Story Coach and Author
Lisa Cron is an American story coach and author of Wired for Story and Story Genius, drawing on neuroscience to explore how the brain engages with narrative. She has taught in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and worked as a producer and story consultant in Hollywood.
by Lisa Cron
Cron argues that the brain evolved to use story as its primary simulator for navigating danger and social life, which is why readers demand a protagonist's internal struggle, not just events. She converts neuroscience findings into twelve craft principles for hooking readers from sentence one.
The books Lisa Cron references, cites, and recommends most frequently.
by Steven Pinker
Pinker argues that language is a biological adaptation - an 'instinct' shaped by natural selection - rather than a cultural invention, synthesizing Chomsky's universal grammar with Darwinian evolutionary psychology. He marshals evidence from child language acquisition, pidgins and creoles, brain lesions, and cross-linguistic universals to defend an innate mental grammar while arguing against Chomsky's own scepticism about adaptationist explanations.
by Antonio Damasio
Damasio overturns the idea that reason and emotion are separate. His neuroscience research shows that feelings are essential to rational decision-making, not obstacles to it.
by Daniel Kahneman
Kahneman reveals that our minds run on two systems: fast intuition and slow deliberation. Most errors in judgement come from trusting System 1 when the situation demands System 2's careful analysis.
by Charles Duhigg
Duhigg reveals the neurological loop behind every habit: cue, routine, reward. Understanding this cycle gives you the power to reshape behaviours at individual and organisational level.
Who Lisa draws from, and who draws from Lisa — aggregated across every book in this collection. Counts show the number of citation links, not the depth of each one.