I just put together another diagram about stories and how they work in preparation for my book. I’m really finding that hashing ideas out in visible form is helping me to hone down my ideas into their most easily transmitted components.

This diagram is loosely based around some ideas I explored in my post about feedback loops. What I’m trying to get at here is one aspect of how people use stories to live their lives. Everyone has the story of their life, which consists of their experiences, imagination, memory, friends, family, etc. You autobiography, basically. Then you have all these stories which are exterior to your actual life which you encounter. Could be in the shape of movies, books, tv, religions, etc.

Basically, I think the way that we make sense of stories that are not part of us is by making them part of us. We simultaneously project ourselves into these stories - almost like they’re happening to us - as well as pulling them inside of us, through identification. Projection & identification go hand in hand to help us understand external stories in terms of our own personal life story. We automatically seek out the elements which match, or which we resonate with for whatever reason. By going through this process, we end up adding these external stories into our own personal life story. We build it up even more richly and understand it better. So, at the end of the day, our life story not only consists of the experiences we ourselves actually had, but also of the conglomeration of external stories which we encountered, projected ourselves into and identified with.

1. Also check out my diagram and explanation of “story-systems”
2. And my post with some quotes about “bricolage” the myth-making process