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Does your story need to be true? This is my answer: it needs to be true to yourself. The French author Jules Renard once said that “as soon as the truth goes beyond five lines it is a novel.” The problem with the truth is that once we think we’ve got it we want to endorse it to everybody. So our truth becomes everybody’s truth. And you know what it comes next. Maybe, we should ask these honest question when we’re planning to tell a story: - What is my angle in this story? Wha

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to influence people using perfectly rational arguments? I bet you’ve tried time after time, and failed consistently. Perfectly rational arguments have never convinced anybody to do anything that they weren’t already convinced about for other reasons. Even in the most dramatic and difficult situations such as hostage negotiations, where you might think logic and rationality are top of the agenda, the FBI recommends that negotiators use active li

Lyn Hunt claims in her book Inventing Human Rights: A History  that what made human rights a reality in Europe was not only politics and law but also reading novels. The concept of human rights depends on empathic identification with individuals, something that only started appearing between 1750 and 1776 due to the popularity of novels in Europe. Of course there were other factors, but novels made the point that we all feel the same regardless of our race, gender and class.