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user-inactivated  ·  4065 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains

Does this mean some stories are "better" than others, objectively? Can you measure a story's value by how much of the brain it affects, or by the amount of empathy listeners feel toward its characters?

I'm wondering this because there are many storylines that are proven to "work" -- think hero's journey, the classic fantasy trope in everything from the Odyssey to the Lion King -- and some types of story are much more likely to draw emotion than others (and therefore be more memorable and impressionable).

EDIT: for instance, have some of the greatest storytellers of all time found the "right" way to our brains in the same way that the processed food giants began to about thirty years ago? I think it's very cool that storytelling can be "solved."