ABSTRACT
Stories help us learn by allowing us to join in and become part of them. We share many psychological traits with other animals but no other species, as far as we know, has our narrative ability. Every narrative has two key ingredients: characters and conflict. There are stories where two or more people communicate across a divide and form a connection, such as Romeo and Juliet, or affect the thinking of a climate skeptic. A story with people in it will grab and hold our attention. At its most basic, a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, a structure first proposed by Aristotle. Some stories have more than one turn; these turns are called plot points in screenwriting. Effective trial lawyers present their cases to juries in the form of stories. The story has a theme, a strong beginning and ending, and is brought to life by verbal pictures, analogies, adages, and graphics.
