During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, “Hell is Story-Friendly” in your notebook. Has your understanding of Gottschall’s writing style changed as you have read more of his book? How does he relate now to Medina?
Before our next class, type up your summary, run spell/grammar check, save it, and copy-and-paste your work into a comment to this blog post.
According to Jonathan Gottschall , stories are more fun to read or listen to when there are a lot of drama in it. When you tell a story to someone, you want them to feel the suspense and also you want them to have questions that relate to the drama. For example: was the little girl kidnapped? By who? This is what makes the readers want to read more about that story. For writers, this is how they get a bigger audience. That is also why people prefer reading fiction books than non-fiction books. Most of the time, when reading a non-fiction book, people tend to get bored easily. When reading a Fiction books, we allow our brain to predict the future of a story even though our predictions are not always right. That is the interesting part about it
( the drama).
This chapter explained how people like stories with conflict and problems. There is no suspense or interest when the story is simple, instead we crave for those that have a problem that the protagonist must strive to overcome. If there is no problem in the story, then there is no plot, and the character will not be able to grow. The term hyperrealism refers to art, and how it can tell a story of its own. From one painting, people can draw many different stories from it, each having similar and different points.
There isn’t any fun in stories that do not have any problems or conflicts between or for the characters. We always want some drama and that’s what stories are! A problem they face that have to be solved. Have you ever read any story that doesn’t have any problem? Probably not and that’s how our lives are as well. We always want to read something that we can relate to. Some of the problems we are facing in our loves we want to read about it if someone else also faced the same thing and how they overcame it? The drama and suspense inside those stories makes us think more, of all the possible solutions that the characters can have to solve the problem. It makes us think outside the box. And the problem is the main thing that keeps the reader connected to the stories from my point of view.
“Hell is Story Friendly”,when I first glanced at this title I pre judged it, as some off the wall,cocky mammy devil involvement crap. I was totally surprised that I liked and found it had a lot truth in it. The gist of the chapter is explaining how we as humans love drama, darkness,and mayhem when it is fiction. I agree wholeheartedly with ,due to fact that every reality show on television is saturated with violence. It does not matter if it is a show about baking cookies or everyone is raising money for their favorite charity. John Gottschall raises this point through examples of different short essays and scientific proofs.
The best kind of story is what makes you get your attention. In the chapter “Hell is story friendly” explains readers love to hear drama, action, or any “hell” related subjects. It grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to read more. The relation it brings out by the author relating to the audience. One of many reasons why the harry potter series was a hit is because of the relation to the readers. The audience was pointed to mainly kids who are in grade 6-12 and as every year pass they would relate their experiences to the experience the characters faced in the book. Everyone wants to hear a good story, and a good story consist of problems between 2 characters which is called “drama”. Without drama there’s no story. Gottshall’s writing has been much clearer, due to the simplicity in his wordings, and how consistent he tells the meaning behind each chapter.
When I finished this chapter, I could bit understand the difference between best seller book and the book one does not. People loves stories when it contains more thrill and dramas. I always thought the conclusion of the story is more important than its process. However, Gottschall point out that people practicing, simulating, challenge the limit through the fiction, and people enjoy it. Often people parallel main character with themselves. That makes people more into stories and make them practice harsh challenges in the fiction.
In Jonathan Gottschall’s, “The Storytelling Animal, Hell is Story-friendly,” Gottschall talks about how society relates to chaos and dramatic story lines. Writers have tried to veer away from the problem structure in fiction. Hyperrealism was a way in which writers wrote stories on exactly how practical we live life. Hyperrealism was considered boring because it didn’t involve a “hellish” story line. Stories with misfortune have a pattern of heroes encountering trouble and their struggles in solving the problem are far more interesting that an uneventful day at work.
Neurologists suggest we connect with fiction on neuronal level. Mirror neurons in our brain puts us in the same feelings of the character we are reading about or watching on TV. We place ourselves in the character’s situation and mirror their reaction to current events, whether sad, joyous or funny. Gottschall believes we may find the riddle of fiction between the gap of what is desired in life and fiction. Gottschall’s writing style has gotten easier to understand in this chapter. Gottschall’s and Medina’s transitioning style are similar by using sub headers.
Humans have knowledge, that is a given. People have to share information to survive. Stories are told between people through various means, whether it be a story, conversation, or other writing work. Fiction books and sometimes books in general tell a story; the author wants the reader to paint a picture in his head, to visualize what is being said. A story could be an outright lie, it is up to the reader to decide whether the story is true or not. The author will likely leave some evidence to justify what is being said in their work. The storyteller might try to use other forms of evidence, including but not limited to illustration. Take for example a story mentioned in the story about a young child in a store who wants a treat; the parent or guardian will decide whether or not to get the child the treat based on the child’s evidence and their own intuition. The child’s evidences includes emotions; the child may scream and cry to persuade the parent to do what the child wants. The child may misbehave and use social cues to further enhance their standing on the issue of whether they have been “good” or not. Fiction itself is a paradox. People will believe many things by default because many people do not take the time to decipher the text and decide it’s truth value. Part of me wants to say to the person who believes a lie is hello, where is your lie (bullshit) detector? People are too easy to fool. People need to stop being like sheep and questioning most if not everything they hear. By hear, I mean observe using any of the five senses.
In the reading “Hell is Story-Friendly” by Jonathan Gottschall he talks about fiction stories which are not real but they portray real events. Gottschall states that Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction is adamant on the point: “Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction”. This simply means that without some kind of drama or conflict readers are not going to be fully engaged in the fiction stories. The drama or conflict in a story always keeps them wondering and imagining what is going to happen next in the story and keeps them reading to find out.