Human Storytelling Guidelines

Inspired by Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, the Human Storytelling Guidelines seeks to derive story design principles from neuroscience, specifically constructionism and relational realism. WIP. First read “7 1/2 Lessons about the Brain” by Prof. Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Brain Basics

1. Brains didn’t evolve to think.
2. One of your brain’s most important jobs is to regulate your body.
3. Brains predict, not react.
4. Brains use concepts to model the world.
5. Brains use the concepts they have, called priors, to construct their reality.
   1. Therefore, the audience is an active user, not a passive viewer. They bring their priors, predictions, and affect to your story.
   2. Therefore, storytellers are experience engineers. We scaffold users’ brains with priors about the world.
   3. Therefore, don’t hide important things. Squid Game is about capitalism killing everyone so a few live, but people miss the point.
6. Brains have a nature that requires nurture.
7. Emotions are constructed, not cartoons.
8. A brain is inseparable from its body.
9. Variation is the norm.
10. Relationships between things, not essences of things.

Derived Fundamentals

1. The audience is an active user, not a passive viewer. They bring their priors, predictions, and affect to your story.
2. Storytellers are experience engineers. We scaffold users’ brains with priors about the world.
3. Your story may become someone’s reality. Should I pee on a jellyfish sting? Do all Chinese know kungfu? If a user has no other experience, the reality you created is all they know.
4. Stories are consequential. Religious stories inspire the lives of billions. “Frozen” inspires children to dress & act like Elsa. The Godfather inspired mobsters to behave more honorably. James Bond inspires the dress & behavior of young men. What’s your favorite film?
5. Stories are consequential. Jaws inspires people to be afraid of sharks. The Dark Knight inspires Joker wannabes and copycat crimes. Taxi Driver inspired John Hinckley Jr. to assassinate Ronald Regan. What’s your favorite film?

Duty of Care

1. Civilization is a fragile, interdependent edifice of professionals who provide & protect non-professionals. 1.Storytellers scaffold people’s reality. With this great power comes great responsibility, legally called duty of care..

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” Mark Twain

1. Realistic depictions
2. Realistic consequences of actions
3. Dispel stereotypes, not enforce
4. Responsible craftsmanship. Shelley Duvall by Stanely Kubrick bat scene took 127 takes. “Going through day after day of excruciating work was almost unbearable,” said Duvall to Rolling Stone in 1980. “Jack Nicholson’s character had to be crazy and angry all the time. And in my character, I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week.” How Playing The Joker Changed Heath Ledger For Good.

Teaching Methods

1. Synthetic.Data + Syn.Results, then Real.Results. Helps brains see possibilities, priming for understanding.”If this, therefore this. If this, therefore this. But this…”
2. Structured variation.

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