RavingLEARNatics

The Silent Dialogue

"Never write a line of dialogue when you can create a visual expression. Ask, 'How can I write this in a purely visual way and not resort to a single line of dialogue?'"

-- Robert Mckee, author of the book Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting

Current TV & Storytelling by Ira Glass

Current TV is a cable network that tells informative stories from the real world with about 1/3 of their content being viewer-created content, or what they call "VC2". They break their schedule into short segments called "pods" — each just 3-7 minutes in length and generally use a character, action, or event to tell a story. Anyone who wants to contribute can upload a video on their website. Then, everyone in the Current online community helps decide what should be on TV.

On the website, They have a training section to help amateur/beginning producers better understand the craft of journalism/storytelling/production. Under the Storytelling section they have video clips from industry “experts.” I found one clip by Ira Glass, host of radio program This American Life interesting. Ira talks about there being 2 building blocks to creating a good story:

1. Anecdotes - A sequence of events that leads from one thing to the next to the next and creates suspense. Raising questions and baiting the audience.
2. Moment of Reflection - Here's the point of the story, the bigger something we are driving at.

Ira's video segment is almost 20 minutes long but worth the time.

Digital Storytelling

A good storytelling quote from Dana Atchley, the late digital storytelling pioneer:

"...digital storytelling combines the best of two worlds: the 'new world' of digitized video, photography and art, and the "old world" of telling stories. This means the "old world" of PowerPoint slides filled with bullet point statements will be replaced by a "new world" of examples via stories, accompanied by evocative images and sounds."

Story Structure II

Screenwriting and story guru Robert Mckee, author of the book Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting describes story as "a design in five parts."  The five parts are:

1. Inciting Incident - A sudden decisive event that significantly upsets the character's life balance either positively or negatively.
2. Progressive Complications - To generate more and more conflict for the characters as they face greater forces of antagonism.
3. Crisis - The decision of the character to take one action or another.
4. Climax - A revolution in values from negative to positive or positive to negative.
5. Resolution - Tie up lose ends and allow the audience to gather it's thoughts.

Story Structure

Respected and influential comic artist Will Eisner mentioned in his book Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative that the structure of a story can be diagrammed with many variations from beginning to end. His basic story structure is shown in this graphic . . .

Eisner tells us that at the outset of telling a story, there is a "contract" between teller and audience. The teller expects the audience will comprehend, while the audience expects the teller will deliver something that is comprehensible. The burden is on the teller and is the basic rule of communication. A major element of the "contract" is audience control. According to Eisner "Once the reader's attention is seized it cannot be allowed to escape. . . In comics, reader control is attained in two stages - attention and retention." Use of "provocative and attractive imagery" gains attention, while the "logical and intelligible arrangement of images" achieves retention.

More on Storytelling

According to eminent cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, human beings are "hardwired to organize experience into narratives."  In his book The Culture of Education, Bruner says that the meaning of all facts, propositions, or encounters depend on the perspectives or frames of reference by which they are referenced.