What Story-Writing Does To Your Brain

What are the experts saying about expressive narrative writing?

Storytelling has always appealed to me, it’s no wonder when I started making research on how to become a better writer, after watching hundreds and hundreds of hours of Tedx videos, reading a countless number of articles on and off Medium, the one recurring take away was; be a better storyteller in your writing.

Why is that?

The answer is simple — we may forget what someone said, but we never forget how someone made us feel. The power of storytelling is that it takes its audience on a journey of both highs and lows — intense emotional rollercoaster. Stories have the ability to evoke from within us, emotional responses, which is why you feel more connected, liked and remembered better, the speaker who gave a speech with a story or an anecdote.

However, researchers have stated that, for a story to be evocative and produce the desired effect, the writer must eschew cliches (super-common words or phrases). Say, for example, you want to express to your audience that your partner was mean to you, instead of using the word mean (which is now worn-out due to overuse), use brutish instead. Saying “his brutishness became unbearable for me and my kids, that I had to file for a divorce”, would elicit more compassion from the listeners/readers, and an understanding for the divorce, than saying he was just mean.

Writing and speaking share the same rule because they both involve the desire to pass an experience or idea across to a listening audience. So the best way you as a writer can get the most impact from your work is to see yourself as a speaker that is carrying her audience on a journey. This single idea has made writing a better experience for me, and also improved my contents.

There are more benefits to writing than just improving your writing skills, and researchers have made studies on the subject, to find out how it affects us — our brain, as individuals, which I’ll be discussing, but just a few — to help you get a better understanding of why you should write, whether you are doing it for the money or not.

The Meditation effect

Meditation has been known to relieve stress and induce a state of calmness, heightened attention and increased focus. For many who have embraced meditation and mindfulness, they sing of gaining clarity, reduced anxiety, and an all-round improvement of memory and attention span. The same phenomenon happens when you sit down to write because to narrate a story through writing involves, sitting in a quiet spot, nerves become relaxed, the outside world is shut out, your breathing is calmed, it slows down and by focusing on what you want to write about; it gets you into a flow where words stream from your mind effortlessly. Consistent writers, writing for a period of time, as I have found out myself, experience an increase in attention span and focus.

Improve Cognitive Performance

Cognitive abilities involve the abilities we have as humans to think, learn, reason, remember stuff, problem-solving, and even our decision making as well. Scientists have suggested that these abilities can be improved by various means like exercising and good nutrition — however, researches have shown that creative writing also improves these cognitive functions. Writing forces the brain to focus, to formulate ideas, connect thoughts and put those thoughts into context, and also to recollect information from memory. The exact same activities that the brain needs to improve cognitive performance.

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Manages Traumatic Experience

The best prescription for individuals with traumatic experiences is to get a psychiatrist or a therapist to talk to, and it still is, by all means. However, expressive writing of those experiences helps reduces anxiety and depression. To write about a negative experience helps you relive those memories in a positive and constructive way, thereby ejaculating pent-up negative energy from within. Dr James W. Pennebaker published an article on the Havard Health Publishing website of the research he performed on how expressive writing helps to deal with traumatic experiences and situations.

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The Speaker-Listener Coupling

A study done at Princeton University, by Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert, and Uri Hasson, found that the brain activity of a storyteller and the listener can synchronise with each other. Further research shows that when an effective storyteller narrates a story, she is eliciting emotions from her experience to the audience. As she narrates, her brain remembers those experiences, and there is a spark in a certain part of the brain — more so in the cerebral cortex. When the listeners hear the story, it produces the same emotions in them, thus the brain of the listener also lights up when it tries to create scenarios of the experience, creating an overwhelming similarity in brain activities of both the listener and the speaker.

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In conclusion

The art of writing is like a two-sided sword that cuts both ways. Just as it affects the reader, it also affects the writer. As a matter-of-factly, we just saw that it probably does more good for the writer than it does for the reader.

We stated earlier the correlation between speaking and writing, and it is a huge Tip, on how you can better present your creative contents. To be a talented writer isn't only about factual-writing, but by being an excellent storyteller. Do not just get good at selling ideas, be good at selling experiences. Your goal should always be to leave something — an experience, in the lives and heart of your writers.

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