Never Tell Me The Odds

Storyteller Evolved:

The ways we tell stories have been evolving since the first time someone said "once upon a time" or whatever the equivalent of the phrase was at the dawn of our civilization.

New ways to tell stories were created throughout history as part of a desire to communicate on a more immediate emotional level. All storytelling forms that developed followed a similar pattern in their establishment. Each started in the shadow of an existing one, then itself rose to proliferate and dominate as a form, and then it made room for yet another storytelling form. From campfire tales in the cave to charcoal pictures on its walls. From poetry to the theater, and from the novel to comic books... And to movies -- which are now here to stay as the dominant form, for a while...

The evolutionary progress of storytelling seems to be of a cyclic nature. A movement from words to images and back. Words and images are the tools of the storyteller. Both have the same purpose, which is to relay information. But they do so in different ways.

When you hear or read a word, your brain immediately deciphers its meaning (granted it is a familiar one) when it matches it to an image of some sort from your memory. That is what language is: specific signs for specific actions or things that exist in the world. Because we first learn by seeing, we know what a thing or an action is, as we have an image of it in our mind (even if we actually have never seen but only heard about something we will construct our own mental visualization of it), but we don't have a natural way to communicate that image, so we assign a specific word for it. That word is our code for what the thing or action is.

After encountering the word in writing or conversation our brain retranslates it back to its corresponding image and we get the picture, so to speak. Now, this process is automatic for us to such an extent that we don't pay any attention to it. We are so used to it in our fluency as communicators that we can process thousands of words in intricate sequences and never think of the actual work our brains do.

On the other hand, images communicate information in a more direct way. Unlike with words, when we see a familiar image we don't need to translate it in our brains. We already know what the image is as we have a ready match of it in our memory. The process I'm talking about here is so incredibly fast, that it is difficult to comprehend. The time we gain by not having to translate images as we do with words is only a fraction, but the process of image recognition is already a step ahead of the process of word recognition by skipping a whole level of encoding and decoding. It is a more streamlined relay of information, which naturally makes it the faster, easier, simpler and more effective way to communicate... That explains one common quality among great storytellers, which is that they communicate visually. Capable writers and filmmakers use words and images that dwell in the collective consciousness to create and brand unique and iconic visuals in our minds.

Images also possess the quality of being universally recognizable, whereas words of a specific language are confined within the constraints of that particular language and its users only. At this point of human history there is yet to come into an existence a universal language. Images are universal, words are not. Or, as Umberto Eco put it: "For images are the literature of the layman".

Because they carry certain meanings and associations, both words and images trigger within us various emotional responses. For every word and image the brain processes it releases a specific emotional response through the central nervous system. Some words and images trigger strong emotional responses, others almost imperceptible ones. Emotional responses may vary between the extreme positive or extreme negative. So a specific sequence of words or images when processed by our brains will trigger a specific sequence of emotional responses, which may alternate in being strong or weak, and positive or negative.

Storytellers are natural button pushers, the focus of their craft being to manipulate emotional responses in others. A good storyteller has a special vision. He or she is able to see the human emotional “control panel” with all its ware. This "control panel" is visible only to the most perceptive storyteller. In a sense, only the storyteller who is truly aware of the human emotional makeup can reach us on a deeper level.

On a technical level a story is just a sequence of words or images, or both. What makes it involving is the clarity of its internal logic and its ability to connect to us on an emotional level. Gifted storytellers are experts at story logic and at pushing the right emotional buttons. They have a good idea about the kind of emotional responses a sequence of words or images, or both, will produce in our minds.

When broken down to its basics a story will be translated by our brains to a series of various emotional responses. If we record those responses for a particular story the sequence could look something like this: Awe. Surprise! Suspense. Fear. Funny. Suspense. Fear. Fear. Funny. Relief... And so on to the end. Did you recognize this story? No? Why, it’s the opening of the original “Star Wars” movie! A rebel ship is chased and captured by an Imperial star cruiser. Two anxious and comic droids try to save themselves in the ensuing chaos of the battle. The rebels are overcome. The intimidating figure of Darth Vader makes an entrance. Princess Lea is captured. Vader’s might is revealed during an interrogation scene. More comic relief with the two droids on the run follows, as they escape in a pod... Or something like that.

I guess the essential question here could be where is storytelling headed? What will be the next step in its evolutionary process? This is certainly a question that has been open to speculation and it remains so. If we follow the pattern of the storytelling evolutionary process, which has been to streamline its techniques and search for ever more emotionally direct ways of communication, then we might speculate that one day we will experience stories purely on an emotional level.

What if someone invented a storytelling technology with which it would be possible to push our emotional buttons by connecting directly to our central nervous systems? The storyteller would be able to compose an emotional sequence and play the audience like a piano. One composition will make us laugh, another cry, yet another will terrify us, and yet another awe us, and so on. Storytellers would be able to write entire unique sequences of emotional symphonies that would be beamed directly into our central nervous systems. In a sense, the audience has always been an "instrument" in the hands of a capable storyteller. But could we be heading towards a time when we would willingly assume the passive role of being the storyteller's indiscriminate "instruments"?

Or, perhaps the next evolutionary step in storytelling will happen on a more interactive level between storyteller and audience? In such a scenario, would the audience have a say in determining the denouement of the story being told? And if the audience becomes a participant in the story decision making process and transforms into a storyteller, would that happen on a collective or on an individual level? Or, perhaps that could also be an available option? Oh, the possibilities that await the storytellers of the world.