Why telling stories is important

It's second nature to humans to tell stories. We've been doing it forever, and we never tire of it. Why do we have this need to make up people and even entire worlds? And why do we have this need to tell others their stories? -- their completely made-up stories. And furthermore why do we enjoy being told stories so much? I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single person who doesn't enjoy books, movies or television at all. It's an innate part of who we are. But it's inexplicable. What purpose does it serve?

Well, it's for more than just entertainment.

People say that we read books and watch movies in order to escape -- from reality, from our lives, whatever. It's actually the opposite. We do it to connect. 

Our love for stories highlights another innate ability of humans: to empathize. It's amazing to me that our compassion for others extends even to people who aren't real. We've all become invested in a character's story, and those emotions aren't worthless. Not worthless at all. As Steven Moffat once sarcastically tweeted: "Remember, it's a TV show. Only the emotional damage is real." He's got a point. The characters and the stories might not be real but the feelings are -- and the ability of stories to stir these emotions, these basic indicators of our humanity, is amazing.

Stories also foster connections with real people in our lives. Think about how easy it is to talk to someone once you discover that you both love the same TV show. I've had many friendships start this way. And that's what it is: a start. In a lot of cases, it will continue. The stories you enjoy reveal a lot about you, after all.

While stories do help us connect emotionally with ourselves and others, an escape they sometimes do provide is one from a world primarily lacking meaning to one where every detail is predetermined for a reason. Stories have highly structured plots, with climaxes and resolutions. Our lives do not. Everything in a story (costumes, characters' names, colors and set design) has significance. Mostly everything in our world is random.

Sometimes people want to make books and television and movies more realistic. They shouldn't. Make the characters realistic, but fill their world with meaning. Their world is rarely how we would want ours to be -- fictional worlds are often far from idealistic -- but we don't consume stories to feel happiness or complacency. We do it to feel a fuller range of emotions all within the safety of it not being real. 

Or is it real, in a way?

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

(Argumentation pro-tip: use a quote from Dumbledore to drive home your point.)

This is why I want to tell stories -- to be a part of one of the greatest human traditions and to allow people to both escape and connect in all the ways that we need to.