@willstorr.bsky.social
Author
This week's free-to-read essay is IN DEFENCE OF MEN: The rewards and sorrows of life as a success object
"If we’re required to account for what makes us toxic, we must also be allowed to celebrate the things that make us great."
substack.com/home/post/p-...
This week's essay is free to read for all: on midlife, the illusion of freedom and life becoming a trap
willstorr.substack.com/p/ducklings-...
Thanks Lucy!
06.09.2025 22:41 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Every so often something resonates.
You may enjoy this by @willstorr.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/willstor...
A Story is a Deal: How to use the science of storytelling to lead, motivate and persuade by @willstorr.bsky.social is a bargain 99p on Kindle today #affiliatelink
amzn.to/45GtwD4
I’m excited to announce that my newsletter is evolving.
As much as I’ve enjoyed writing about the science of storytelling I was beginning to find it limiting. So I’ve decided to change the name of my publication, to allow myself to write about a broader range of subjects.
willstorr.substack.com
Today’s free-to-read essay, A Crisis of Mattering, lays out a theory that I’ve touched upon but not fully fleshed out in previous books, that a major cause of modern unhappiness is that our world has grown too big.
READ HERE: willstorr.substack.com/p/a-crisis-o...
Thank you Chris
30.08.2025 08:25 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0This is a really beautiful, thoughtful and thought-provoking piece of writing.
27.08.2025 13:26 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Storr hypothesizes that forces beyond us compel us to live in a state of perpetual status anxiety.
Pair with Arthur C. Brooks observation that people habitually and chronically choose “being special” over “being happy”…
Today’s free-to-read essay, A Crisis of Mattering, lays out a theory that I’ve touched upon but not fully fleshed out in previous books, that a major cause of modern unhappiness is that our world has grown too big.
READ HERE: willstorr.substack.com/p/a-crisis-o...
This week's free-to-read essay is already proving controversial. In it, I critique fashionable but bad ideas from Eastern spirituality and accuse Buddhists of being "utterly and incurably self-obsessed and self-interested."
willstorr.substack.com/p/there-is-n...
This is a very good piece of analysis on AI-generated faux-meaningful essays on Substack which has enabled me to spot quite a few as they were served to me.
What it tells me is: we’re desperate for things to be OK. But we’ll settle for calmingly written essays that tell us things are OK.
This week's piece is free to read for all! On the aesthetic construction of self and my midlife identity crisis
willstorr.substack.com/p/how-art-ma...
This week's piece is free to read for all! On the aesthetic construction of self and my midlife identity crisis
willstorr.substack.com/p/how-art-ma...
Here is @willstorr.bsky.social at @humanists.uk convention 2025. Great talk about the human quest for status and its consequences.
14.06.2025 10:45 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
This week's essay is the first in a new series called Most Popular Highlights, in which I discuss the ten top reader-selected storytelling tips from an exceptional book. The first is George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
willstorr.substack.com/p/most-popul...
Picture of a book by Dr Lucy Foulkes called Coming of Age: How adolescence shapes us
Bad pain day means I get to read this, rather than wash the kitchen floor. Thanks, @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social
04.06.2025 10:34 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
For those interested in universal MH interventions in schools, there’s a new meta analysis out today by Hayes et al and I wanted to highlight a few points
🧵
www.frontiersin.org/journals/chi...
This week's essay explores solitude. What do we really want, when we want to be alone?
"Life, for many of us, can come to feel like the sufferance of a million tiny stings of social pain."
willstorr.substack.com/p/without-yo...
Israeli leaders could literally say "we will genocide until there is no more genocide to be genocided" and the world will still be like "gosh it's so complicated"
19.05.2025 21:05 — 👍 119 🔁 54 💬 3 📌 2
Tomorrow's essay:
SCAMMING SUBSTACK?
How to get money for nothing and likes for free on the world's favourite newsletter platform!
Why I suspect popular Substackers are using AI to entirely or substantially write viral essays
shorturl.at/DTO6E
My popular SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING masterclass, that began at the Guardian more than a decade ago and produced the bestselling book of the same name, is now EXCLUSIVE to full subscribers of my newsletter!
The next masterclass is May 28th. Sign up now to join us then! willstorr.substack.com/about
Today’s essay is a Science of Storytelling special on the extremely surprising results of a recent large-scale data analysis of story. Do popular plot structures make stories more successful? And, if not, what kind of plot shape can make your story 160% more popular? Find out: shorturl.at/Eyc4P
03.05.2025 12:34 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Delighted to announce my next SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING LIVE! masterclass, on character and plot. Containing lots of new ideas not featured in the bestselling book. Now EXCLUSIVE to full subscribers of my weekly newsletter You Are A Story.
May 28th 6pm
SIGN UP HERE: shorturl.at/TpTmo
Today’s essay tells a tragic tale of murder, and explores how the storytelling abilities of our own brains mislead us all the time, with sometimes horrific results
Read here: shorturl.at/1X7l3
Today’s essay explores our habit of creating stories of Great Significance out of even ridiculously trivial events (via airport queues, ego death and the hidden benefits of religious belief).
Free to read for all, for one week only!
shorturl.at/ETQHq
Today’s essay explores our habit of creating stories of Great Significance out of even ridiculously trivial events (via airport queues, ego death and the hidden benefits of religious belief).
Free to read for all, for one week only!
shorturl.at/ETQHq
My latest essay explores eternal lessons in storytelling that were created at the very dawn of human evolution - featuring Aaron Sorkin, Anton Chekov and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Free to read for one week: shorturl.at/vvxuI
