The 99% has posted a talk by storyteller Jay O'Callahan, in which he shares some of his process for developing stories. Included is an excerpt from "Forged in the Stars," a story commissioned by NASA on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
The audience for this talk aren't storytellers, so O'Callahan's simplifies his process greatly (you would too, if you only had 20 minutes to explain what you do), but notice how the story he tells to illustrate his point is a story about storytelling. In his telling, he's not telling the story of the moon landing, he's telling the story of Neil Armstrong telling the story of the moon landing.
Showing posts with label imagination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imagination. Show all posts
September 10, 2010
August 09, 2009
More Lessons from the Campfire
I was camping in Yosemite National Park last month (missed Angela Lloyd by a week, I didn't know they invited storytellers in for workshops and concerts). The first night, my family and I went to the ranger-led campfire program. The interpretive program was on the "spirit" of the mountains (as expressed through artists and poets), and the audience sat on fixed benches in an amphitheater style arrangement, with the presenter sharing the stage with the actual campfire. That night, the ranger shared a personal story of climbing in Bhutan and invited stories from the gathering. Afterwards, she told me she hadn't quite known how to work in a traditional tale she'd learned in Bhutan, which she then told to my family (and to my 8-year old's delight, it had a more scatological ending than the version he'd heard from Laura Simms).
Once friends joined us in Yosemite, we had our own campfires each night in our campsite, where I told stories, after marshmallows had been roasted.
Some thoughts in comparing the two campfires:
The fire for the official ranger-led program we saw had at least eight logs in it, it was quite bright, and with both the light of the fire and the dusk (the program was at 7:00, so it was before sunset), the ranger was clearly visible (and the only one standing on the stage).
Our family campfire had just three logs in it, and usually the stories didn't start until after marshmallows had been roasted and the sun had gone down. Kids and parents were nestled in camping chairs drawn around in a tight circle around the fire pit. The fire was not roaring. It was a cozy, small flame. I, as the storyteller, also in a camping chair, was only dimly visible. And as the night wore on, less so, as the fire died down.
And though I took the role of the storyteller around the fire, just as the ranger had, the simply fact of darkness made the fire, and not me, the focal point for the audience's eyes. Though I was "onstage," and telling the story, there wasn't much point in looking at the storyteller. They were doing the imagining-- the "heavy lifting" of the story-- internally. Nice how something as simple as a campfire can remind us of that.
Once friends joined us in Yosemite, we had our own campfires each night in our campsite, where I told stories, after marshmallows had been roasted.
Some thoughts in comparing the two campfires:
The fire for the official ranger-led program we saw had at least eight logs in it, it was quite bright, and with both the light of the fire and the dusk (the program was at 7:00, so it was before sunset), the ranger was clearly visible (and the only one standing on the stage).
Our family campfire had just three logs in it, and usually the stories didn't start until after marshmallows had been roasted and the sun had gone down. Kids and parents were nestled in camping chairs drawn around in a tight circle around the fire pit. The fire was not roaring. It was a cozy, small flame. I, as the storyteller, also in a camping chair, was only dimly visible. And as the night wore on, less so, as the fire died down.
And though I took the role of the storyteller around the fire, just as the ranger had, the simply fact of darkness made the fire, and not me, the focal point for the audience's eyes. Though I was "onstage," and telling the story, there wasn't much point in looking at the storyteller. They were doing the imagining-- the "heavy lifting" of the story-- internally. Nice how something as simple as a campfire can remind us of that.
July 17, 2009
Process: Color and Advance
I'm in the process of adding some new stories to my repertoire. So, taking a page from the playbook of storyteller Priscilla Howe, I set up some informal backyard storytelling sessions, to give myself a live audience to whom I could tell these stories.
Two of the three stories are wonder tales, involving quests, with various tasks which tangle the plot, and familiar fairy tale motifs. But in this early stage, when I'm just getting to know the story, the main challenge for me is to simply hit all the plot points. And for my first run in my backyard, I managed to include most of them in my telling. Even got them in the right order.
