Why Science Needs Global Stories.

Today, 20th March, is World Storytelling Day. With origins in Scandinavia, according to Wikipedia, it coincides with the spring equinox, and exists to celebrate oral storytelling as an art-form around the globe. This year's theme is Deep Water.

So, today I’m thinking about global stories. In Storytelling Foundations, I teach an archetypal story structure using the example of Finding Nemo. It’s a great vehicle for covering many common elements of stories, including worlds, characters, stakes, inciting incidents, journeys, conflict, climaxes, resolutions, narrative, dramatic tension and change.

Pixar stories like these often follow such an archetype closely, singing from the songbook of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.

Campbell himself, writing in 1940s America, touted the Hero’s Journey as a story common to all cultures across all eras, and generations of Hollywood screenwriters and storytellers have claimed the same.

But story scholars since have widely debunked Campbell’s theory as poorly-conducted, Western-biased, sexist and over-simplified.

While I still use the Finding Nemo model as a friendly introduction to storytelling concepts, I’m careful never to claim the Hero’s Journey as the best or the only way to tell a story.

Because there are just as many story forms as there are story cultures around the world.

So, what does this mean for telling science stories?

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking at a lecturn that reads Hands, Face, Space. Source: Flickr

Back in September 2020, the world was adjusting to the realisation that the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t restricted to a matter of weeks, or even a few months, but that we were in the calm before the storm of a pandemic winter.

With health systems braced and emergency hospitals built, governments needed a clear and compelling public health message to control the behaviour of millions of fed-up and fearful citizens. 

The UK government’s approach was the ‘Hands, Face, Space’ maxim, aiming to guide the public towards behaviours that would reduce the spread of the virus.

This is interesting from a science storytelling perspective; the format of ‘Hands, Face, Space’ speaks to the individualism which is core to many European story cultures, literally centring the individual’s body in the core message.

Later messaging during the winter lockdowns of 2020-2021 also revolved around the individual, this time with heroic undertones; ‘Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’. 

Source, The Government of Japan

The Japanese government also adopted a three-part maxim during the Covid-19 pandemic, but, in contrast, theirs encouraged citizens to ‘Avoid the Three Cs: Closed spaces, Crowded places and Close-contact settings’.

Such messaging framed the advice as individuals relative to others. It was encouraging people to be aware of their own effect on wider groups, centring the individual as part of a wider whole.

This approach is consistent with story cultures in countries such as Japan, China and Korea, which often involve collectivist narratives, rather than focus on an individual hero.

Why science needs global stories.

Campbell’s Hero’s Journey was built on Western culture and ideals. But our greatest scientific challenges in the next century are global ones; climate change, antibiotic resistance, food security, future pandemics and many others.

As such, highly individualistic hero narratives that only resonate with audiences in the West may fall flat for the global majority.

To solve such collective, global problems, science stories must be able to connect with global audiences. For example, scientists might experiment with multiple protagonist Scandinavian structures, Indian ‘dendritic’, or branching, storylines, or Central African narratives that revolve around place, rather than people, with social context and spiritual centre more important than any individual protagonist. 

And what about other story forms? What can science learn from the never-ending soap opera? The episodic yet exploratory form of video games? The co-created stories in narrative networks that emerge from online platforms and social media?

Perhaps learning how to tell different forms of science story will be humanity’s only hope for staying out of Deep Water.

Want to learn more about global science storytelling? Extending story form beyond the Hero’s Journey is one element of Storyology’s Advanced Storytelling training.