resurse storytelling: forma povestirilor

Forma povestirilor unei societăți, spunea Vonnegut, este cel puțin la fel de interesantă ca forma vaselor sale de lut sau a vîrfurilor sale de suliță. Iată cîteva, în versiunea graficianei Maya Eilam.

Cu cuvintele lui Vonnegut însuși, am mai pomenit de forma povestirilor aici (în 2013).

resurse storytelling: creierul tînjește după poveste

O să recunosc: am citit The Da Vinci Code ! Aflat într-o expediție prin Europa, l-am recuperat dintr-un hostel și l-am început, de curiozitate. 
O să continui să recunosc: am terminat romanul lui Dan Brown în mai puțin de 48 de ore - și asta numai din cauză că expediția cu pricina era o întîlnire într-un proiect pe care îl coordonam, eram complet blocat în timpul zilei, iar seara, odată ajuns la hotel, aveam de rezolvat chestii online; deci, doar din acest motiv nu l-am putut citi mult mai repede, într-un 'șnur' de cîteva ore :> 
Și: da, l-am citit scrîșnind și bombănind sistematic diverse formule de tehnică narativă de un kitsch total - dar l-am citit pînă la sfîrșit, și l-am citit repede. Și, exact din aceeași cauză, l-am și păstrat - ca să-l recitesc, la un moment dat, și să mă lămuresc: de ce, mă, de ceee...? 

De unde și pînă unde, deci, oda asta închinată Codului lui Da Vinci ? :) Acum niște luni, am dat peste o carte care mi-a explicat, coerent, de ce. Cică

MYTH: Beautiful Writing Trumps All
REALITY: Storytelling Trumps Beautiful Writing, Every Time

Nu e ca și cum nu i-aș fi bănuit întotdeauna pe calofili de tot felul de păcate. Dar Lisa Cron, în Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence, explică, pe îndelete, primatul povestitorului față de jonglerul cu metafore folosindu-se de argumente din neurosciences. Deci, fără citate din McKee și Vogler - ci din Antonio Damasio și Steven Pinker, ba chiar, într-un loc, din V.S. Ramachandran :) Cu alte cuvinte, argumente științifice referitoare la focalizarea reflexă a creierului pe poveste, pe narațiune - în detrimentul scriiturii 'frumoase'.  

Iată, mai jos, schema Lisei Cron - în care aceasta împerechează cîte un aspect al modului în care funcționează creierul cu unul al modului în care funcționează o poveste [în contact cu un creier]. Enjoy :)

cognitive secret	story secret
We think in story, which allows us to envision the future.	From the very first sentence, the reader must want to know what happens next.
When the brain focuses its full attention on something, it filters out all unnecessary information.	To hold the brain's attention, everything in a story must be there on a need-to-know basis.
Emotion determines the meaning of everything -- if we're not feeling, we're not conscious.	All story is emotion based -- if we're not feeling, we're not reading.
Everything we do is goal directed, and our biggest goal is figuring out everyone else's agenda, the better to achieve our own.	A protagonist without a clear goal has nothing to figure out and nowhere to go.
We see the world not as it is, but as we believe it to be.	You must know precisely when, and why, your protagonist's worldview was knocked out of alignment.
We don't think in the abstract, we think in specific images.	Anything conceptual, abstract, or general must be made tangible in the protagonist's specific struggle.
The brain is wired to stubbornly resist change, even good change.	Story is about change, which results only from unavoidable conflict.
From birth, our brain's primary goal is to make causal connections -- if this, then that.	A story follows a cause-and-effect trajectory from start to finish.
The brain uses stories to simulate how we might navigate difficult situations in the future.	A story's job is to put the protagonist through tests that, even in her wildest dreams, she doesn't think she can pass.
Since the brain abhors randomness, it's always converting raw data into meaningful patterns, the better to anticipate what might happen next.	Readers are always on the lookout for patterns; to your reader everything is either a setup, a payoff, or the road in between.
The brain summons past memories to evaluate what's happening in the moment in order to make sense of it.	Foreshadowing, flashbacks, and subplots must instantly give readers insight into what's happening in the main storyline, even if the meaning shifts as the story unfolds.
It takes long-term, conscious effort to hone a skill before the brain assigns it to the cognitive unconscious.	There's no writing, there's only rewriting.

