Review: Wired for Story
Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence. Berkley: Ten Speed Press, 2012.
Can preachers learn anything from specialists in communication who have no direct interest in preaching? We’d better. In fact, we always have. From the New Testament onward, Christian preaching has “baptized” the prevailing rhetoric of each era in service of the gospel. For this reason, I occasionally like to read a book written by a contemporary rhetorician. Because of my “story-shaped” bent, this means exploring the craft of novelists and screenwriters. My latest read in this category is Wired for Story by Lisa Cron.
Cron, who is a writer, editor, and analyst of novels and screenplays, applies recent discoveries in “brain science” to story-telling. The premise, as the title suggests, is that human beings are neurologically hardwired for story. In fact, she says, “Story is what makes us human, not just metaphorically but literally.” (loc. 84) We are captivated by stories, but only when those stories meet our mind’s expectations of what a story should do. Understanding the underlying framework needed to captivate readers is the key to writing a successful story. I would suggest that the same is true for our sermons.
I found insights in every chapter that could be applied to narrative preaching, but I will highlight three.
Story Focus
“A story is designed, from beginning to end, to answer a single overarching question,” Cron writes. “As readers we instinctively know this, so we expect every word, every line, every character, every image, every action to move us closer to the answer.” (loc. 436) Instantly, every preaching professor shouts “Amen!” We know, and we teach, that a sermon should make a single point – not two, not three, not seven. The “Big Idea” guides us as we make crucial decisions about the content of the sermon. Whether you are writing a novel, a screenplay or a sermon, if you can’t sum up the point of the story in a sentence or two, your narrative is not ready for public consumption.
Cron helps us further by describing the makeup of this narrative focus. It is the synthesis of three elements: the protagonist’s issue, the theme, and the plot. To define the focus of the narrative then, we need to ask three questions:
What does the protagonist have to overcome internally to reach the goal?
What specifically does the story say about human nature?
What series of events (plot) will force the protagonist’s hand and make the point about humanity that the story needs to make?
These questions easily suggest analogous questions to help us preachers sharpen the focus of our narrative sermons.
What is the heart issue of my hearers that this sermon will address?
What is the truth from the biblical text that speaks to this heart issue?
What are the essential pieces of exposition, illustration, and application that will expose this truth and challenge my hearers at the point of their internal resistance?
Worldview Dissonance
The protagonist’s “internal issue” drives the story forward, and it is the result of a challenge to a deeply-held belief about the world. “We see the world not as it is, but as we believe it to be,” says Cron. (loc. 1359) A circumstance that calls into question some aspect of what the protagonist believes the world to be creates the tension that launches the story. The best place to begin working on a story is “pinpointing the moment long before, when she first fell prey to the inner issue that’s been skewing her worldview ever since.” (loc. 1389)
What does this insight contribute to our preaching process? Plenty! At the heart of the transformation we seek as we preach is the dissonance between the truth of God’s word and false assumptions of our hearers. Just as a novelist explores a protagonist’s past to find the point at which their view of the world went askew, we need to explore the underlying story that taints the worldview of our hearers. Exposing these assumptions to the light of day prepares the way for the worldview shift that God’s truth will require. The tension between God’s truth and ours—the divine and the human agendas—propels the narrative sermon towards its conclusion.
Economy and Story Movement
The difference between a good sermon and a great one is not what you put in it, but what you leave out. Story experts like Cron teach us that less is usually more, because excess baggage slows momentum. “Your job is to filter out the details that don’t matter a whit,” she says, “so you can have plenty of space left for the ones that do.” (loc. 1922)
The elements that matter are those that move us closer to the story’s goal through a continuous cycle of cause and effect. Daily life is full of unimportant details, but readers assume that “everything in a story must be there for a story reason; it must be something that, given the cause-and-effect trajectory, the reader needs to know, at that moment.” (loc. 2608) This means that “everything in a story is either a setup, a payoff, or the road in between.” (loc. 2985)
Sermons fall flat or stall out for a number of reasons. Most often, it’s because preachers have a hard time resisting the temptation to say everything they know. We could learn an important lesson from successful novelists and screenwriters. Because they give highest value to the story itself, they are willing to delete their most elegant prose, or leave their favourite scenes cluttering the editing room floor.
If we think of the sermon as a journey with a specific destination, we’ve made a good start. If we consider each exegetical detail, illustration, or point of application as either a setup or a payoff, we’ve taken another step. When we eliminate everything that is not essential and craft what’s left into a series of cause and effect movements, we may have a sermon that reaches its redemptive destination with all its passengers (hearers) on board.
And much more …
These three areas are just a taste of the insights I find inspiring in this book. Dozens of bits of advice for novelists become thought-provoking teasers when read from the perspective of preaching. Here are just a few:
If you can’t picture it, it’s general. If you can see it, it’s specific. (loc. 1536)
Action, reaction, decision— it’s what drives a story forward. (loc. 2331)
Everything in a story should indeed be utterly predictable, but only from the satisfying perspective of “the end.” (loc. 2334)
Each thing you add to your story is like a drop of paint falling into a bowl of clear water. It spreads and colors everything. (loc. 2561)
If we can’t see it, we can’t feel it … Images drive emotions as well as intellect. (loc. 1666)
A different “why.”
Of course, not everything in the book resonates with a Christian worldview. Most significantly, Cron—and the neuroscientists she cites—believe that our story “wiring” is due to evolutionary forces. We love stories, they claim, because stories help us predict the future, giving us an edge over hostile elements and species in the world around us. I would suggest that we are “wired for story” because we are created by a relational God, in his own image. We are drawn to stories because our hearts long to live in the story of the one who has created us and redeemed us. Our thirst for story is ultimately our thirst for the Gospel. Because this is so, we preachers of the Gospel should learn everything we can about how story works, and how it penetrates the hearts and minds of those to whom we speak.
