The Nature and Paradoxes of Story: An Exploratory Essay
The Nature and Paradoxes of Story: An Exploratory Essay

Summary/Abstract: What 'stories' are is ultimately determined by how those stories are experienced by individual readers. This essay considers key aspects of 'story' as experienced by those who 'consume' them, as well as by those who create them. The author underscores that story is predominantly a solitary experience; that good stories create a sense of flow which readers enjoy and do not want to end; that stories are experienced as 'real' as long as we are 'under their spell'; that stories typically reflect the temporary dominance of the right cerebral hemisphere over the left, creating an 'altered state of consciousness' in the reader, listener, or viewer; that stories communicate metaphorically, through unconscious projection of the reader's self into the story's characters, and hence do not lend themselves to analysis and abstraction – the tools of the left cerebral hemisphere. Stories cannot be 'taught,' only 'experienced.'

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