The more you think about it, the stranger it seems. But, we still all love to hear a good story.

Why do we enjoy hearing made up stuff so much?

Edit:
Oh man. I just noticed by extremely poor grammar in the title. Please ignore the apostraphe.

story's plot?

story's character?

Assuming you meant stories...

The fact is that the human brain is capable of processing much more information than we need to survive on a moment to moment basis. In an effort to keep us awake, we find a way to fill the unused portions of our thoughts with just about anything.

For some people this is fiction, for others its history and for other video games and for too many, its reality TV or CSI.

Generally we prefer fiction because:

1) The real news is not all happy endings. (no sympathetic endorphins)

2) If fiction has an unhappy ending, well, its only fiction.

Why storytelling? Well, why painting, why art, why music, why crafts, why dancing (the latter being unnecessary movement)?

I think ot stems from several drives. A large part of that is an inate curiosity that drives us to explore even that which does not exist. Humans are also endowed with imagination and the drive to create, as well as the ability to appreciate that gift in others.

I used to assign characters to assorted inanimate objects and act out little action adventure plays with them. Books in my then-meager collection...cards in a deck...I suppose I could have done it with dolls but I didn't have dolls, this being some years before the action figure idea caught on.

As we grow older, its how we remember our family and friends and important benchmarks in our life. I read John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men every so often because it is a good story but also because of the memories it envokes. When I reach a stopping point, I always feel like a high school freshman again. I think back to my days in Jesuit High School in New Orleans. I remember my friends, the stupid crap we did and got away with and the stupid crap we did and didn't get away with.

Some books remind me of my days in the army or a particular case I worked as a police officer.

Stories are also how we relate our day to day happenings to people around us. When we make a presentation to our supervisors or clients we make a presentation in somewhat of a story form, usually we start with a joke to loosen everyone or we search for the quick hook to get them interested in what we have to say.

When we are making conversation at the water cooler at work we tell our friends about a particular event that happened in our life. Sometimes, it's a friend's account of an incident that suddenly reminds us of a similar incident that we may have forgotten about or haven't thought about in a long time.

When we sit down for supper with our family, we recount the day's events. Without stories, man has no recollection of his past, existance in the present or direction for his future.

Peace,
Scott

Without delving too deeply into everything, the question is Why does it matter wether it is "real" or not? Paraphrasing Neil Gaiman Fiction is telling the truth which never happened. Because when it comes down to the nitty gritty don't we all tell truth as we believe it but didn't happen?

My use of the Internet is really an extension of my ability to read, and therefore in a somewhat limited fashion. Watching television has extended to taping (and within the last six months, "disking"), and that is kind of an extention of book collecting.

But so much of my life revolves around being into reading and watching TV. I can get within the "reality" of what's going on in front of me, whether in words or pictures---though I never lose sight of the fictional nature of it all. (Whether this is healthy for me or not I cannot say. I have reservations.)

I remember an exchange between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien on the subject of myths. (No, I don't remember where I saw it, or I'd dig it out of my library and quote it precisely. So the phrasing of what follows may be inexact.) Lewis argued that "myths are lies, even if they are lies breathed with silver." Tolkien argued that "no, myths are true."

If you take "fiction" for "myth," then "fiction" is something that's true. That's why it feels real.

I think we need stories in order to make sense of the world and of our lives.

Consider how we deal with our memories of what we've dreamed (if we remember, that is). Scientist have said that our dreams are actually jumbles of images with no rhyme or reason, but we tend to insist on imposing coherence on those jumbles by making them into stories.

I submit that without stories, we would have little or no coherence in our lives.

Therefore 'spell-bound' could mean 'story-bound' or enthralled by a story. And a 'spell book' is a book of stories or discourses.

In MY story, wizards keep journals and study the events of their lives and their observations for patterns and messages. A sort of life-long divination. A hunt for their one true tale. Some wizards discern patterns early, some not until they are old, some not at all. Others give up.

Some of the most powerful books are the journals left by other wizards, passed down from one to another through the generations. They are highly prized and studied with great care. Some wizardly lines are said to be unbroken commentaries back to the very first of all men.

Along the lines of Kathleen's post, the human mind likes to see patterns in things that are otherwise random, hence images of saints appearing in tortillas, or the canals on mars. We all do it, our minds like to close gaps and complete the circles.

Campbell uses comparative religion and mythology combined with Freudian and Jungian dream analysis to talk about the influence of the human imagination on our collective and individual lives. He asks intriguing questions about whether our biology dictates our need to tell stories, or our cultures. He also explains why Tolkien and Lewis were both correct in their discussion about the "truth" of myths

"But," said Lewis, "Myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver."

"No," said Tolkien, "they are not."

Carpenter continues, paraphrasing Tolkien's next line of argument:

"You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a 'tree' until someone gave it that name....By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth."

He goes onto say (I'd quote, but I don't know if I'm over 13 lines yet) that making stories, in a way, makes us a creator like God, and that by creating stories, we can reach back towards the perfection Man knew before the fall. This whole long conversation helped C.S. Lewis convert to Christianity -- Carpenter goes onto paraphrase Lewis: "You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand."

So, at least to Tolkien, and later to C.S. Lewis, myths were a way to express eternal truth and reach back towards God. In that sense, at least, stories are then more true that real life, which is, as many have noted, often without a lot of order or pattern, where sometimes things don't happen as they should [i.e. the good guys loosing].

As we read, we are the main character, and as such, his or her problems are our problems. We see an impossible situation, and we, as readers, must deal with it with the main character (and other secondary characters).

The nice thing about stories is that at the end, the problem is resolved. Even in a tragedy, some order must be resolved. As readers, we experience a stress response, which is relieved at the end.

The relaxing effect is twofold: not only do we essentially flex and then relax the parts of our brains that deal with stress, helping us relax, but we also take away from the story the message that our own problems also have resolutions. We get from the story that we can achieve order from the disorder in our lives.

Functions such as stress relief seems a side benefit, not the whole reason. We need to create, we need to explore. Storytelling helps us do both.

Oh well.