This simple narrative element can predict a story’s popularity, study finds | By analyzing 30,000 stories across various formats, researchers found that narratives with more frequent and pronounced changes in emotional tone tend to be more successful
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Excerpts from the article :-
“A new study published in [Science Advances](https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adl2013) reveals that the success of a story can be predicted by the number and intensity of narrative reversals, moments when the fortunes of characters dramatically shift. By analyzing 30,000 stories across various formats, researchers found that narratives with more frequent and pronounced changes in emotional tone tend to be more successful.
Stories have been a cornerstone of human culture for thousands of years, captivating audiences and imparting values across generations. Despite centuries of storytelling, the precise reasons why some stories resonate deeply while others fail remain elusive. Scholars have proposed many theories about what makes a story compelling, with concepts like plot progression, dramatic tension, and the balance between highs and lows often highlighted. Yet, past research has struggled to empirically verify these ideas or to predict the success of stories based on theoretical frameworks.
This study aimed to address that gap. With advances in computational linguistics, researchers saw an opportunity to quantify elements of storytelling, particularly focusing on narrative reversals. These are moments when a character’s fortune shifts drastically, such as a protagonist going from success to failure or from despair to triumph. By analyzing the frequency and magnitude of these shifts, the researchers hoped to uncover a measurable pattern that could explain why certain stories succeed.
“In addition to working as a quantitative researcher, I’m also a novelist, with an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and my second novel coming out in 2025. I believe that new computational-linguistics tools allow us, for the first time, to build an empirically testable theory of narrative that can afford us new insights into why stories affect us the way they do,” said study author Samsun Knight, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto.”