O să revin, în săptămînile și lunile următoare, luînd pe rînd fiecare pereche de 'secrete'. Dar să fim bine înțeleși: modul în care funcționează creierul uman generează învățăminte legate, mai degrabă, de structura narativă, nu de scriitură ca atare. Însă scriitura joacă un rol capital - vă amintiți de teoria lui Isaac Asimov, cea cu mozaicul și geamul ?

There is writing which resembles the mosaic of glass you see in stained-glass windows. Such windows are beautiful in themselves and let in the light in colored fragments, but you can't expect to see through them. In the same way, there is poetic writing that is beautiful in itself and can easily affect the emotions, but such writing can be dense and can make for hard reading if you are trying to figure out what's happening.
Plate glass, on the other hand, has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between.

Și continuă: I hope this is what is happening when you read this book. 
Acum ați înțeles...? :)

resurse storytelling: înapoi la kurt vonnegut jr.

De data asta, nici nu mai dau explicații - ci trimit direct către două 'colaje' cu titluri suficient de explicite:

Watch Kurt Vonnegut demystify story structure with a fairy tale and a piece of chalk
și 
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

sau, în această formă...

7 storytelling tips from kurt vonnegut from Gavin McMahon

So it goes...

resurse storytelling: labyrintheme - the 'story and narrative' module

The Story and narrative module in the labyrinth theatre course/workshop for educators working in and with museums - an output of Labyrintheme, a LLP/Grundtvig Multilateral Project (2011-2012).

Labyrintheme curriculum

Story and narrative theory-focused session

Lucian Branea

1. Introduction

1.1.      Background

The rationale of the inclusion of such a module is to introduce trainees to the importance of story and narrative, as well as to some structural elements common to fairy tales and myths around the world deemed essential to effective narratives.

1.2.      Objectives

The module’s objective is to offer a brief theoretical background to developing a narrative. By the end of this module, trainees should have a grasp regarding the importance of storytelling and basic knowledge regarding some technical aspects of storytelling and narrative.

2. Pre-requisites

2.1.      Required competences of  trainer/s

The trainer should be knowledgeable of narrative / storytelling theory and practice, derived either from a literature studies or a performing arts studies background. Background in creative writing practice helps :)

2.2.      Required competences of trainees

Trainees need no specific competence, skill or background, except curiosity and openness towards the subject matter of the module.

2.3.      Required logistics

No specific logistics is required, the module is delivered within the training course space.

2.4.      Duration and timing

The duration of the session is 2-3 hours, with appropriate breaks, provisionally positioned in the morning of Day 4.

3. Module program and content

3.1.   Actual content

a. Lecture (max. 30 minutes)
In Terry Pratchett’s Witches Abroad, witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick have to travel from their native mountainous Ramtop to the distant lowlands of Genua to fulfil an apparently easy task. You have to admit: how hard can it be to ensure that a particular servant girl does not marry a prince? However, since this happens on Discworld (which travels through space on the back of four elephants who in turn stand on the shell of the Great A’Tuin, the sky turtle), things are not so simple as they appear. And this is because Discworld runs on magic, and magic is indissolubly linked to Narrative Causality, the power of story. On Discworld servant girls have to marry the prince; wolves have to eat grandmothers; and it is impossible for the third and youngest son of any king, upon embarking on a particular quest, not to succeed.

In Terry Pratchett’s words,  

[…] stories are important.

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.

Stories exist independent of their players. If you know that, knowledge is power.

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling… stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness.

And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountainside. And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper.

This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been.

This is why history keeps on repeating all the time. […]

Stories don't care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself.

Even more, on Discworld, the narrative imperative is reified into narrativium.

Narrativium is not an element in the accepted sense. It is an attribute of every other element, thus turning them into, in an occult sense, molecules. Iron contains not just iron, but also the story of iron, the history of iron, the part of iron that ensures that it will continue to be iron, and has an iron-like job to do and is not, for example, cheese. Without narrativium, the cosmos has no story, no purpose, no destination.

