Well, I thought that I’d ramble about storytelling and extroverts today. This was something I ended up thinking about after watching two very different video essays on Youtube – one was a fascinating “bookswithzara” video where she talks about anti-intellectualism in publishing and online discussions of books. Although the whole video is interesting, the part that grabbed my attention the most was when she showed clips of people on TikTok who say that they literally only read the dialogue in novels and skip over everything else.
The other was this excellent “Pim’s Crypt” video (warning – Flickering images, horror imagery) which totally changed my understanding of the 2004 survival horror videogame “Silent Hill 4“. I, amongst many others, have criticised the game’s main character – Henry – for being a “boring” or “bland” character. But the video – and how did I not notice this? – points out that he’s actually much more of an introvert, he’s probably neurodivergent and he was probably something of a recluse before the events of the game.
In this context, the game makes a lot more sense. For example, the fact that Henry’s health regenerates when he returns to his apartment during the early parts of the game could be a subtle way of hinting at all of this. Again, how did I miss this?
And, in combination, these two videos made me think about storytelling and extroverts.
Whether it is how some readers literally only read the “social” parts of novels, or how I was so used to seeing stories written for extroverts that I didn’t even recognise when a videogame had a more introverted main character until someone literally pointed it out to me mere minutes before preparing this article. And this made me think about whether stories are an inherently “extroverted” thing or not.
Of course, in visual mediums, they sort of have to be. Unlike in prose fiction or radio drama, you can’t directly show the thoughts of the characters without using dialogue or voice-over. These mediums are optimised for showing things, often “dramatic” things that grab the audience’s attention and keep them interested. Even things like emotions have to be shown through dialogue, facial expressions, music, cinematography, lighting etc…. Though, even in word-based stories, they can only be evoked or described, but not directly transmitted to the audience.
In one sense, the act of publishing a story for an audience is an inherently social thing. A form of communication. In ancient times, stories were literally only told aloud to an audience. In this sense, the act of storytelling is an inherently extroverted thing. Yet, whilst things like movies and videogames can be enjoyed by multiple people in the same room at the same time, the same isn’t true for prose fiction.
By its very nature, a novel is a solitary thing. Not only that, in order to read a novel, you have to re-construct all of the settings, events etc… within your imagination. Novels literally rely on you being alone and using your imagination. They are also written alone by a writer using their imagination. And, whilst your daydreams whilst reading might be guided by words on a page, the fact is that literally every location and character in a novel that you’re reading are technically all parts of the same imagination (eg: the writer’s or the reader’s). Yes, I could go off on a fascinating tangent here about pantheism and/or solipsism, but I don’t want to get side-tracked.
Anyway, in this sense, novels are the perfect “introvert” storytelling medium. There’s even the whole asynchronous/time-shifted element of them, where the author wrote the story at a different time to when the reader reads it, without the intimidating immediacy of – for example – a real-life conversation. They are typically only created by just one person – without the large teams that are often required for things like films or videogames.
And, yet, maybe it’s because – like most people – I’ve been raised on films, games, TV shows, books etc… written by and for introverts, but I’ve noticed that it is a lot more difficult to write more “quiet” or “introverted” scenes in some of the writing projects I’ve been doing recently. I worry that they’re “too slow-paced” or have to add lots of external events to “keep the scene interesting” or stuff like that. Maybe, despite it being such a large part of my life, I’ve been conditioned to see a character just… thinking… to be “boring” in the context of stories?
I don’t know if there is much point to this rambling article. We live in a culture and a society which is traditionally designed for – and designed around – more extroverted people. Of course both storytelling and the rules of what is considered “good storytelling” will reflect this. And, whilst some storytelling mediums are optimised for more “extroverted” stories, it’s interesting that even the most introverted of mediums – prose fiction – still often has to include a lot of “extroverted” stuff (eg: dialogue, dramatic things happening etc...) in order to be considered interesting by the audience.
Stories and storytelling reflect the culture in which the stories are told in. In addition to this, thanks to the current economic system, stories which are “popular” are rewarded with money, pushing more creative people to make the stories they tell more like the “profitable” ones. All of this leads to a situation where a more extroverted approach to storytelling is not only rewarded but also normalised to the point that storytelling “rules” are based on it and it is literally considered “good storytelling”. The standard. The thing all stories have to be judged against.
And, well, I can’t help but wonder how stories would be different if the culture and economic system were different?
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
