Storytelling Final Exam:
Tompkins, Aim for the Heart (pp. 255-279)
"Tell the Story With Social Media and Online" - Framing the Narrative - Social Media use has increased dramatically over time - Telling a visual story within social media profiles
Lodge, The Art of Fiction (pp. 1-8; 121-129; 215-218)
(215-218) - "The Hand", "All Right" & "Ma" - "Ma": the jewish mother always expects the worst. - "The Hand": classic notion of narrative unity; a beginning, middle, and end. A father hits his son. - "All Right": some sort of sexual interaction is occurring. It starts with a woman uneasiness then her self-justification, then again back to displeasure. - The structure of a narrative is like the framework of riders that holds up a modern high-rise building: you can't see it, but it determines the edifice's shape and character. Summary: - the narrator is describing the punishment of his son. He smacked his little boy. He justifies the relief of tension and the exercise of power. The narrator attempts to justify his own behavior. Direct speech: "Listen, I want to explain the complexities to you"; this favors the narrator. - Plot: "a completed process of change": In the story: "I said yes. He said no." MAIN POINT: *PLOT*: the pattern of events and situations in a narrative or dramatic work, as selected and arranged both to emphasize relationships- both cause and effect- (121-129) - Showing & Telling: - Fictional Discourse constantly alternates between showing us what happened and telling us what happened. - Purest form of showing: is the quoted speech of characters - Purest form of telling: authorial summary Summary: - Parson Adams is lecturing the hero, Joseph, about his impatience to marry his sweetheart Fanny, with whom he has just been reunited with after a long and hazardous separation. Adams subjects him to a lengthy sermon, warning him against lust, and lack of trust in Providence. - Telling in Different Voices Summary: - Female Friends traces the fortunes of three women through the nineteen-forties, fifties, and sixties, focusing on their sexual and martial experiences, against a background of rapidly changing social mores.
Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths
- "In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pên, he chooses-- simultaneously--all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork." - "The Garden of Forking Paths is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time; this recondite cause prohibits its mention. To omit a word always, to resort to inept metaphors and obvious periphrases, is perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it." - "In other words, whenever the characters come to a point at which more than one outcome is possible, both outcomes occur. This causes the narrative to branch out into multiple narrative universes, which then provide the scenarios for new bifurcations." Summary: An anonymous narrator introduces a document that will, he assures us, shed a little light on why a British offensive against the Germans had to be delayed by thirteen days. The document is a deposition (oral testimony given by a witness to be used in a trial) given by Dr. Yu Tsun. The first two pages are missing, so its narration begins abruptly. He must escape from Captain Richard Madden, the Irishman who has murdered his co-conspirator in espionage, and complete his mission by delivering the location of a secret cache of British weapons to his boss in Germany, whom he refers to as The Chief. A man named Stephen Albert greets Yu Tsun, speaking Chinese, and invites him to see the "garden of forking paths." Tsun identifies himself as a descendent of the creator of that very garden. Dr. Albert tells Tsun the story of his ancestor, Ts'ui Pen, a former governor who abandoned his political position to write a novel and build a labyrinth, or maze. In the opinion of his descendents, Ts'ui Pen had failed on both accounts - the novel made no chronological sense, and the labyrinth was never found. In other words, whenever the characters come to a point at which more than one outcome is possible, both outcomes occur. This causes the narrative to branch out into multiple narrative universes, which then provide the scenarios for new bifurcations.
Talese, Frank Sinatra has a Cold
- "Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only worse." - Gay Talese writes from an outside perspective about the behaviors of Frank Sinatra throughout a few months of his life, also surrounding around a time in which he was suffering from a common cold. New Journalism & The 'True' Narrative: - a style of non fiction writing that documents events by blending journalistic intention with literary techniques - the basic unit of reporting is no longer the datum or piece of information, but the scene. - it aims to present a larger "interpretive truth" - balance between showing and telling
Ffion, The Seven Pillars of Storytelling (pp.29-42)
1. Monomyth: the hero's journey, is a story structure found in many folk takes, myths and religious writings from around the world. - taking the audience on a journey - showing the benefit of taking risks - demonstrating how you learned some new-found wisdom EX: Japanese yo-yo-er BLACK tells the inspiring story of finding life's passion and the difficult path he took to become world champion. 2. The Mountain: is a way of mapping the tension and drama in a story. The first part is given to setting the scene; and is followed by just a series of small challenges and rising action before a climatic conclusion. EX: Aimee Mullins uses a mountain structure speech to tell a personal story- from being born with fibula bones in her lower legs to becoming a famous athlete actress and model. 3. Nested Loops: a storytelling technique where you layer three or more narratives within each other. You place your most important story in the centre and use the stories around it to elaborate or explain that central principle. EX: Simon Sinek's TED talk shows how successful organizations place the 'Why? of what they do at the centre, surrounded by the 'what?' and 'how?' of their business. EX: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses the framework of her experiences in university and the way that Africa is perceived in the Western world to drive home her argument about stories. 4. Sparklines: a way of mapping presentation structures. Graphic designer Nancy Duarte uses sparkles to analyze famous speeches graphically in her book Resonate. The best speeches contrast our ordinary world with an ideal, improved world; what is with what could be. Highly emotional technique that motivates your audience to support you. EX: Martin Luther King Jr. I have a Dream Speech: contrasts the racist, intolerant society of the day with an ideal future society where all races are treated equally. 5. In Medias Res: storytelling is when you begin your narrative in the heat of the action, before starting over as the beginning to explain how you got there. Dropping your audience right into the most exciting part of the story. EX: Zak Ebrahim begins his talk with the revelation that his father helped plan the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. 6. Converging Ideas: a speech structure that shows the audience how different strands of thinking came together to form one product or idea. Used to show the birth of a movement or how several minds worked towards one goal. EX: Larry Page & Sergey Brin - Google EX: John Bohannon and the Black Label Movement explain how scientists and dancers came together to form an exciting, dynamic alternative to boring presentations. 7. False Start: when you begin to tell a seemingly predictable story, before unexpectedly disrupting it and beginning it over again. You lure your audience into a false sense of security, and then shock them by turning the tables. EX: JK Rowling begins her speech at Harvard in a typical fashion. She talks about her time at university and the expectations of her parents. The audience expects her to talk about her accomplishments yet she focuses on a time where she felt she had 'failed' in life. 8. Petal Structure: a way of organizing multiple speakers or stories around one central concept. It's useful if you have several unconnected stories you want to tell or things you want to reveal that all relate to a single message. EX: Simon Sinek tells a series of stories to help illustrate his ideas, each one strengthening his message further.
