Storytelling, one of our oldest art forms, has many branches spreading from the trunk. All branches to various degrees are forms of entertainment and information transfer.
The literary tellers include: tellers using rote word memory to remain true to the author's manuscript, tellers who have changed the author's literary language to oral language, tellers who have adjusted the language and added their imbellishments, and tellers who have recast the literary story into a different inventive approach of telling the literary story as personalized experience. Folk Storytellers add into their memory banks a flowing serial image of a story and create the word patterns during the telling of the story. Between these two primary approaches of rote manuscript memory and flowing imagery memory are other approaches I'm aware of, but am unable to understand, other than the teller is unable to memorize words or see an image, but they are talented tellers.
Literary and Folk storytellers also share the same need to understand and develop their talent skills in supporting the storytelling with appropriate vocal and physical body language which I refer to as Para-language. Lack of para-language talent skills, while more subtle then poor word construction and tongue twisting errors, are a major deterent to effective communication.
Storytelling includes tellers who have collected and retold stories from their own culture and from other cultures, and tellers who have creative talents {and those who lack development in creative talent} who develop original stories.
How a story is told has as many paths as there are storytellers. Some tellers come from drama backgrounds and include, as example, monologuest storytellers, others rose from storytelling cultures and family traditions, others simply stepped out on stage and told stories.
Stories arrive from many paths and the tellers have arrived from many paths, but all storytellers have in common the need to expand and develop their speaking talents, for this is a public speaking art form and there are very specific identifiable talent skills to understand and acquire. There are talent skills that need to be used in all lingual communication situations that do not change from one to one communication or from one to a group communication and there are additional lingual talent skills to be used in accordance to the environmental speaking conditions including audience and space.
All lingual storytelling includes both theater of the stage and theater of the mind telling talents. A storyteller who plans to entertain on stage should decide and control the audience's focus - either the action on stage {theater of the stage} or focus the audience on their own mental imagery {theater of the mind}. An audience also can focus on both the teller on stage and their own flowing imagery. There is no right or wrong entertainment between theater of the stage or theater of the mind, but the performing storyteller should have the talent and knowledge to choose which of the two forms to use and when to shift during a telling in lieu of basking in ignorance and letting chance shift between the two entertainment forms.
Diagnosed talent errors are most often a pattern in an aspect of speech or a failure to support the spoken word with appropriate verbal and physical para-language. Patterns and inapt para-language diminish effective communication. The most well known vocal para-language error, for example, is the monotone pattern. Every facet of a teller's voice is either a pattern interfering, or is neutral, or is supporting the flowing moment of the story. Body para-language errors include any unconscious, but controllable physical activity, distracting to a listener that fails to support the flowing moment of the oration.
Actors on stage have planned movements called blocking that supports the play. Storytellers on stage that have not planned their body movements (Blocking) to support the flowing movement of the story either need to be neutral {stand still} or move with a reason. Hand gestures {after one finely learns to get their hands up and communicating} have to be trained to tell the same story or know when to be neutral. In this case neutral can be up in view but motionless waiting for the next que. Eye contact is looking at a member of the audience until you know they know you are looking at them and at random shifting, not head bobbin back and forth or gawking down one's nose unless you are another Pete Seeger.
Boredom - I mean boaring boaring boaring Storytelling is listening to straight narration. "But that's my style I use with kids!" Well look out some day they will become free of their ball and chains and come looking for you! And if they can't find you they take it out on their parents during their teens.
Always substitute at every opportunity Character thinking out loud and Characters in dialogue and learn to change para-language, physical and vocal and Word Per Minute speaking rate with a little accent for each character. It ain't no big deal, just turn your child lose on stage cause if'n your willin' to be a fool, God, well He's willin to make you wise.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Prototypical story
Stories exist at (at least) two levels: The underlying event level and the surface manifestation (communication) of the underlying event level.
There are various morphs and variants, but this is an attempt to define the prototypical story. At the underlying event level we have:
One or more protagonists.
One or more goals that the protagonist(s) are pursuing.
A concrete setting (rule-based world) in which the events take place.
One or more events in which the protagonist takes goal-directed action but which results in an unexpected outcome. This outcome is significantly better or significantly worse on some value dimension that what was expected.
Here are some non-stories that lack one of these elements.
A protagonist is an agent that the reader (or listener or watcher) empathizes with. (A narrative description of a sequence of events, even in a concrete setting, does not in itself constitute a story). "Joe woke up. Joe walked into the kitchen. Joe ate a muffin. Joe went to work. Joe came home." This is not a story. It is not crafted so that we care about Joe. We are not really "feeling" or "seeing" the world from his POV.