If the descriptions above remind you of memes, the cultural analogues to genes first described by Richard Dawkins, you are indeed on the right track. And you’d better be, because on Roundworld (that is, obviously, Earth) the story is at least as important as it is on Discworld. In all human cultures, from very early infancy, each and every bit of socializing and of learning is achieved through stories. Children hear stories even before they are able to recognize any words at all, and by the age of three most of them are already set to make up their own stories about their immediate environment. And things continue like this, year after year, story after story, until they grow older and some of them get ashamed of referring to ‘stories’ anymore, preferring to call their made-up stories ‘alternative scenarios.’ However, they’re still using stories, narratives, to shape and communicate their experiences, no matter how they call them.  

Now, even if most of us were able to make-up our own stories by the age of three, only a fraction of us are really successful when telling jokes at parties. A much smaller fraction is able to make careers as stand-up comedians, novelists or movie-makers. And an even much smaller fraction is eventually so successful with storytelling so as to get rich and internationally famous (this arithmetic does not apply to politicians, a distinct category of storytellers!). As a consequence, in order to alter such statistics, some of us become teachers of literature, or even (if we’re really over-structured) narratologists, while some hold creative writing or screenwriting workshops, training others to unlock their potential in a) writing stories (movie scripts included), that b) grab their readers or audience from the first moment and don’t let them go back to their mundane world until the story is over. This second outcome is a tricky business indeed, because stories passed on to other people have to interest them, to make them care, and consequently to make them learn something about the world and, in the process, about themselves.  

Due to a variety of cultural and economic factors and stakes, the most energy to develop such advice for the novice storyteller emerged from within the movie-making sector. Aspiring storytellers might have occasionally heard about Syd Field and Robert McKee, or Catherine Ann Jones, or John Truby, or Linda Aronson, or Blake Snyder for that matter, because such screenwriters and story consultants in the movie-making industry put their advice on paper claiming that the things they recount about making a story ‘work’ are relevant and applicable to writers of all kinds, including short story writers, novelists, but also journalists, memoirists, and other non-fiction writers.

This module chose to present to you a model developed on some structural elements than can be found in myths, fairy tales, and even dreams across the world: Joseph Campbell’s The Hero's Journey refers to a basic pattern found in a substantial number of narratives in Eastern and Western cultures alike. This identifiable pattern was first fully described in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Slightly more than four decades later, Christopher Vogler, a Walt Disney Company development executive, compiled a 7-page company memo based on Campbell's work, A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces, that circulated extensively around Hollywood. Vogler's memo was later developed into TheWriter's Journey. Mythic Structure For Writers, with a first edition in 1997 (and a third printed in 2007 as the latest edition at the moment of writing this).

Please mind (again!) that this is only a model of a variety of models, which you might find useful or not, within or outside the Labyrintheme training course’s scope, and as such it is the personal option of the author of the present module. Such an option is primarily based on the fact that each story worth its existence recounts a protagonist’s journey, be it outward or inward, in the end of which the hero is changed forever. Or until a next journey, of course…:>

Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey

[the names of the stages of the Hero’s Journey as dubbed by Vogler are in Bold; only some of them correspond to Campbell’s terminology]

1.   The heroes are shown (more or less extensively) in their ‘home environment’, the Ordinary World, where they mind their own daily businesses, until

2.   one day the Ordinary World is shaken in one way or another and the heroes are presented with a Call to Adventure, a way out of their familiar environments and their routine;

3.   at first, the heroes are reluctant, from a variety of reasons, to respond to the challenge, and a Refusal of the Call is tabled;

4.   however, a Meeting with the Mentor helps heroes to rise to the challenge and embark on their quest.

5.   Leaving the Ordinary World and effectively entering a non-ordinary, unfamiliar world, the heroes are Crossing the First Threshold,

6.   entering a stage during which they encounter Tests, as well as sort out Allies and Enemies.

7.   The heroes and their allies are furthermore preparing for the major challenge of their journey, that is for the Approach to the Inmost Cave,

8.   a stage in which they are subjected to an Ordeal, confronting their most terrible fear or death,

9.   which they survive and consequently get their Reward.

10. The Road Back now begins, as the heroes must (or choose to) return to the Ordinary World, to bring back the Reward and implement lessons learned during the journey;

11. however, perils along the journey are far from over: the heroes have one more dangerous meeting with death and undergo a final purging and purification, a Resurrection, before re-entering the Ordinary World.

