Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence (37 page)

BOOK: Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
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Back in 1999, Michael Arndt felt he’d paid his dues, having spent ten years in the movie business as a script reader and assistant. So, having accumulated a small nest egg in the process, he quit his job and hunkered down to write a screenplay. He wrote six stories and ditched each one. The seventh—which he wrote in three days—he had a good feeling about.
14
So he kept at it. For over a
hundred
drafts. His motto was
No point in doing something if you’re not going to do it right
. And he was determined to get it right.
15

Which is probably why, six years after he began writing it, he won the Oscar for best original screenplay for
Little Miss Sunshine
. Why? Because his allegiance wasn’t to himself, or to his first draft, or even to his ninety-ninth. It was to the story itself. And to us. A world full of strangers who he knew would never, ever give him the benefit of the doubt. So his story didn’t ask us to. All it required of us was that we sit back, relax, and give it our undivided attention.

With that kind of care and determination, imagine how far
your
story can go. You don’t need to be a genius, although you may well be one. What you do need is perseverance. The one thing that makes a person a writer is
writing
. Butt in chair. Every day. No excuses. Ever. As Jack London famously said, “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
16
Hemingway concurred: “Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”
17

It’s only then that the real story you’re telling slowly emerges. Here’s a secret: when you’ve tapped into what it is we’re wired to respond to in a story, what we’re hungry for from the very first sentence, it
is
your truth we hear. As neuroscientist David Eagleman says, “When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something larger than the sum.… The concept of emergent properties means that something new can be introduced that is not inherent in any of the parts.”
18

What emerges is your vision, seen through the eyes of your readers,
experienced
by your readers. So what are you waiting for? Write! Although they may not know it yet, your public is eager to find out what happens next.

- End -

 
INTRODUCTION
 

1.
M. Gazzaniga,
Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 220.

2.
J. Tooby and L. Cosmides, 2001. “Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction and the Arts,”
SubStance
30, no. 1 (2001): 6–27.

3.
Ibid.

4.
S. Pinker,
How the Mind Works
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997/2009), 539.

5.
M. Djikic, K. Oatley, S. Zoeterman, and J. B. Peterson, “On Being Moved by Art: How Reading Fiction Transforms the Self,”
Creativity Research Journal
21, no. 1 (2009): 24–29.

6.
Common quote based on J. L. Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” in
Ficciones
, trans. Emecé Editores (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 22.

7.
PhysOrg.com
, “Readers Build Vivid Mental Simulations of Narrative Situations, Brain Scans Suggest,” January 6, 2009,
http://www.physorg.com/print152210728.html
.

CHAPTER 1: HOW TO HOOK THE READER
 

1.
T. D. Wilson,
Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 24.

2.
R. Restak,
The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety Is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), 24.

3.
D. Eagleman,
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
(New York: Pantheon, 2011), 132.

4.
A. Damasio,
Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
(New York: Pantheon, 2010), 293.

5.
Ibid., 173.

6.
Ibid., 296.

7.
Pinker,
How the Mind Works
, 543 (see introduction, n. 4).

8.
B. Boyd,
On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 393.

9.
J. Lehrer,
How We Decide
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 38.

10.
R. Montague,
Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions
(New York: Plume, 2007), 111.

11.
C. Leavitt,
Girls in Trouble
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2005), 1.

12.
J. Irving, “Getting Started,” in
Writers on Writing
, ed. R. Pack and J. Parini (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991), 101.

13.
Restak,
Naked Brain
, 77.

14.
D. Devine, “Author’s Attack on Da Vinci Code Best-Seller Brown,”
WalesOnline.co.uk
, September 16, 2009,
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/09/16/author-s-astonishing-attack-on-da-vinci-code-best-seller-brown-91466-24700451
.

CHAPTER 2: HOW TO ZERO IN ON YOUR POINT
 

1.
M. Lindstrom,
Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
(New York: Broadway Books, 2010), 199.

2.
P. Simpson,
Stylistics
. London: Routledge, 2004), 115.

3.
Boyd,
On the Origin of Stories
, 134 (see ch. 1, n. 8).

4.
Wilson,
Strangers to Ourselves
, 28 (see ch. 1, n. 1).

5.
Lehrer,
How We Decide
, 37 (see ch. 1, n. 9).

6.
Boyd,
On the Origin of Stories
, 134.

7.
Damasio,
Self Comes to Mind
, 168 (see chap. 1, n. 4).

8.
R. Maxwell and R. Dickman,
The Elements of Persuasion: Use Storytelling to Pitch Better, Sell Faster & Win More Business
(New York: HarperBusiness, 2007), 4.

9.
Pinker,
How the Mind Works
, 539 (see introduction, n. 4).

10.
E. Strout,
Olive Kitteridge
(New York: Random House, 2008), 281.

11.
Ibid., 224.

12.
E. Waugh,
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh
, ed. by M. Amory (London: Phoenix, 1995), 574.

13.
M. Mitchell,
Gone with the Wind
(New York: Simon & Schuster Pocketbooks, 2008), 1453.

14.
W. Golding,
Lord of the Flies
(New York: Perigee Trade 2003), 304.

15.
“Gabriel (Jose) García Márquez,”
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center
. (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2007),
http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/chh/bio/marquez_g.htm
.