The protagonist must be pursuing at least one goal that has significant value. (We would not write or find interesting a "story" about someone trying to bite a sandwich UNLESS there were some unusual significance to the action -- it is poison, or they are overcoming a deep-seated food prejudice, or they are paralyzed, or incredibly hungry, etc.) "Joe wanted to eat a sandwich. Joe ate a sandwich. Joe was not quite so hungry afterwards as he had been before."
"A being wanted to live. In order to live, it seemed necessary to take action A. Action A didn't work. It was necessary to take a risky action, B. The being took the action B. The being lived." This is not a story, though it might be an abstract outline for a story.
"Joe needed to win Sally. So, he told her that she meant the universe to him. They were married and lived happily ever after in Phoenix, Arizona on Elm Street." OR "Joe jumped out of the Navy Trainer without his parachute from 20,000 feet. He wanted to live. But he fell to the ground and was killed." No unexpected or unusual outcomes --- no story.
At the surface level, the underlying story may be communicated in various means:
1. a sequence of spoken words and gestures.
2. a written sequence of words.
3. a filmed sequence (which may or may not also include words).
4. a painting (which may or may not have a caption).
5. a photograph (which may or may not have a caption).
6. a still cartoon (which may or may not have written words).
Of course, every sequence of words, painting, cartoon, etc. does not depict a story.
There are various morphs and variants, but this is an attempt to define the prototypical story. At the underlying event level we have:
One or more protagonists.
One or more goals that the protagonist(s) are pursuing.
A concrete setting (rule-based world) in which the events take place.
One or more events in which the protagonist takes goal-directed action but which results in an unexpected outcome. This outcome is significantly better or significantly worse on some value dimension that what was expected.
Here are some non-stories that lack one of these elements.
A protagonist is an agent that the reader (or listener or watcher) empathizes with. (A narrative description of a sequence of events, even in a concrete setting, does not in itself constitute a story). "Joe woke up. Joe walked into the kitchen. Joe ate a muffin. Joe went to work. Joe came home." This is not a story. It is not crafted so that we care about Joe. We are not really "feeling" or "seeing" the world from his POV.
The protagonist must be pursuing at least one goal that has significant value. (We would not write or find interesting a "story" about someone trying to bite a sandwich UNLESS there were some unusual significance to the action -- it is poison, or they are overcoming a deep-seated food prejudice, or they are paralyzed, or incredibly hungry, etc.) "Joe wanted to eat a sandwich. Joe ate a sandwich. Joe was not quite so hungry afterwards as he had been before."
"A being wanted to live. In order to live, it seemed necessary to take action A. Action A didn't work. It was necessary to take a risky action, B. The being took the action B. The being lived." This is not a story, though it might be an abstract outline for a story.
"Joe needed to win Sally. So, he told her that she meant the universe to him. They were married and lived happily ever after in Phoenix, Arizona on Elm Street." OR "Joe jumped out of the Navy Trainer without his parachute from 20,000 feet. He wanted to live. But he fell to the ground and was killed." No unexpected or unusual outcomes --- no story.
At the surface level, the underlying story may be communicated in various means:
1. a sequence of spoken words and gestures.
2. a written sequence of words.
3. a filmed sequence (which may or may not also include words).
4. a painting (which may or may not have a caption).
5. a photograph (which may or may not have a caption).
6. a still cartoon (which may or may not have written words).
Of course, every sequence of words, painting, cartoon, etc. does not depict a story.
Propoties of stories
My own interest in stories derives from a dissatisfaction with the standard logic-based models of knowledge that one finds in the more formal branches of AI and related fields. I thought stories could make a better basis for a theory of mind and memory.
So, here's what I consider to be the salient characteristics of stories, from this cognitive perspective:
Concrete: they deal with specific people, things, and events, rather than abstract concepts.
Temporal: stories consist of events unfolding in time
Purposeful: stories usually deal with agents who have goals that they try to realize, obstacles or conflicts they encounter, and (sometimes) solutions or resolutions
These characteristics contrast sharply with the logicist view of knowledge as abstract detached facts about value-free categories. They also seem to be linked to deep properties of cognition, ie, episodic memory, prototype-based representation, and social cognition.
It's also interesting to think about this in light of Ong's work. Stories are the basis of oral culture, whereas the more abstract forms of knowledge only come into being with the invention of writing and print.
So, here's what I consider to be the salient characteristics of stories, from this cognitive perspective:
Concrete: they deal with specific people, things, and events, rather than abstract concepts.
Temporal: stories consist of events unfolding in time
Purposeful: stories usually deal with agents who have goals that they try to realize, obstacles or conflicts they encounter, and (sometimes) solutions or resolutions
These characteristics contrast sharply with the logicist view of knowledge as abstract detached facts about value-free categories. They also seem to be linked to deep properties of cognition, ie, episodic memory, prototype-based representation, and social cognition.
