Lessons from the Dangers of Narrative Project: Toward a Story-Critical Narratology*

The essay introduces new methods for applied and “story-critical” narratology that are based on the analysis of a crowdsourced corpus in the Dangers of Narrative research project. This analysis suggests that the prototype model of narrative developed by fi rst-wave cognitive narratologists resonates strongly with the popular understanding of what a narrative is and what it can do. Yet, more interestingly, the prototype model also reveals the pitfalls of narrative form in contemporary media. Reliance on individual, unverifi able experience is the most pertinent risk perceived by the informants participating in the crowdsourcing for “dubious” storytelling. The essay also sketches a new theory of viral storytelling spun around the “viral exemplum”, a concept created to describe the viral narrative prototype: a personal “true story” which is given undue representative and normative weight via online sharing.