Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence (18 page)

WAIT
,
I HEAR YOU SAYING
. Some people think in the abstract. Scientists, mathematicians, braniacs like Albert Einstein, for instance. He didn’t arrive at things like E = mc
²
by channeling Jane Austen. No, he came up with it after remembering how, as a child, he’d imagined riding through space on a beam of light. And relativity theory? By imagining what it would be like to plummet down an elevator shaft, then take a coin out of his pocket and try to drop it—without, I’m assuming, passing out or throwing up first. Here’s how Einstein explained his own mental process: “My particular ability does not lie in mathematical calculation, but rather in visualizing effects, possibilities, and consequences.”
¹

Sounds exactly like a story to me. And the key word here is
visualizing
. If we can’t see it, we can’t feel it. “Images drive the emotions as well as the intellect,” says Steven Pinker, who goes on to call images “thumpingly concrete.”
²

Abstract concepts, generalities, and conceptual notions have a hard time engaging us. Because we can’t see them, feel them, or otherwise experience them, we have to focus on them really, really hard,
consciously
—and even then our brain is not happy about it. We tend to find abstract concepts thumpingly boring. Michael Gazzaniga puts it this way: “Although attention may be present, it may not be enough for a stimulus to make it to consciousness. You are reading an article about string theory, your eyes are focused, you are mouthing the words to yourself, and none of it is making it to your conscious brain, and maybe it never will.”
³

Story, on the other hand, takes mind-numbing generalities and makes them specific so we can try them on for size. Remember, we’re hardwired to instantly evaluate everything in life on the basis of
is it safe or not?
Thus the whole point of a story is to translate the general into a specific, so we can see what it really means, just in case we ever come face to face with it in a dark alley.

And the only way we can see it, is if we can, well,
see
it. As Antonio Damasio says, “The entire fabric of a conscious mind is created from the same cloth—
images
.”
⁴
Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran agrees: “Humans excel at visual imagery. Our brains evolved this ability to create an internal mental picture or model of the world in which we can rehearse forthcoming actions, without the risks or penalties of doing them in the real world.”
⁵
What this all boils down to is, as I’m inordinately fond of saying, the story is in the specifics.

Yet writers often tell entire stories in general, as if concepts alone are captivating or, worse, because they’ve fallen prey to the misconceived notion that it’s the reader’s job to fill in the specifics. That’s why in this chapter we’ll explore the difference between the specific and the general; why the specific often turns up missing; where writers often inadvertently drop the ball; and why giving
too many
details is just as bad as not giving enough. Finally, we’ll tackle the myth that sensory details inherently bring a story to life.

Quick, what do you feel after reading that sentence? My guess is, you feel a little confused by the question. Now imagine a wall of water coming straight toward a small boy, who clings desperately to his frantic mother. Trying to soothe him,
she whispers, “Don’t worry baby, I’m here, I won’t let you go.” She feels him relax in the moment of deafening calm just before the water rips him from her arms. The sound of his cry above the cacophony of destruction—trees ripped from the ground, houses smashed to splinters—will haunt her for the rest of her life. That, and his look of utter surprise as he was swept away.
I trusted you
, it seemed to say,
and you let me go
.

Now how do you feel? This time, the question is clear. Watching the flood claim that one little boy is far more gut-wrenching than hearing about six thousand anonymous people perishing in various floods, isn’t it? I’m not suggesting your heart doesn’t go out to all the flood victims and their families. But chances are, when you read that opening sentence, you didn’t feel much of anything.

Don’t worry. This isn’t a psychological test to reveal your deep-seated pathological tendencies; rather, it highlights how we humans process information. As counterintuitive as it may seem, even the most massive, horrendous event, when presented in general, doesn’t have much direct emotional impact, so it’s easy to sail right by it almost as if it wasn’t there. Why? Because we’d have to stop and
think
about it in order to “manually” do what a story would have done: make it specific enough to have an emotional impact. And why would you do that? As Damasio says, “Smart brains are also extremely lazy. Anytime they can do less instead of more, they will, a minimalist philosophy they follow religiously.”
⁶
Since your brain’s probably much more interested in thinking about something that matters, like why your spouse is late again tonight, it’s probably not going to work at envisioning—wait, what was that again? A terrible flood somewhere years ago? Especially because hey, there’s nothing you can do about it, and besides, it would just make you feel bad, and god knows you have enough on your plate with your knucklehead spouse, who your mother warned you about, but did you listen?
Huh?
Flood? You talking to me?

The point is, if I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention. Feeling
is a reaction; our feelings let us know what matters to us, and our thoughts have no choice but to follow.
⁷
Facts that don’t affect us—either directly or because we can’t imagine how the facts affect someone else—don’t matter to us. And that explains why one personalized story has infinitely more impact than an impersonal generalization, even though the scope of the generalization is a thousand times greater. In fact, it is only via a specific personalization that the point of a generalization is shot home. Otherwise, as Scarlett said, we can think about it tomorrow—which, given how much brain energy it takes to think about something that hasn’t grabbed us emotionally, usually translates to a week from never.

Feel first. Think second. That’s the magic of story. Story takes a general situation, idea, or premise and personifies it via the very specific. Story takes the horror of a huge, monstrous event—the Holocaust—and illustrates its effect through a single personal dilemma—
Sophie’s Choice
. Thus the massive, unwieldy, unbearable vastness of its otherwise incomprehensible inhumanity is filtered through its effect on one person, a mother who must decide which of her two beloved children to spare. And because we are in Sophie’s skin, we feel the ineffable magnitude of all of it: the Holocaust, the unspeakable cruelty, her ultimate decision. We are not just being
told
about its effect; we are experiencing it.

But to unearth the generalities that can undermine a story, we need to know what they look like. The answer is simple: a generic doesn’t look like anything at all, which is the point. A generic is a general idea, emotion, reaction, or event that does not refer to anything specific. For instance, telling us “Trevor had a great time,” without telling us what Trevor actually did, or what he considers to be a great time, is generic. Telling us, “Gertrude always wanted to start her own business,” without telling us what that business is, why it’s interesting to her, and why she hasn’t, in fact, started it already, is generic. Generic concepts
are crafty devils. They leap in front of your story and pull the blinds down, shutting the reader out. Here’s a specific example of how maddening generics can be when they sneak into a story and take hold: