Will Storr has spent thirty years working out what a story actually is. He sits down with James for the longest, most personal version he has given of how that obsession started — and what it has cost him to get good at it.

It starts with six words. A tiger. A hunter. A tiger. Will calls this an ancient Bengali story, and inside ninety seconds it has done more to explain how stories work than most books on the subject.

From there he tracks his own arc against the architecture he has spent four books describing — Selfie, The Status Game, The Science of Storytelling, A Story Is a Deal. The Catholic-comp kid who failed every A-level and started a school magazine called The Groover.

The phone call from Loaded where, as he puts it, you were judged on how good your first sentence was. The Oxford open day where an English tutor asked his favourite Tennessee Williams and he wondered, briefly, if it might be a brand of crisps. The great-great-uncle, Samuel Smiles, who in the mid-1800s wrote the book that named the self-help genre.

The thesis of A Story Is a Deal: the most persuasive stories say I see you. I know you. I know how to get you from there up to there. And the question James eventually puts to him — would the boy who pinned a newspaper column to his bedroom wall have had any idea this was coming? Not a chance.

Chapters

(00:00) A tiger, a hunter, a tiger

(02:00) The Catholic comp, The Groover, and the local fanzine

(05:00) Inside Loaded: judged on your first sentence

(10:00) What AI might give back to long-form

(14:00) A Story Is a Deal: hero, connection, status

(16:00) Apple, Sport Club Recife, and the architecture of persuasion

(22:00) The Status Game: virtue as the second route

(24:00) "What's your favourite Tennessee Williams?"

(27:00) Donkins, Smiles, and the comp boy at Cambridge

(36:00) Forget Scott Galloway: get good at something

(39:00) The best of masculinity

(48:00) The method, the jewels, The Five Obstructions

"I see you. I know you. And I know how to get you from there up to there." — Will Storr

Mentioned in this episode

- Will Storr, A Story Is a Deal

- Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling

- Will Storr, The Status Game

- Will Storr, Selfie

- Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism

- Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1850s)

- George Loewenstein on the psychology of curiosity

- Apple, "Here's to the Crazy Ones"

- Sport Club Recife organ donation campaign

- Lars von Trier, The Five Obstructions (2003)

- Jørgen Leth, The Perfect Human (1967)

- John Gray, Straw Dogs

About the guest

Will Storr is a journalist and author whose books — Selfie, The Status Game, The Science of Storytelling, and most recently A Story Is a Deal — have made him one of the most forensic chroniclers of how identity, status and narrative actually work. He came up at Loaded in the late 1990s, trained in the Tom Wolfe school of long-form, and treats the architecture of a story the way an engineer treats a bridge.

Listen elsewhere

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast

Website: https://www.storyco.site

Follow: @StoryCoPodcast

Credits

Host: James Kirkham. Guest: Will Storr. Producer: Jago Lee. Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt. Editor: Ryan O'Meera. Music: Doubt Point. Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London.