How Neuroscientist Michael Grybko Defines Storytelling

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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