Both veteran and budding storytellers will learn a great deal from Storr’s pages, which themselves add up to a meaty yarn.
British novelist and science journalist Storr (Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us, 2018, etc.) peels back the neuroscience of what makes stories work.
A good story—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, say, or Dracula—operates on rules that its makers may have internalized but may not be able to enumerate. One is that the creator of a story builds a model world that readers then colonize and rebuild. In one study, subjects “watched” stories as they were being related by casting their eyes upward when events occurred above the line of horizon, and “when they heard ‘downward’ stories, that’s where their eyes went too.” Tracking saccades when stories land on a person is one thing, but there are fundamental observations that storytellers have long known: Character is more important than plot, for instance, and, as Storr puts it, “every story you’ll ever hear amounts to ‘something changed.’ ” A skillful storyteller will then build the promise of change close to the beginning, as with E.B. White’s opening to Charlotte’s Web: “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” Humans being self-centered if social critters, another fundamental element is that we all like to be the hero of our own epics—our lives, that is—which helps explain our attraction to other such heroes and the journeys they face, which involve at least a couple of failures before getting it right. Moreover, we like the vicarious experience of chaos while yearning for stability in our own lives, which explains the value of a good tale full of reversals. As for that old rule about avoiding clichés like the plague? It turns out that the brain doesn’t fire quite so blazingly when it hears a familiar phrase as when it hears a fresh new metaphor, reason enough for the careful writer to try to find a new way of turning a phrase.
Both veteran and budding storytellers will learn a great deal from Storr’s pages, which themselves add up to a meaty yarn.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4303-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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