For thousands, maybe millions, of years people have been telling stories to each other. They have told stories around the campfire, they have traveled from town to town telling stories to relate the news of the day, they have told stories transmitted by electronic means to passive audiences incapable of doing anything but listening (and watching). Whatever the means, and whatever the venue, storytelling seems to play a major role in human interaction. We get reminded of stories and we use them in conversation to hold up our end of the conversation. In essence, conversation is a mutual remind-athon. Stories follow stories. In a group conversation we take turns in storytelling, as we each wait for our chance to say what we are reminded of.

In some sense, stories seem to be almost the opposite of scripts when viewed as a part of the functioning of memory. Stories are our personal take on what isn't scriptlike about the world; we don't tell a story unless it deviates from the norm in some interesting way. Stories embody our attempts to cope with complexity, whereas scripts obviate the need to think. No matter what the situation, people who have a script to apply need do little thinking; they just do what the script says and they can choose to ignore what doesn't fit. People have thousands of highly personal scripts used on a daily basis that others do not share. Every mundane aspect of life that requires little or no thought can be assumed to be a script.