Storytelling has power

There are stories, that have a power that goes beyond borders and generations, a mystical power that resonates with our very essence

Ever since I learned how to do it, I have been an avid reader. Storytelling has power. A good novel can heal you or mirror your thoughts and feelings. A book can free your imagination, keeps you company when you are alone, makes you live different lives. This is probably the reason why I started to write. Storytelling has power and is at the core of our humanity, or, as they say, at the core of our success as a species. We don’t think often about this power and the influence it exerts on our daily life. Let me take you by the hand and walk you on the pathway of stories and how they impact our growth collectively and as individuals.

I will start this walk from a time far, far away, at the very dawn of humanity. When I was young, my history books where packed with images like this one:

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I suppose our ancestors were portrayed walking to underline their evolution. The ape somehow turned into a small Homo Habilis, who after some millennia became Homo Erectus, and so on. A chain of evolution from monkey to man.

However, recent discoveries show that, besides from the findings of many other Homo species, from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home to several human species, all living at the same time. No more catwalks on history books then, more a group of hairy guys playing soccer in the same field in a game for supremacy.

So how did it happen that over the last 10,000 years we are the only Homos left? One of the reasons for this could be the power of storytelling. I read about this theory in the fascinating book of Yuval Noah Harari “Sapiens, a brief history of humankind” and, as a storyteller myself, it immediately resonated for me.

Sociological research has shown that the maximum “natural” group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. The Microsoft Viva email I receive from my OP monthly, which provides me with statistics about my online activity: the number of emails I received and written and how many meetings I had (my personal Big Brother), confirms this rule. I work in an organization of around 220 people, but I interact with only little more than 100 (I try to avoid gossiping, though). Month by month, my 100 buddies can vary but they never exceed that number. So how did Homo Sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, to eventually found cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires of hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.

If we think about myths, we most probably immediately relate them to the animal-headed gods painted on the walls of the pyramids or to ancient Greece telenovela-like, scarcely clad, Mount Olympus dwellers, or to fairytales and folklore. Myths are so hardwired in our everyday life that we don’t even recognize them when we bump into one. Money is one of these myths. We have been telling ourselves for so long that a certain amount of gold or a banknote is worth something that we don’t think any more how weird it can be. Let me give you an example: imagine that I want to sell my small apartment in Rome, worth about €380,000. It is an experience of our everyday life. But try look at it from the outside, with candid eyes. Think about someone coming to me with a wheelbarrow full of 3,800 small pieces of paper that can be damaged by fire or water, telling me he would like to exchange them for my stone-built, 130 years old, cabled, piped and serviced home: is this person on a bad trip? We are so accustomed to the narrative of money that we think it is a good deal even when, instead of the pieces of paper, this person does a wiring on a virtual banking platform: we lose the house while getting something we cannot even touch. Amazing. This is the true power of storytelling: we built international organizations, countries, companies on it, including all kinds of untouchable abstract concepts we are ready to die, work or pay taxes for.

I’m a fantasy writer. I read the “Lord of the rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien in the summer of 1983. I was eight and my mind was blown away by this huge, 1251 page-long tome and I got hooked by the genre ever since. I loved the atmosphere that Tolkien created in his books and I tried to find it in other authors who, starting from the 60s and inspired by his work, wrote other stories with elves, dwarves and the like. But it was only much later that I realized what appealed to me in these stories.

Let’s take a step back. What is fantasy fiction? I asked Wikipedia and I got this answer: fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any location, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at children as much as at adults. Fantasy is a subgenre of speculative fiction and it distinguishes itself from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these genres overlap. Historically, most works of fantasy were produced in writing. However, since the 60s, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programmes, graphic novels, video games, music and art. Many fantasy novels originally written for children and adolescents also attract an adult audience. Examples include Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

When I was a kid, fantasy had a very small and nerdish fanbase, especially in Italy. The Lord of the Rings movies released by Peter Jackson at the beginning of this century turned fantasy into a mainstream phenomenon. Today, if you like fantasy, you can have all kinds of subgenres, many authors and a plethora of titles to choose from. I don’t like everything that came out of this golden age of fantasy literature, because I think fantasy works best when it does its main job: when it weaves the myth of the hero’s journey.

Let’s sit down a while to interiorize this concept: most fantasy books, movies and their derivatives tell exactly the same story. I’m not joking. They are in fact based on a tale that humanity has been telling for millennia. It is a tale of personal growth that crosscuts the mythology of the whole world. The first scientific research on this myth was done in 1949, by Joseph Campbell an American historian of religions, who published this study under the title “The hero with a thousand faces”.

From Osiris to Jason to Ulysses to King Arthur, every hero of mankind has walked a similar path. This tale has proved so resilient and strong that it is used to build stories even nowadays. 

Let’s deep dive into these common features of the hero’s journey myth, that, as invisible threads, link the imagination of mankind through history and latitude. First of all, the hero has a father issue: whether he is an orphan or the father has somehow abandoned him. He lives a quiet and ordinary life until he receives a calling to adventure and begins his journey. This calling arrives in many guises, but it is usually embodied by a mentor, a sage who will be his guide through the journey. Often, this calling is represented or accompanied by the delivery to the hero of an object – a ring, a sword, a magic wand – that represents the supernatural irrupting in his everyday life and that will play a big role in the story. The hero resists the call, he doesn to lose his security, doesn’t want to leave his beloved ones, but usually something happens that forces him to start the journey and step into the unknown, the supernatural. The journey will change him and his life. He will meet friends and foes. He will usually have at his side a trickster who will pretend to be a friend. He will almost die, usually walking in the dark, in some underground scary place. In the end he will prevail: his quest will end and the hero will bring a new era of peace and prosperity to the world.

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Does this sound familiar? Let’s play the tune on the Lord of the Ring plot: Frodo, an orphan hobbit, receives a ring form the uncle, a wizard. The sage gandalf tells him that the ring has to be destroyed. He leaves home when some black knights start to scour his shire. He leaves with his best friends, will find a fellowship and many enemies. A trickster (Gollum) will become his guide. He will walk through the darkness of Mordor. He will almost die, bitten by a giant spider. He will finally destroy the ring and bring a new era to the world.

And this narrative scheme works also for movies. I will give you the name of a guy who was recently inspired by Campbell analysis of mythology and created an incredible story: George Lucas. Luke Skywalker, his hero, perfectly follows the journey. He is an orphan, called to adventure by a video. He meets his Mentor, Ben Kenobi who gives him a laser sword. Imperial troops destroy his farm and kill his family. He leaves for his journey helped by a trickster (Han Solo) who will become his friend. He travels, trains with Kenobi, almost dies in a garbage press. Faces danger in the Death Star, escapes and finally with the help of his new powers given by the Force, destroys the Death Star and gives a New Hope (the title of the movie) to the Galaxy. Lucas bets on Campbell, the public loves the story, he has a blockbuster in his hands and tries to replicate it as many times as he can.

And the Hero’s journey becomes one of the most used narrative tools of Hollywood. Most of the Disney’s movies follows it, The Matrix follows it, of course Harry Potter follows it to the letter. While we, as readers or movie watchers, we crave for the same story on and on. Why?

Because some stories have a power that goes beyond borders and generations, a mystical power that resonates with our very essence. Because we all are heroes facing our trial to achieve a deeper meaning in our life.

That’s why I decided to write fantasy books. Because I want to tell that tale. A tale of wonder, danger and death but most of all a tale of hope. A tale can change reality, it can shape it. Storytelling has power.