See Ron’s bio, photo, and Part 1 of this Q&A and Part 2, and Part 3.

Q&A with Ron Donaldson (Question 4):

Q. If you could share just one piece of advice or wisdom about story/storytelling/narrative with readers, what would it be?

A: We all make sense of our world by telling stories. But we experience the world through a lens or filter of what makes sense to us at the time, what John Bowker in his interesting book The Sacred Neuron calls a “Circle of Coherence.” Such circles of coherence are integral to our understanding of how religions have developed and communities and identities are formed.

Stories of the past, i.e., history, are subconsciously and sometimes malevolently biased to paint a picture of what teller assumes the audience want to hear. In short, stories can often tell us more about the person who wrote, re-told, or even translated the story than the experience which the story explains.

The subconscious has its own feedback mechanisms to tell the conscious when it is straying from the ‘norm’ and this emerges as nightmares, dreams and creative thoughts. In early times these would have been giants, dragons and monsters, now they are paedophiles, despots and corrupt politicians.

Christopher Booker in his fantastic book The Seven Basic Plots (Why We Tell Stories) postulates that this is mankind’s way of saying to itself “beware of the emerging ego in yourself.” Great writers and film producers have known this for years from Tolkien to Spielberg but for me it is summed up by my favourite quote of all time from the great GK Chesterton “dragons tell us not that dragons once existed, only that they can be beaten.”