stories work, how characters and plot shake hands, and how to untie the stubborn knots of feeling stuck. Until the day this groundwork crumbles, The Science of Storytelling will remain the best book on the craft I’ve ever read.