12. Finally, heroes Return with the Elixir, in the form of an artefact and/or specific wisdom; they are forever changed by the experience, and the Ordinary World is expected to change too, in some minor or major form.

Archetypes

Mentors, Allies, the Heroes themselves and many others are character types. Myths and fairy tales throughout the world tend to share a series of recurring character types, symbols and relationships. Carl Gustav Jung first suggested that a collective unconscious may exist, to the same extent as there is an individual unconscious. And since a series of such character types consistently occur at both levels, across vast cultural spaces, Jung used the term archetype to account for such patterns of personality as a shared heritage of humanity.

Christopher Vogler describes, in his The Writer’s Journey, eight archetypes as “the most common and useful” for the storyteller, acknowledging there are many more, but introducing just “the most basic patterns, from which all others are shaped to fit the needs of specific stories and genres.” As Vogler’s Journey, the following list of archetypes is just a proposal; you are obviously welcome to find others that do not seem to be particular variations of the ones below.

However, before examining a list of possible patterns, please note two more important things about archetypes. First, while they look like character types, they may very well be roles or functions performed temporarily, in various stages of the story, by various characters, including the hero her/himself. Second, if you think that all humans are complex (like I do!), you might as well look at all archetypes as facets of the hero’s personality, acquired or gaining prominence in various stages of her/his journey.

 

Hero. The term comes from the Greek ἥρως (heros) and literally means protector, defender. As such, the hero is a central protagonist that, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self-sacrifice for the common/greater good. Its psychological function is to represent what Freud called the ego, the part of personality that considers itself distinct. Its dramatic functions (because the Hero has several) are: to facilitate audience identification; to display learning/growth; to act, in control of own fate; to confront literal or symbolic death; to sacrifice herself/himself. In any story, the hero is the one who learns/grows the most.

Mentor. Most often a positive figure, the Mentors teach, inspire and protect heroes. Its psychological function is to represent the Self, the aspect of one’s personality connected with the world, therefore the wiser and nobler part of it. Its dramatic function is supporting the heroes through teaching/training, but also offering them gifts that will be of help at some point through the journey.

Threshold Guardian. A guard at each gateway to a new world encountered along the journey, the Threshold Guardian is there to keep the unworthy from entering. Its psychological function is to represent the ordinary obstacles in the everyday world, but ultimately our internal demons: fears, self-limitations, dependencies. Its dramatic function is to test the hero at various checkpoints along the journey.

Herald. The Herald issues challenges, announcing imminent change. Therefore, its psychological function is signalling the need for change. By issuing challenges, the Herald’s dramatic function is to motivate the Hero.

Shapeshifter. Shapeshifters are characters continuously change appearance or mood, with their loyalty and sincerity always questionable. Their psychological function is to express the energy of animus and anima in Carl Gustav Jung’s terminology: the male element in the female unconscious, and the female element in the male unconscious, respectively. Consequently, their dramatic function is to bring suspense into a story.

Shadow. The Shadow archetype represents the energy of one’s dark side. Its psychological function is therefore to represent the power of repressed feelings, not so much neuroses (as in the case of the Threshold Guardian), but psychoses threatening to destroy oneself. Its dramatic function is to challenge the hero, posturing as a worthy opponent.

Ally. A companion, conscience or even comic relief, the Ally is an archetype whose psychological function is to represent positive unexpressed or unused parts of one’s personality that should be brought occasionally to action. Its dramatic function is to support, and occasionally challenge, the hero.

Trickster. A catalyst character, it embodies de desire for change. Its psychological functions are to cut egos down to size, bringing everybody taking themselves too seriously down to earth, as well as facilitating change or transformation. Its dramatic function is therefore that of comic relief.

Summing up

Defining story or, for the purpose of this brief, storytelling can consume whole libraries. There’s no easy way out of this, so I’ll just refer you to a TED Talk in February 2012: Andrew Stanton - The clues to a great story. Says Stanton:

Storytelling -- is joke telling. It's knowing your punchline, your ending, knowing that everything you're saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal, and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.

