Monday, February 15, 2016
Rebecca's Philosophy of Storytelling
I think there are two senses of the word "story." There's a story behind every person, every object, and social construct, and then there's the discrete story like we've been creating in class. Storytelling in this way summarizes descriptions and experiences. Someone's "life story" is an example of this; their life story is made up of so many details because time passing creates a history for that person, but it is summarized and organized with key points and usually a takeaway. Humans naturally organize events as narratives, so there's a spectrum of storytelling that ranges from mundane and simple (telling a story about brushing your teeth) to extraordinary and complex (the story of WWI).
My story for class has a low-stakes takeaway to be informed and entertained by the adoption of my family cat George. My story mostly follows chronological order, rather than organizing different points that create an overall argument or a statement about the bigger picture. My story is pretty much all about George and my family's experience, but I hope certain parts are relatable for listeners with pets even though I never directly invite the audience to engage with my story and imagine certain situations or feelings.
There were so many different approaches I could've taken when creating my story. Focusing on different aspects, point of view, and tone could have ended up completely different since I'm familiar with the topic and have a lot of content I could create. t's like the fact that some people are "good storytellers" and others aren't. Some classmates have stories that resemble a blog post or short article more than a story to me, when thinking of a story as a fairy tale, but they still convey a clear message and combine all the parts to make sense. So it's easy to categorize communication as storytelling a lot of times, I think, but it's difficult to strategically compose it to have a specific effect on listeners.
Literal music video: "Handlebars" by Flobots
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