In an interview with the Creative Penn podcast, writer Lisa Cron talks about the importance of story, including what stories are really about and how we evolved to tell them.
Cron says that story predates written language and evolved as a survival tool. “We are wired to need to work with other people and to band together in order to figure out literally how to survive,” Cron says. “That’s where story comes in, because story is the thing that lets us step out of the present, so we can envision the future and think about what would we need to do in order to survive the next wolf pack attack or saber-toothed tiger attack, or how to bring food together. And that’s really what stories are about.”
Fast forward to today, and stories are still about surviving in the social world. “Story is never about what someone does, because what someone does on the surface, and the reasons we attribute to it, are almost always wrong,” Cron explains. “Stories are about why they’re doing it, and how they’re making sense of it, so that we can really understand the meaning of the action, and why they’re doing what they’re doing, and what it means to them. And that’s what allows us to empathize with them.”