It's also interesting to think about this in light of Ong's work. Stories are the basis of oral culture, whereas the more abstract forms of knowledge only come into being with the invention of writing and print.
Perceptions of stories
It seems that we might think about a:
1. Story as Written (spoken)
2. Story as it "is"
3. Story as perceived/experienced
The last depends on set and setting so that the experience of a critic reading a story is quite different from the experience of someone "openly" listening. So too, a story within "Alice in Wonderland" is certainly experienced differently depending on age. A consultant in their office hurriedly "reading through" a bunch of stories to find the one that is most relevant will certainly have a different experience than someone lounging in a bar hearing the same story.
It also seems clear that a story "exists" or can be analysed and defined on various levels. At one (superficial) level, a story is a sequence of interrelated sentences, words, and phrases. In another sense, a story can be thought of as a (pre-computer) simulation or virtual realty device. It essentially allows someone who was not present at an event to "live through it" at least in schematic form -- seeing, hearing, thinking and feeling what the teller saw, heard, thought, and felt. A story is a way to express general (universal?) truth through the use of specific instances. You can write a story about anything.... the letter "P" on your keyboard or an International Terrorist Attack, because if it's a good story, it will "really" be about what it is like to be human in either case.
1. Story as Written (spoken)
2. Story as it "is"
3. Story as perceived/experienced
The last depends on set and setting so that the experience of a critic reading a story is quite different from the experience of someone "openly" listening. So too, a story within "Alice in Wonderland" is certainly experienced differently depending on age. A consultant in their office hurriedly "reading through" a bunch of stories to find the one that is most relevant will certainly have a different experience than someone lounging in a bar hearing the same story.
It also seems clear that a story "exists" or can be analysed and defined on various levels. At one (superficial) level, a story is a sequence of interrelated sentences, words, and phrases. In another sense, a story can be thought of as a (pre-computer) simulation or virtual realty device. It essentially allows someone who was not present at an event to "live through it" at least in schematic form -- seeing, hearing, thinking and feeling what the teller saw, heard, thought, and felt. A story is a way to express general (universal?) truth through the use of specific instances. You can write a story about anything.... the letter "P" on your keyboard or an International Terrorist Attack, because if it's a good story, it will "really" be about what it is like to be human in either case.
how to write story
Defining story
A story is... "that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well-constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles."
-- Aristotle, Poetics
Intuitively we all know what a story is, although we may not be able to articulate all its elements. Generally, story is an organization of experience which draws together many aspects of our spatial, temporal, and causal perception.
In a story, some person, object, or situation undergoes a particularly type of change, and this change is measured by a sequence of attributions which apply to the thing at different types. Story is a way of experiencing a group of sentences, or pictures, or gestures, or dance movements, etc., etc., which together attribute a beginning, middle, and end to something. But typically this beginning, middle, and end are not contained in discrete elements but rather in the overall relationships established among the totality of elements. For example, the first scene of a film is not in itself the “beginning.” It acquires that relationship together in combination with other scenes and in relation to their scenes. Although a scene, or sentence, or page being physically first may be necessary to include it in the beginning, it is not sufficient since a beginning must also be judged to be a proper part of an ordered sequence or pattern of other elements.
Stages of story
What exactly is this pattern? Story theorists argue that a story consists of 5 stages:
a state of equilibrium
disruption of equilibrium
recognition of the disruption
effort to restore state of equilibrium
results of that effort, typically another state of equilibrium
These stages are not random but are produced according to the principles of cause and effect. Mere coincidence may play a part -- but only a very small part -- of what we know as “story.” Cause and effect are the essential rules of process in what we know as story. Events must flow naturally and logically from previous events, based upon what we know of he laws of nature and the way people generally behave.
Cause and effect
When “cause and effect” is violated, story is diminished, sometimes to such an extent that the audience no longer wishes to allocate attention and processing energy. It is likely that all of us at some time has stopped watching a film, or stopped reading a novel, or stopped being engaged by some kind of story because the unraveling of events was marred by faulty cause and effect. That process must ring true.
But to understand the power of story, one needs to know about a broader concept: cognitive schema.
Chunking
When exploring mental processes, we begin with the fact that our brains have severe capacity limitations both in terms of our attention and memory. For example, our short-term memory is said to be able to manipulate only about 5 to 9 “chunks” of data. But by “chunking,” we are able to remember more smaller pieces than by not chunking. For example, the word “red” counts as one chunk, but the letters “edr” count as three chunks. Given a list of 20 letters to remember, one would no doubt have great difficulty recalling them individually.
A story is... "that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well-constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles."
-- Aristotle, Poetics
Intuitively we all know what a story is, although we may not be able to articulate all its elements. Generally, story is an organization of experience which draws together many aspects of our spatial, temporal, and causal perception.
