
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Storytelling
Aug 24, 2015
37:31
Have you ever wondered why storytelling is such an omnipresent theme of human life? Welcome to another guest segment of “The Writer s Brain” where I pick the brain of a neuroscientist about elements of great writing.
Research scientist Michael Grybko — of the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington — returned to the podcast to help me define storytelling from a scientific standpoint.
If you missed the first two installments of The Writer s Brain — on How Neuroscience Defines both Creativity and Empathy — you can find them in the show notes as well as on writerfiles.fm and iTunes.
In this file Michael Grybko and I discuss:
- Why Storytelling is the Default Mode of Human Communication
- How Empathy Makes Storytelling Such an Effective Tool
- Why Hollywood Continually Taps into ‘The Hero’s Journey’
- How Blueprints Help Writers Connect with Their Audience
- Why Reading Fiction Makes Us More Empathetic
- Writers’ Addiction to Stories (Especially the Dark Ones)
- Where Humanity Would Be Without Storytelling
The Show Notes
- How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Creativity
- How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Empathy
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)
- Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee
- “Reading literary fiction improves empathy, study finds” from The Guardian
- The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
- Kelton Reid on Twitter
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