Afterwards, reflecting on how these "first tellings" went, I realized that I was so concerned about the plot, that I left out pretty much any description that might help my listeners create the images of the story. Luckily, these stories are archetypal enough (and my audience young enough) that just saying "forest," "cave," "lion," or "giant" is enough of a prompt to get their imaginations going. But to me the story felt dry. Bare bones.
This feeling reminded me of an instructive game I learned when I was studying improvisation. The game, Color/Advance, involved two people: a storyteller and a director. One person would start telling a story, and the director could say only one of two directions:
"Advance," and the storyteller would have to keep the action of the story moving forward.
The other direction, "Color," when spoken aloud, meant that the storyteller had to stop the forward momentum of the story and stay in the moment, but embellish--go deeper--with description of the environment, the characters, or the emotion. The game was designed to get us thinking about key components of narrative.
So here was my thought about the bare bones: too much advance, not enough color.
It will come, with more tellings. The color is already there; I just need to bring it out. As I tell a story, I have visual images in my head of everything that's going on. In one sense, I'm simply describing what I see.
(Not all storytellers work that way, though many do, but I found this is a fairly useful description to explain to people how it is that I can tell a story without memorizing a text)
The trick is to translate those images into oral language, fluidly. With more tellings, it will happen. I'll begin to associate certain phrases with certain images. Over time, the language may become more and more set (but for me, never rigid).
This was a helpful revelation, as, at the same time, I was working on a new story for a local adult storytelling series, and for a change of pace, I was developing a monologue... which meant that the story was not simply plot and image strung together. I was working on giving voice to a character, and so I was considering sound, movement, attitude, and emotion in a way that I don't typically do in my "regular storytelling" (Thank goodness for all those years working towards a degree in Theatre).
All of these qualities in a character monologue are part of the "color." But this backyard lab helped me (wearing my playwright hat) by reminding me that my character could tell his story more effectively if he went beyond "this happened then this happened" to include details like "she was the kind of girl who..." and "two ogres? two ogres are stupider than one."
The Color/Advance game was an exercise to build awareness. We never came up with a formula for the proper ratio of each, and we never tried. It's been a helpful way, for me, to think about oral performance. I've noticed some storytellers tipping the scales toward too much color (taking a two minute story and stretching it into five, or ten, with description of time and place and character)-- I think the personal memoir genre encourages this. I really admire those storytellers who are economical with their color-- the details really matter to the story, they are there because they need to be. They're part of the meat, not the fat.
How about you? Which part of the storytelling process appeals to you, as a listener, or as a teller?
Color? or Advance?
Two of the three stories are wonder tales, involving quests, with various tasks which tangle the plot, and familiar fairy tale motifs. But in this early stage, when I'm just getting to know the story, the main challenge for me is to simply hit all the plot points. And for my first run in my backyard, I managed to include most of them in my telling. Even got them in the right order.
Afterwards, reflecting on how these "first tellings" went, I realized that I was so concerned about the plot, that I left out pretty much any description that might help my listeners create the images of the story. Luckily, these stories are archetypal enough (and my audience young enough) that just saying "forest," "cave," "lion," or "giant" is enough of a prompt to get their imaginations going. But to me the story felt dry. Bare bones.
This feeling reminded me of an instructive game I learned when I was studying improvisation. The game, Color/Advance, involved two people: a storyteller and a director. One person would start telling a story, and the director could say only one of two directions:
"Advance," and the storyteller would have to keep the action of the story moving forward.
The other direction, "Color," when spoken aloud, meant that the storyteller had to stop the forward momentum of the story and stay in the moment, but embellish--go deeper--with description of the environment, the characters, or the emotion. The game was designed to get us thinking about key components of narrative.
So here was my thought about the bare bones: too much advance, not enough color.
It will come, with more tellings. The color is already there; I just need to bring it out. As I tell a story, I have visual images in my head of everything that's going on. In one sense, I'm simply describing what I see.
