The first story?

‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live’ said Joan Didion.

But who told the first story? Who decided that instead of giving a set of instructions about how to catch a woolly mammoth that they would tell a story about it instead? That they’d make it funny or thrilling and that that would become a great way of helping other people to remember facts?

Or was it someone who wanted their kids to really remember that a certain type of berry or leaf was definitely not for eating?

It had to be something like that didn’t it? Neuroscience now shows us that we’re more likely to remember something if it’s connected to an emotion. So making us laugh or cry or run and hide means we’re more likely to take in what we’re bring told.

So was the original story about learning and passing on knowledge?

I mean those nights must have been long - no Netflix then. No books either. Just the same group of people trying to survive. The first person who told a great story must have been LOVED.

Stories aren't just about learning and entertainment of course. What’s the first thing we do when we try to get to know someone? Share some stories. Sometimes embarrassing ones and sometimes the ones that show us in a good light but either way they connect us to other people.

And not just to people we actually meet in real life. They’re also a way in to other people’s lives, a way to share experiences we may never have but want to know about, to go places we may never travel to in reality but want to see, to share the full range of emotions from misery and despair to joy and delight.  Stories offer us a glimpse into another world - whether that world is on our own planet or outer space or somewhere that never existed.

Stories also bring meaning. They try to explain the inexplicable. Whether it was an explanation for what those bright shining lights in the sky were back in those woolly mammoth days or to explain how all parts of the Earth are connected today. Whether it’s setting values or deciding what matters.

And then there was the first person who went over the horizon and came back and said - you’ve got to see what’s over here. Stories that rely on the imagination, that ask us to consider what else is out there, that are purposeful or inspirational.

‘Imagination will often carry us to worlds that were never there. But without it we go nowhere.’ Carl Sagan

They are a way to live the lives we will never have.To empathise with how other people live.  At another level they define who we are as individuals, as a society, as a group. They reveal what we think is important.

Stories are build into our bones and brains - although annoyingly that doesn’t mean they’re easy to construct for the page or the screen. And that’s ok. That’s the craft we get to hone over and over again, with every new project.