For the other 19 minutes of Stanton’s TED Talk, check http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story.html. Then read or watch stories whenever you can to make up your own definition for ‘story’ :)  

b. Practical activities:

* reconfigure your choice of a story [with yourself as the protagonist in a museum setting] as a ‘hero’s journey’

* design a brief ‘hero’s journey’ whose hero is a museum artefact of your choice

3.2. Resources used

Material resources needed: flipchart, paper, pens/pencils, personal objects of participants.

Bibliography

Christopher Vogler’s A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Cristopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: MythicStructure for Writers - Michael Wiese Productions, 2007 (3^rd edition)

Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad – Corgi Books, 1992

Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, TheScience of Discworld II: The Globe – Ebury Press, 2003

Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, TheScience of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch – Ebury Press, 2005

Only indirectly referred to in this brief, but essential for aspiring storytellers:

Robert McKee, Story: Substance, structure,style, and the principles of screenwriting – Methuen, 1999

    If you feel over-analytical :) and wish to update your knowledge of narrative to an academic level, go to

David Herman, Basic Elements of Narrative – Wiley-Blackwell, 2009

3.3. Glossary

Archetype. an inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/archetype). The term derives from the Latin noun archetypum, the latinisation of the Greek noun ἀρχέτυπον (archetupon) and adjective ἀρχέτυπος (archetupos) – a compound of ἀρχή (arche = origin) and τύπος (tupos = pattern, model, type).

Meme. An idea, behavior, style or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme). Alteration of mimeme, from Greek μίμησις (mimesis = imitation). First coined by Richard Dawkins in The SelfishGene (1976). 

4. Concluding session

The concluding session should discuss trainees’ opinions on what makes a good story and what makes a well told story. 

resurse storytelling: the point is... (christmas special treat)

Da, The Point (1971). Cu vocea lui Ringo Starr și muzica (dar și vocea, dar și story-ul) lui Harry Nilsson.

Post by Lucian Branea.

resurse storytelling: the parting glass

The Parting Glass este o reclamă la Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey - creată de Opperman Weiss, o agenție din New York. Regizorul britanic Laurence Dunmore a filmat în County Wicklow (Irlanda, firește) - asta în caz că vă întrebați unde găsiți combinația asta de gri și verde, precum și ploaia asta... arhetipală de-a binelea :) Iar capela este asta.

resurse storytelling: kurt vonnegut, jr. - do not use semicolons

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. este unul din autorii pe care am început să-i urmăresc sistematic 'de mic' - încă mai am o ediție din 1972 din Cat's Cradle cu niște ștampile de American Reading Room pe ea. Și aproape toate celelalte cărți ale lui, firește (din care doar alte două cu ștampile pe ele, că începuse să se traducă din el și s-a făcut și decembrie 1989).

8 sfaturi de la Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., deci:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Poate nu sînteți de acord cu 'Punctul 8 de la Vonnegut' și vă plictisește cititul...? Încerc cu niște grafice, atunci...

Acest video circulă de multă vreme și este, în mod evident, doar un fragment dintr-o conferință mai consistentă. În consecință, de vreți să aflați dacă există viață de povestitor și după Cenușăreasa, treceți înapoi la citit (nu mult!) - Maria Popova administrează (cu cuvintele lui Vonnegut din A Man Without a Country), și veștile bune și veștile rele.  

resurse storytelling: andrew stanton - make me care !

Odată cu acest post, încep să organizez pe-aici un set de resurse storytelling - materiale și referințe care să poată fi folosite într-un atelier (workshop adică, da) în curs de asamblare sub umbrela Ghildei Povestitorilor. Enjoy :)



Și încep revenind, neapărat, la Andrew Stanton - The clues to a great story, un TED Talk din februarie 2012. 19 minute. Worth every second :) Transcript și în română ! 

Storytelling -- is joke telling. It's knowing your punchline, your ending, knowing that everything you're saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal, and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.

Andrew Stanton este scenaristul sau autorul poveștilor din Toy Story 1, 2 și 3, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, WALL-E. De anul trecut - și scenaristul pentru John Carter, primul său film care nu este de animație (dar cu CGI in ADN). 

Nu cred că n-ai avut răbdare 19 minute. Dar, pentru orice eventualitate, vezi mai jos 'regulile de aur' ale ceea ce numim storytelling (așa cum sînt ele explicitate de Stanton) vizualizate de către Karin Hueck și Rafael Quick de la revista braziliană Superinteressante via blogul TED.