(Not all storytellers work that way, though many do, but I found this is a fairly useful description to explain to people how it is that I can tell a story without memorizing a text)
The trick is to translate those images into oral language, fluidly. With more tellings, it will happen. I'll begin to associate certain phrases with certain images. Over time, the language may become more and more set (but for me, never rigid).
This was a helpful revelation, as, at the same time, I was working on a new story for a local adult storytelling series, and for a change of pace, I was developing a monologue... which meant that the story was not simply plot and image strung together. I was working on giving voice to a character, and so I was considering sound, movement, attitude, and emotion in a way that I don't typically do in my "regular storytelling" (Thank goodness for all those years working towards a degree in Theatre).
All of these qualities in a character monologue are part of the "color." But this backyard lab helped me (wearing my playwright hat) by reminding me that my character could tell his story more effectively if he went beyond "this happened then this happened" to include details like "she was the kind of girl who..." and "two ogres? two ogres are stupider than one."
The Color/Advance game was an exercise to build awareness. We never came up with a formula for the proper ratio of each, and we never tried. It's been a helpful way, for me, to think about oral performance. I've noticed some storytellers tipping the scales toward too much color (taking a two minute story and stretching it into five, or ten, with description of time and place and character)-- I think the personal memoir genre encourages this. I really admire those storytellers who are economical with their color-- the details really matter to the story, they are there because they need to be. They're part of the meat, not the fat.
How about you? Which part of the storytelling process appeals to you, as a listener, or as a teller?
Color? or Advance?
February 02, 2008
TED Talks - J.J. Abrams: The mystery box
Hearing about Carmen Deedy's experience at TED in 2005 got me thinking. I certainly appreciate that the TED conference organizers invited a storyteller... that they felt it important to have an oral storyteller share the stage (I'm missing information here, though, it's not clear to me if Carmen was invited as a "performer" or a "thinker," or even if TED makes that distinction). By the limited accounts available on the web, she certainly made an impression (not bad, considering Bono was the main attraction that year), but I wish I knew more.
In her plea for the importance of story, did she merely rely on the personal story?
When she said that "the storyteller has been relegated to the secondary or tertiary role in the community," was she merely bemoaning the loss of tradition. Did she acknowledge the role of technology (or was she simply stepping into an assigned role of the vanishing anthropological relic)?
TED has not published the video of her talk, so for now, the questions remained unanswered.
I'm including here a TED talk from 2007 from J.J. Abrams, the writer and director (Alias, Lost, Cloverfield). Now here's a storyteller who's unabashedly awed by technology... because it allows him (and inspires him) to fully express his creativity. I'm including his rambling TED talk here, not because I think Abram's evangelizing of the democratizing power of technology to create is that relevant, but because his metaphor of the "mystery box" acknowledges fundamentals of our art form: that mystery is the catalyst for the audience's imagination, that witholding information makes the imagination work harder (and makes stories more satisfying), and that a story's narrative is not its content.
Also, I'm a huge fan of Lost.
If you were asked to perform at TED, what would you say?
In her plea for the importance of story, did she merely rely on the personal story?
When she said that "the storyteller has been relegated to the secondary or tertiary role in the community," was she merely bemoaning the loss of tradition. Did she acknowledge the role of technology (or was she simply stepping into an assigned role of the vanishing anthropological relic)?
TED has not published the video of her talk, so for now, the questions remained unanswered.
I'm including here a TED talk from 2007 from J.J. Abrams, the writer and director (Alias, Lost, Cloverfield). Now here's a storyteller who's unabashedly awed by technology... because it allows him (and inspires him) to fully express his creativity. I'm including his rambling TED talk here, not because I think Abram's evangelizing of the democratizing power of technology to create is that relevant, but because his metaphor of the "mystery box" acknowledges fundamentals of our art form: that mystery is the catalyst for the audience's imagination, that witholding information makes the imagination work harder (and makes stories more satisfying), and that a story's narrative is not its content.
Also, I'm a huge fan of Lost.
If you were asked to perform at TED, what would you say?
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