Foster, Aspects of the Novel (pp. 100-125)
Characters: - making a memorable character - name, appearance, personality, motivation, conflict, voice - Jane Austen Novel - FLAT: they are constructed around a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. Easily recognized and easily remembered. - ROUND: the test of round characters is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat pretending to be round. It has the incalculability of life about it - life within the pages of a book.
Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act V, Scene V)
Summary: - Macbeth (still at Dunsinane) insists that banners be hung outside the castle. - Many of his former forces are now fighting against him on the English side, making it difficult for him to meet the army in a glorious blaze. - He's still feeling pretty good, since Dunsinane is so fortified that he imagines the enemy army will die of hunger and sickness before he ever even needs to leave the castle. - In the meantime, a shrieking of women tells Macbeth that his wife is dead—it's suicide. - Macbeth here launches into one of Shakespeare's (and literature's) best known and oft-quoted speeches, beginning "She should have died hereafter," meaning one of two things: she would've died eventually so she might as well have died today or, she should have died later because I'm super busy defending the castle right now. - He also gets to say the super famous line, "Life's but a walking shadow [...] a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury," which is not only an early, maybe the earliest occurrence of Existentialist thought in literature. - Macbeth is quickly distracted by the news that a "grove" of trees seem to be moving towards Dunsinane, which is all around bad news, since said "grove" is likely Birnam Wood. - Macbeth finally realizes that the prophecy was as twisted as the prophets, but he's going to face the army anyway. If you have to go down, you might as well go down fighting. Famous Line: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that trusts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more" - Metaphor for a ghost: Macbeth is comparing his existence to the condition of being a ghost. The fleeting nature of life... a character who is only on the stage for an hour and then is heard no more. - A metaphor triggers a known story in people's minds, allowing them to draw a connection and remember it.
Cortázar, The Continuity of Parks
Summary: - A man is on a train reading a story; setting of the novel he is reading is a cabin in a woods where a woman and a man meet to complete the final stage of the murder of her husband. The setting changes as the lover moves from the cabin in the woods into the house where he finds the husband sitting in a chair reading a novel. Meaning: - argues that your success in reading or writing fiction depends on your willingness to lose yourself utterly in the task. - the story is actually a metaphor for the experience of reading: Cortázar's reader gets so lost in a fictional world that he literally becomes a participant in it. It is also a metaphor for our reading experience: we get so swept up in literature
Hemingway, Hills like White Elephants
Summary: - about a woman going to get an abortion - guy is super self centered, woman doesn't want abortion set in a train station with the two talking, speaking of love, beer, elephants Narrative Pacing: - Fast: action, short sentences, present, action verbs Ananchrony: a event that may belong either to the past or to the future with respect to the events which form its immediate context.
Poe, The Tell-tale Heart
Summary: - "Every night about twelve o'clock I slowly opened his door. And when the door was opened wide enough I put my hand in, and then my head. In my hand I held a light covered over with a cloth so that no light showed. And I stood there quietly. Then, carefully, I lifted the cloth, just a little, so that a single, thin, small light fell across that eye. For seven nights I did this, seven long nights, every night at midnight. Always the eye was closed, so it was impossible for me to do the work. For it was not the old man I felt I had to kill; it was the eye, his Evil Eye." - He tries to kill the old man and then his heart doesn't stop beating. The neighbor heard the old man's cry and calls the police. When the heart beat doesn't stop beating the man cries out that he killed him. - Suspense, Narrative Distance & Dramatic Irony
Simmons, The Story Factor (pp. 1-24)
Title: The six stories you need to know how to tell, to be a person is to have a story to tell: 1. Who I Am Stories 2. Why I am Here Stories 3. My Vision Story 4. Teaching Stories 5. Values in Action Stories 6. "I Know what you are Thinking" Stories - Story about a young CEO making a mistake in his engineering plans for a boat building company. - Story about a mans grandfather who looked at everyday as his next best. - Story about a man who raises money for AIDS and giving to get; relating to the Dead Sea. - A CEO who wants to be a $2 Billion company; You have to take the time to find a story of your vision in a way that connects - a story that people can see. - To live in this world with purpose and meaning we must tell ourselves some story of vision that gives our struggle meaning. - "They want faith - faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell. It is faith that moves mountains, not facts. Facts do not give birth to faith. Faith needs a story to sustain it - a meaningful story that inspires belief in you and renews hope that your ideas, do indeed, offer what you promise."