16.
Mitchell,
Gone with the Wind
, 1453.

CHAPTER 3: I’LL FEEL WHAT HE’s feeling
 

1.
Lehrer,
How We Decide
, 13 (see ch. 1, n. 9).

2.
A. Damasio,
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
(New York: Penguin, 1994), 34–50.

3.
Pinker,
How the Mind Works
, 373 (see introduction, n. 4).

4.
Gazzaniga,
Human
, 226 (see introduction, n. 1).

5.
Damasio,
Self Comes to Mind
, 254 (see ch. 1, n. 4).

6.
Gazzaniga,
Human
, 179.

7.
Wilson,
Strangers to Ourselves
, 38 (see ch. 1, n. 1).

8.
E. George,
Careless in Red
(New York: Harper, 2008), 94.

9.
A. Shreve,
The Pilot’s Wife
(New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1999), 1.

10.
E. Leonard,
Freaky Deaky
(New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2005), 117.

11.
George,
Careless in Red
, 99.

12.
Restak,
Naked Brain
, 65 (see ch. 1, n. 2).

13.
Pinker,
How the Mind Works
, 421.

14.
J. W. Goethe, “The Poet’s Year,” in
Half-Hours with the Best Authors
, vol. IV, ed. C. Knight (New York: John Wiley, 1853), 355.

15.
Gazzaniga,
Human
, 190.

16.
C. Heath and D. Heath,
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
(New York: Random House, 2007), 20.

17.
Common quotation based on M. Twain,
Following the Equator
(Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1898), 156.

18.
W. Grimes, “Donald Windham, 89, New York Memoirist (Obituary),”
New York Times
, June 4, 2010.

19.
J. Franzen, Life and Letters, “Mr. Difficult,”
New Yorker
, September 30, 2002, 100.

CHAPTER 4: WHAT DOES YOUR PROTAGONIST
REALLY
WANT?
 

1.
Pinker,
How the Mind Works
, 188 (see introduction, n. 4).

2.
M. Iacoboni,
Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), 34.

3.
Gazzaniga,
Human
, 179 (see introduction, n. 1).

4.
Boyd,
On the Origin of Stories
, 143 (see ch. 1, n. 8).

5.
PhysOrg.com
, “Readers Build Vivid Mental Simulations” (see introduction, n. 7).

6.
Pinker,
How the Mind Works
, 61.

7.
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower
, 1957 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, Federal Register Division, 1958).

8.
J. Barnes,
Flaubert’s Parrot
(New York: Vintage, 1990), 168.

9.
K. Oatley, “A Feeling for Fiction,”
Greater Good
, The Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley, Fall/Winter 2005–6,
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/a_feeling_for_fiction
.

10.
M. Proust,
Remembrance of Things Past
, trans. C. K. Scott-Montcrieff (New York: Random House, 1934), 559.

11.
J. Nash,
The Threadbare Heart
(New York: Berkley Trade, 2010),

CHAPTER 5: DIGGING UP YOUR PROTAGONIST’S INNER ISSUE
 

1.
Wilson,
Strangers to Ourselves
, 31 (see ch. 1, n. 1).

2.
Gazzaniga,
Human
, 272 (see introduction, n. 1).

3.
K. Schulz,
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
(New York: ecco, 2010), 109.

4.
Damasio,
Self Comes to Mind
, 211 (see ch. 1, n. 4).

5.
T. S. Eliot,
Four Quartets
(Boston: Mariner Books, 1968), 59.

6.
B. Forward, “Beast Wars, Part 1,”
Transformers: Beast Wars
, season 1, episode 1, directed by I. Pearson, aired September 16, 1996.

7.
G. Plimpton, “Interview with Robert Frost,” in
Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews
, 2nd series (New York: Viking, 1965), 32.

8.
T. Brick, “Keep the Pots Boiling: Robert B. Parker Spills the Beans on Spenser,”
Bostonia
, Spring 2005.

9.
K. A. Porter, interview by B. T. Davis,
The Paris Review
29 (Winter-Spring 1963).

10.
J. K. Rowling, interview by Diane Rehm,
The Diane Rehm Show
, WAMU Radio Washington, DC, transcript by Jimmi Thøgersen, October 20, 1999,
http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1299-wamu-rehm.htm
.

11.
J. K. Rowling, interview by C. Lydon,
The Connection
(WBUR Radio), transcript courtesy
The Hogwarts Library
, October 12, 1999,
http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/1099-connectiontransc2.htm
; J. K. Rowling, interview, Scholastic, transcript, February 3, 2000,
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/interview-j-k-rowling
.

12.
Gazzaniga,
Human
, 190.

13.
Ibid., 274.

CHAPTER 6: THE STORY IS IN THE SPECIFICS
BOOK: Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
13.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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