Writing question: Why stories?

A question from Amy Butler in comments on a recent GITS post:

Scott, this touches on something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of weeks –

Why do we like stories at all? They are, practically, useless. Is it purely because they appeal to our emotional, sentimental side? What makes a story more effective than a list of instructions?

I was reading through your posts, catching up, and I almost got chills reading, “In the beginning was the Word.” Being a theologian and a scholar, what resources have you come up with that have explained our affection for storytelling? I think if I am going to whittle myself into a better writer, I have to understand our love of stories better.

Here was my off-the-cuff response:

Why stories? We could spend a lifetime discussing that subject I suppose and never come to any comprehensive conclusion. But it’s such a hugely important question, why don’t I do a blog post on it and see what the GITS community says.

Here are a couple of thoughts:

* By the time a college student graduates, s/he will have heard, read, or seen 10,000 stories.

* “Tell me a story.” Every parent has heard this God knows how many times from children.

* Speaking of children, I know this for a fact being the father of two sons: Stories are a safe place into which children can project themselves and experience any sort of feeling the story creates. If you want to know how it is we as human being somehow manage to contextualize a truly existential fact — that each of us is going to die — it is, I would argue, largely through the power of story. By the time a child reaches 6 years of age which is generally when they first have an authentic sense of permanence, they will have already heard hundreds of stories about animals, people, kingdoms, planets and other organic beings dying. The harsh reality of death gets demystified in a way by stories enabling us as individuals to incorporate that reality into our lives by the time we understand the permanence of dying.

Think on that: If a story has the power to enable us as human beings to make sense out of death, then story must be one of the most powerful interfaces that exists in human culture.

But I’m sure readers will come up with a zillion more ideas.

So there’s my frame for why stories: They are a critical tool in helping us make our way through life. But there are so many other reasons why we like stories, are drawn to them from the mundane to the magnificent.

Therefore I throw it out to the GITS community: Why do you like stories? Why are you drawn to stories? Why do you think people respond to stories? And how does any of that provide insight into what you do as a writer and why you write stories.

Big subject. Let’s kick it around and see what comes up in comments.

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