The conversation started, as increasingly they do now, with a discussion of ChatGBT. Specifically, about its use in schools to help KS3 and KS4 English literature students capable of great insights but who struggle with coherently expressing them. Some are reacting with horror at thought of ChatGBT being able to write an English essay, but is it really so different from cramming for an exam with York Notes in the 1990s?

In the context of literary studies, ChatGBT isn’t so much a shortcut as a tool to promote accessibility and inclusivity, to give a voice to those not naturally reticent, but with the potential to be rendered dumb by impenetrable text, allowing them to keep pace with the bookish. I have a first-class honours degree in English Literature and a SparkNotes No Fear guide to Beowulf is still appealing to me. Far be it for me to judge the use of ChatGBT as a mouthpiece.

The conversation moved on, to the role of a writer when disaster strikes. Stood in a garden next to someone who had fashioned not just fit for purpose but aesthetically pleasing outdoor cooking apparatus, the temptation would be to feel rather inadequate or surplus to requirement as a wordsmith were nuclear fallout to occur. But who would relay vital information in a way that landed with people? Who would make sense of the crisis? Who would share learnings further down the line? The communicators, we all agreed.

It’s well known that our ability to tell stories is a crucial part of human evolution. A concept delivered within a narrative becomes a recognisable pattern, has more natural resonance and acts as a framework from which we can make decisions. It sticks in a way raw data doesn’t. The story of The Crow and the Pitcher once heard is not forgotten. It’s not about a corvid satisfying its thirst, it’s about necessity prompting creativity, a kernel of an idea itself carried over time by the symbolic vehicle of the mother, by metaphors of breeding and begetting.

So the storyteller has their place, and their method of communicating dictates the size of the audience that carries on the tale. Too lofty and obscure and only a few will connect, or misinterpretation may occur. Simplicity creates democracy and the opportunity for personal application of universal truths or the conversion of personal experience into universal knowledge. If ChatGBT can act as a bridge, unlocking wisdom in outmoded or erudite vernaculars and facilitating an understanding echo, this is surely a means of greater engagement and cohesion.

Because we’re all trying not to die. Not yet. Storytelling engenders social cooperation and enables the passing on of intelligence to ensure we survive. Our need to communicate is so nuanced that over 7000 languages are spoken worldwide. An individual word may be untranslatable based on the idiosyncratic lifestyle of a community but an idea, woven into the thread of a narrative, can be transposed across cultures and collectively enlightening. In writing an author is simply carrying on an essential tradition, but sharing life lessons via the page rather than around the fire.