In a story, some person, object, or situation undergoes a particularly type of change, and this change is measured by a sequence of attributions which apply to the thing at different types. Story is a way of experiencing a group of sentences, or pictures, or gestures, or dance movements, etc., etc., which together attribute a beginning, middle, and end to something. But typically this beginning, middle, and end are not contained in discrete elements but rather in the overall relationships established among the totality of elements. For example, the first scene of a film is not in itself the “beginning.” It acquires that relationship together in combination with other scenes and in relation to their scenes. Although a scene, or sentence, or page being physically first may be necessary to include it in the beginning, it is not sufficient since a beginning must also be judged to be a proper part of an ordered sequence or pattern of other elements.
Stages of story
What exactly is this pattern? Story theorists argue that a story consists of 5 stages:
a state of equilibrium
disruption of equilibrium
recognition of the disruption
effort to restore state of equilibrium
results of that effort, typically another state of equilibrium
These stages are not random but are produced according to the principles of cause and effect. Mere coincidence may play a part -- but only a very small part -- of what we know as “story.” Cause and effect are the essential rules of process in what we know as story. Events must flow naturally and logically from previous events, based upon what we know of he laws of nature and the way people generally behave.
Cause and effect
When “cause and effect” is violated, story is diminished, sometimes to such an extent that the audience no longer wishes to allocate attention and processing energy. It is likely that all of us at some time has stopped watching a film, or stopped reading a novel, or stopped being engaged by some kind of story because the unraveling of events was marred by faulty cause and effect. That process must ring true.
But to understand the power of story, one needs to know about a broader concept: cognitive schema.
Chunking
When exploring mental processes, we begin with the fact that our brains have severe capacity limitations both in terms of our attention and memory. For example, our short-term memory is said to be able to manipulate only about 5 to 9 “chunks” of data. But by “chunking,” we are able to remember more smaller pieces than by not chunking. For example, the word “red” counts as one chunk, but the letters “edr” count as three chunks. Given a list of 20 letters to remember, one would no doubt have great difficulty recalling them individually.
Thinking of stories
A fundamental way of organizing data
Story has existed in every known human society. Like metaphor, it seems to be everywhere: sometimes active and obvious, and at other times fragmentary, dormant, and tacit. We encounter it not just in novels and films and conversations, but also as we look around a room and see objects that have history, or wonder about an event or think about what to do next week. If you were to personally count every instance of story that you encounter in the course of a day, the number would not be just one or two but likely in the dozens, if not greater. One of the important ways we perceive our environment is by anticipating and telling ourselves mini-stories about that environment based on stories already told. Make stories is a strategy for making our world of experiences and desires intelligible. It is a fundamental way of organizing data.
Stories abound in all professions
Story principles have been found in the work of a wide range of professionals, including attorneys, historians, biographers, educators, psychiatrists, and journalists. Thus, story should not be seen as exclusively fictional but instead should merely be contrasted to other ways of assembling and understanding data
Story has existed in every known human society. Like metaphor, it seems to be everywhere: sometimes active and obvious, and at other times fragmentary, dormant, and tacit. We encounter it not just in novels and films and conversations, but also as we look around a room and see objects that have history, or wonder about an event or think about what to do next week. If you were to personally count every instance of story that you encounter in the course of a day, the number would not be just one or two but likely in the dozens, if not greater. One of the important ways we perceive our environment is by anticipating and telling ourselves mini-stories about that environment based on stories already told. Make stories is a strategy for making our world of experiences and desires intelligible. It is a fundamental way of organizing data.
Stories abound in all professions
Story principles have been found in the work of a wide range of professionals, including attorneys, historians, biographers, educators, psychiatrists, and journalists. Thus, story should not be seen as exclusively fictional but instead should merely be contrasted to other ways of assembling and understanding data
Economic Development story
Economic Development
There is new syndicated content from Story City Weather.
Story City is located in central Iowa on Interstate 35, only 45 minutes north of Des Moines and 10 minutes north of Ames and Iowa State University. Industrial parks, shopping malls, and several restuarants are located on the interstate, with a vibrant downtown located less than two miles west of I-35. US Hwy 69 is located one mile west of the downtown.
Story City Economic Development Corporation works directly with the State of Iowa and City of Story City to design an incentive package that best suits prospective developers. This 12-person board is experienced in working with a variety of industries and business sizes.
There is new syndicated content from Story City Weather.
Story City is located in central Iowa on Interstate 35, only 45 minutes north of Des Moines and 10 minutes north of Ames and Iowa State University. Industrial parks, shopping malls, and several restuarants are located on the interstate, with a vibrant downtown located less than two miles west of I-35. US Hwy 69 is located one mile west of the downtown.
Story City Economic Development Corporation works directly with the State of Iowa and City of Story City to design an incentive package that best suits prospective developers. This 12-person board is experienced in working with a variety of industries and business sizes.
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