engaging stories... ...told economically

A very long time ago we humans sat around our campfires. When it got dark there wasn't a lot to do beyond going to bed, and that was not the relaxing thing it usually is today. There was no writing so there was nothing to read, there was no radio so nothing to listen to and no TV so there was little to deaden the mind after a long day's subsistence living. And back then, a rock concert was a very different sort of a thing from today.

We complained about the boredom. We complained about the dark. We complained about the never ending work just to hang on to what Hobbes called: our mean, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short lives. We shared the joy and misery of our existence and then forgot about it. But in the flickering embers of deep pre-history something extraordinary began to happen.

Any communication is an attempt to impact the minds of others. "Duck!" is a good and well-intentioned example. "Stick 'em up!" is often more self serving on behalf of the utterer. "You're under arrest!" is the precursor to the bitter consequences of some badly thought out entrepreneurial whimsy.

Each utterance is an argument for a course of behaviour. My first example must be immediately compelling to be of any use. Otherwise, if the response is not what we desire then further weight can be given to the argument: "I'll blow your head off!" and maybe "We have you surrounded!"

All of this works well in the moment. But if you want to capture a sophisticated argument and persuade audiences long beyond the reach of your years, then you need more than these simple utterances. Humans make decisions about things emotionally and then rationalise them. So, the argument needs to be compelling in both emotional and logical ways. And further, since this is likely to be a fairly long argument, it will need to be interesting or it will fall on places where ears used to be.

The extraordinary thing I mentioned earlier, fanned from the flames of confusion, was story. Stories were, initially, easily remembered and probably rhyming pieces of knowledge. They had the distinction of preserving culture, philosophy, religion, science, maps and probably did some entertaining too. In this way we began to realise that there was increasing evidence that we don't learn from history.

Early stories were probably much like the rather beautiful creation stories that still survive in aboriginal cultures. They remained part of a verbal tradition until more reliably preserved by the invention of writing. Gutenberg and his press further improved the record and town criers gave way to journalists who are slowly giving way to game show panels.

I think that it's worth considering the way story works within different media. Then we won't make the mistake of thinking that someone made a film of a book.  We'll realise that actually what happened is that someone made a film of a story, about which somebody once wrote a book. It is the story which forms the foundation and not the medium of publication.