“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
Mark Twain

As with most things in life, a piece of smart thinking quickly becomes corrupted when exposed to and adopted by the masses. The temptation to remove all the difficult bits of that original thinking in order to provide novices with the ‘easy button’ they yearn for inevitably always proves too great in the end.

I’m sure Annette Simmons – who’s pretty much devoted her career to the subject – John Bobo, Mathew Luhn and the myriad other authors who’ve tapped in to the same basic idea started out with the best of intentions. Their idea being that good storytelling is an important factor in achieving success in life. The person who tells the best story wins. Story makes the world go around. People do things for a good reason and a real reason. The real reason is the emotional one. And story is the shortcut way to our emotions.

I’m sure the original idea was that we were all supposed to add the story-telling importance meme to the existing idea that success came to those who told the truth. Truth plus story equals innovation.

But, of course, telling the truth is hard. And once people begin to realise that telling a good story, even if it is patently untrue, beats the dry truth seven times out of eight. And so starts a downward spiral that now sees most parts of the world stuck in a Fake News tailspin.

Arch-liar and Conservative politician, Andrea Leadsom, has taken to dismissing the words of experts as ‘just their opinion’, safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of her listeners will simply nod their heads in agreement. Much easier in our busy, over-scheduled lives to do that than think.

That the best story wins irrepsective of truth was made clear through the clickbait- soundbite victory that was the Brexit campaign. ‘Take back control’ makes for a great story. ‘Our Independence Day’ makes for an even greater one. No need to worry about the tiny question-mark of whether they’re true or not. We can all – Brexiteers included – patently see today that both are patent nonsense. But that becomes part of the story, part of Steve Bannon’s masterplan: no-one likes to admit they were wrong. And with that the RomCom devolves into inevitable tragedy.