Narative Form: ONE SIZE DOESN'T

Fit All

Written by Peter Andringa

Designed by Korinne Hawk

Look just about anywhere in our culture, and you’ll see the word “story” everywhere. It’s obviously important to the worlds of film and literature, but it goes far beyond that. The atomic unit of news is the “story,” and “storytelling” is a buzzword on resumes across disciplines. The term is thrown around in pulpits around the country, from “your life’s story” to “God’s story.” Politicians and political consultants talk about their candidate’s “narrative,” and marketers promote a “brand story.” Even social media apps are getting in on the game, promoting short-form, 24-hour photo sharing as “stories.”

On one hand, the saturation of stories in our culture makes sense: oral stories about history, heroes, and villains have been a part of the human experience going back to the beginning of language. Neuroscience even seems to prove that our brains are wired for narratives1, using stories as a short cut to making memories. But is storytelling really the best way to interpret the world? Often, forcing facts to fit in a narrative forces us to tidy up a messy reality and ignore the complexities of life. When used well, stories expose us to new worlds. But when used poorly, stories obscure the world around us.

Statistician and writer

Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term “narrative fallacy” in his book, “The Black Swan,” to describe how humans tend to over-rely on that propensity for stories, collecting unrelated facts into a narrative that might not be accurate. The narrative fallacy can cause us to assume cause-and-effect when we hear something that makes a nice story, whether or not reality backs it up. This mental shortcut saves time and makes memory easier, but it’s not always accurate: stories risk oversimplifying the facts or leaving out context that doesn’t fit.

I first considered this overreliance on narrative in my own sphere of journalism, a field which worships the idea of a great story. We all want to tell a story our readers find interesting—but what if the facts on the ground don’t easily fit into a narrative format? Each story contains a thousand decisions: what to put in, what to leave out, what to highlight with the headline. There’s a constant battle between including every relevant detail and making a story easy to read—and that tension isn’t only true for writers, but also for every one of our daily lives.

A good narrative has to be somewhat linear to be coherent, but our day-to-day experiences are more like snippets of a thousand stories. Every good story has a protagonist, a villain, and some conflict between them—but politics, business, and interpersonal relationships are almost never about good versus evil. Stories also give us a sense of control over a chaotic world: horoscopes and conspiracy theories are popular because they make for good stories, explaining the parts of life that feel unpredictable and scary. This narrative instinct is particularly dangerous when we use a story to understand why other people are acting in a certain way. Much of the political, cultural, and social divides across the world come from misplaced narratives about what “the other side” wants — taking what should be reasonable disagreements and framing it as a battle of good versus evil. The black-and-white interpretation encouraged by the narrative format risks erasing the infinite shades of gray that exist in our world.

Similarly, narrative fallacies affect religion—an institution that’s literally founded on shared set of stories. The secret is this: you can point to a “story” in the Bible (or any other religious text) to justify almost any theological or moral belief. Talking about an overarching “story of humanity” or “God’s story for the universe” requires simplifying an infinite God into a simple narrative. We often use stories to attribute cause-and-effect to God’s behavior

— but why should humans presume that any single story can definitively explain what God thinks?

I don’t have an answer for how to prevent this over-use of stories in your (or even my own) life. It requires a constant battle of checking our prior beliefs, constantly searching for more and more context, and having the empathy to try to view a story from another person’s point of view. Most importantly, it requires a willingness to sit with the sometimes uncomfortable unknowns. It requires a constant striving for more—more perspectives, more context, more fullness—without ever reaching a complete, 100% understanding.

Letting go of stories will require humility about the assumptions we’ve made in the past and a willingness to embrace a messier epistemology, where not everything is easily explainable. We must question the stories we tell ourselves and the stories told to us by politics, culture, tradition, and religion. That’s inherently uncomfortable: we often choose those stories in the first place because they give us a sense of order and control over the world. However, that means letting them go is all the more freedom – and an even better exercise in trusting God.

This skepticism of stories doesn’t mean we should avoid reading the Bible, enjoying novels, or watching good movies. If anything, it means we should read more, embracing a wider variety of tales about the world from a more diverse set of storytellers. This will only increase our ability to hold multiple narrative lenses in tension and help us consider the ways each one falls short in capturing a complete picture. Exposing yourself to different worldviews, ideas, and traditions can highlight the fact that it’s impossible to fit our complex world into a single story.